Content marketing has been a key part of digital marketing for years. While changes to SERPs and the constant battleground of advertisements rages on, creating copy which informs, entertains, and converts putters along. A good content marketing strategy feeds into the rest of your digital marketing, supporting SEO, capturing users at the top of the funnel, and providing bottom-funnel users with reasons to purchase your product or service.
However, this isn’t to say content marketing doesn’t have to adapt too. The digital landscape shifts from month to month, year to year, and content marketers are constantly on the lookout for new and interesting ways to draw in readers. We’re going to look at some of the biggest content marketing trends for 2021 and how they can improve your overall digital strategy.
Develop content communities
With applications like Discord, Slack, and other communication platforms becoming the norm in 2020, it’s now more important than ever to build communities. Creating topics for discussion on your site, developing webinars and digital events, or reaching out to your community to provide insight and information.
By chairing meetings and developing a more natural form of communication you empower your users, build a reputation as an industry expert, and can use your content community to develop relationships and network. This growth can be exponential as your community events allow your users and influencers to piggyback and push your events and content out to their audiences.
This system doesn’t take too much in the form of resources either as it is driven by the community. The majority of work is setting up the platform and developing the initial interest. Once you have the community in place it’s a matter of providing topics and occasions for members to discuss and learn about the industry. Content communities are also for generating brand awareness and testing the waters with ideas on branding, marketing, or development.
Sharing Information
In an age where disinformation is rife, users are putting more and more value in reliable information. It’s not just a matter of providing an opinion but backing it up with expertise. If you are a business owner you can use your hard-earned experience and create webinars and video presentations that inform and educate users.
A webinar is incredibly valuable in many ways as it not provides a litmus test for who and what users are interested in, but also lets you collect valuable emails for remarketing, and opens the door to networking and developing client relationships.
Better Information on Product and Services
This one may just be me but I’ve noticed an increasing number of people complain about a lack of information when ordering a product. Before the lockdown, when the majority of consumers bought products from brick-and-mortar stores you could get away with suggesting users visit a store to see a product.
Nowadays, online shopping is in the ascendancy so creating informative product and service pages are a must. If you haven’t already it’s integral that you review your product pages, at least the top-performing ones, and ensure you have up-to-date imagery, dimensions, descriptions of materials, shipping and returns policies, terms of use etc. User trust and decision making require information so make sure you give the customer everything they could possibly need. This will reduce the chances of users leaving before conversion and save you from answering emails about a product.
Augment with AI
While content marketing is a job that still hasn’t been taken over by machines yet (wipes sweat off brow), AI advancement in content marketing has come on in leaps and bounds. Content marketing tools are incredibly intelligent and are capable of improving your work by analysing data and content, suggesting optimisation and incorporating A/B testing.
Some of the content tools that have become popular in content marketing circles include the likes of SparkToro, a tool created by Rand Fishkin that helps find sources of influence. This includes who or what audiences follow, read, listen to, and watch. SEO optimisation systems like SEMrush and Clearscope also have clever tools that score content and suggest where to improve. While some of these systems are a little rudimentary they can serve as fresh eyes and give you a perspective on your work that you hadn’t considered.
At Fifteen, we work with clients to create exciting digital strategies that improve their visibility and conversion rates. If you’re interested in finding out more about content marketing or want to work with a committed team of digital experts then contact us today.