We live in a world where it’s getting very difficult to differentiate noise from information especially online. Brands are producing more content than they did before. Consumers have multiple devices and an endless number of channels to consume content.
As marketers, our task is to make sure that content creates value both for the brand as well as the consumer. If marketing is a relay race, consider content marketing to be the baton.
Content Marketing is a marketing approach to making & distributing relevant content to a defined audience with the aim of achieving a desirable action. It focuses on building a relationship and loyalty by providing worth to its readers.
Doesn’t it sound interesting to you? Here is a definitive guide of content marketing 2021 with unique perspectives from some of the leading brands in the world.
What is Content Marketing?
This is the process of creating and sharing online materials (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that do not intend to promote a brand but it is intended to stimulate an interest in its product and services.
Why is Content Marketing Important?
It is a method of designing, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing content to reach your target audience. It will boost factors like brand awareness, sales, reach, interactions, and loyalty.
- Educate your leads and prospects about the product and services you provide.
- Boost conversions.
- Build relationships between your customers and business that lead to increase loyalty
- Show your audience however your product and services solve their challenges
- Create a way of community around your brand
Now let’s look at the various types of content marketing.
Types of Content Marketing
There are many types of content marketing that you simply might prefer to incorporate in your strategy — here are some of the most common:
1. Social Media Content Marketing
With over 3.6 billion world social media users, it’s easy to grasp why such a lot of businesses invest in social media marketing.
There are a variety of platforms (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat) to work with and a number of other ways in which you’ll produce and share content on each of them (e.g. photos, live videos, pre-recorded videos, stories).
2. Infographic Content Promoting
Infographics display content, information, and data in an easy-to-understand, graphic format. With a mix of simple wording, short statements, and clear pictures, infographics are fantastic ways to effectively communicate your content. They work well if you’re attempting to distill an academic and/ or complicated topic down so all audience members can understand it.
3. Journal Content Promoting
Blogs are a strong variety of inward content and permit tons of creative thinking in terms of their purpose and topic. With a blog, you’ll do things like promoting different internal and external content and journal articles via links, add social share buttons, and incorporate product data.
4. Podcast Content Marketing
According to Pulse Nigeria in 2021, podcasts became really mainstream and influential to the global pop culture in 2015. The survey found that forty-ninth of 18-40year-olds within the Nigerians had listened to a podcast during the last month, with a median of six listening hours per week. For this reason, several businesses and media shops have begun making and sharing their own podcasts.
Podcasts yield plenty of power as they’ll be regarding any topic of selection. to boot, you identify alternative factors associated with the podcast like the cadence of episodes, who’s on the podcast, wherever you advertise the podcast, and the way long episodes square measure.
5. Video Content Marketing
According to Wyzowl’s analysis, sixty-nine of customers say they like to find out a few brand’s products or services through video. to boot, video selling will boost conversions, improve ROI, and assist you to build relationships with audience members. you will like better to share your video content on social media platforms, landing pages, or on a marketer’s site.
6. Paid Ad Content Promoting
Paid ads will assist you to reach a broad audience and permit you to position yourself all told of the places you would like to be seen — paid ads are particularly helpful once paired with incoming promoting. There are several places you’ll be able to share paid ads together with on social media, landing pages, banners, and sponsored content.
What are examples of content marketing?
This process includes things like educational articles, e-books, videos, entertainment, and webinars that answer peoples questions and provide them with an alternative. It’s the best way to turn your product, no matter how common, into something that is not like everyone else’s.
How much should I spend on content marketing?
The most successful organizations spend closer to 40 percent of their total marketing budget on content strategy. Those with a relatively mature hold on content marketing spend about one-third of their budget on content.
What are the best content marketing trends for 2021?
Here are the seven biggest content marketing trends you need to know about going into next year:
1. Building content communities
The biggest content selling trend to undertake in 2021 isn’t a surprise. With the increase of Slack communities across the school and also they specialize in personalization in selling throughout the pandemic, building communities has been a push for selling groups all year.
However, building communities specifically around content sharing and creation can permit selling groups to still expand their reach, even with fewer resources.
Expanding your reach is nice for whole awareness—and, of course, your metrics—but that sort of inclusion is additionally smart for fostering a way of the community together with your audience, too.
Masooma Memon, a SaaS content vendor, expects this comprehensive community feels to own a positive impact on audience engagement. “Whether it’s content for social, your blog, or a webinar, it’s attending to continue specializing in creating your audience desire a community,” she says. “Folks love this sense of community happiness.
It makes them feel valued, therefore this trend ought to continue discovering pace.”
2. Going live video and webinars
With events out of play this year, video and webinar content has been even a lot of important and it does not deed.
“My guess is video selling, as well as the boom in live video, can still grow in 2021,” Masooma predicts. However, it’s not solely attributable to in-person restrictions; there’s a reason why the live video was trending well before the pandemic.
“The reason? Video may be a fast and effective medium to speak your message and educate your audience. customers need to urge information/learn quickly and there are no higher thanks to doing therefore than with the assistance of video selling.”
3. Improving the content experience
Ever click on an editorial and you run to a page stuffed with pop-ups and ad panels? It’s awful, and most of the time I shut out of the page while not reading something.
At constant time, I’ll pay to click around tools like I Miss the workplace as a result of they give the impression of being interesting—even although I positively don’t miss the sound of coworker’s change of state.
The bottom line is that generally however you’re interacting with content is simply as necessary as what content you’re interacting with. That’s why the attention to content expertise goes to be a key content selling trend.
“In order to drive ROI with content, you wish to specialize in content expertise. which means you wish users to remain on your 11website, love what you write on, realize specifically what they are searching for, and enter a sales funnel,” explains content selling skilled Adam Enfroy.
“One of my favorite samples of tremendous content expertise is Pat Flynn’s learning pages. They embrace not solely text content but courses, webinars, videos, podcast episodes, and military science calls-to-action besprent throughout. Brands need to start making content consistently to drive leads.
5. Testing AI-powered content
When I first tested out an AI-powered content tool this fall, I thought it was cool and futuristic and potentially a little scary, After I looked into it, I realized that content experts have actually been predicting the rise of AI in content for years.
As for this being a scary trend for content marketers, I don’t think we need to worry. PPC has been debating on automation taking jobs for years which allows account managers to accomplish even more.
Plus, I’m sure AI-powered copy will need more content editing than your standard blog posts.
6. Doubling down on SEO
Some trends never go completely out of style but for fall in and out of focus. For fashion, it’s corduroys. As per beauty, it’s blue eyeliner. For content, it’s SEO.
“I expect to see high-quality SEO continue to be a critical piece for content marketing in 2021,” says Sales Hacker Head of Content Brooklin Nash.
That means spending time creating a solid SEO strategy and digging into keyword research to find those long-tail opportunities is going to be even more important for your content strategy next year.
7. Repurposing content across channels
Now, this may be my favorite content selling trend. With stress on making content with fewer resources, it makes sense that next year can bring an even bigger target repurposing content across channels.
“I’m most excited to visualize however content groups repurpose content rather than ranging from scratch,” Brooklin says. “Brands have discovered the virtual event issue (more or less) in 2020. In 2021, content groups can begin deciding the way to most effectively use content from webinars, spherical tables, podcasts and conferences to tend the content balefire. In each discussion, there is a minimum of 5 social media posts, a blogpost, a report mention. we do not need to reinvent the wheel—just savvy turning quicker.”
Conclusion
While you’re coming up with your content marketing strategy for the year, keep these trends in mind. the general focus next year is making high-quality content that will add for your business—without essentially taking additional resources. That’s one thing we are able to all use to spice up produce higher content and crush our marketing objectives in 2021.