Top 10 Content Marketing Strategies for 2021

According to Google Trends, there has been a rise in interest in content marketing since January 2011. This should not come by surprise as it has been proved that to expand a business, content marketing is required. One of the interesting features of content marketing is that there is no particular strategy for it. “Failing to plan is planning to fail”. The same thought goes for content marketing as well. It needs to be known what is being done and how it is being done. This will lead one step closer to the business objective. 

Content marketing strategy has been defined in different ways by different people. When explained with a Russian doll, it is a smaller strategy inside a larger one. According to Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach, Content marketing strategy is the narrow discipline of marketing content and consists of planning, creation, governance, and maintenance of content. A strategy is “a plan, method or series used to gain a particular goal and for content marketing that is “building an audience that builds a business”. A content marketing strategy is a plan for establishing an audience by creating, maintaining, and spreading content that serves the purpose of educating or inspiring the readers to convert to customers. It´s important that within your content marketing strategy you also involve content moderation, this will helps to ensure that the content published on the site is not illegal, inappropriate, harassing, or harmful to others. It’s commonly used in websites that rely heavily on content generated by users such as forums, social media platforms, dating sites, and online marketplaces.

Content marketing strategy is important for any business irrespective of the size of the business because there is always a need for a more comprehensive plan and then to implement it.  

Why Content Marketing?

Content marketing is used to reach the target customers by creating, publishing articles that serve the purpose of boosting sales and creating brand awareness thus enhancing the loyalty of the customers towards the business.

It is important and essential in today’s business era because of its many advantages and uses. One of them is that it provides a solution to how the products and the services of the business serve their purpose and how they can be used by the customers. With content, conversations can be initiated with potential leads. With blogs and posts on social media, customers can initiate discussions in the comments section. Through this, customers will feel attached to the company and the products and services it offers. This creates a sense of community around the brand. Through this way, a relationship is built between the customer and the brand which results in the increased loyalty towards the brand. Customers through this are always in touch with the business and they know what is going on, or what is the business planning.

With proper content marketing, there are very high chances that businesses will rank at a high position if proper Keywords are used. This helps in building the authority of the business on the online platforms. This also proves fruitful in the sense that customers see the business as the industry expert as it is visible at high positions in search engines.
Good content helps in retaining the customers as they are attracted to visit the page of the company again and again. This is a ticket to capture the audience of the company and to continually reinforce a positive brand impression.
Content marketing proves to be a cost-saving effort done to promote a business. The content when once uploaded online remains on the internet forever unless removed intentionally, so if the content is written about a product, people can anytime visit and read about it. This saves the cost which would have been incurred in the case of normal marketing techniques. With inbound marketing and attractive content, traffic is bound to increase on the website.

Top 10 Content Marketing Strategies for 2021:

Empowering information through infographics-

An infographic displays contents and all the necessary information in a graphical format and we are quite sure that a human brain shall respond better to a graphical presentation over a text document. They relate more towards the pictures and short sentences written beside them. By using simple short sentences and images, customers can be educated and made aware of the brand and the business, adding a touch of educating the consumers about the background of your offerings proves to be a game-changer at times, which will give in-depth knowledge to the customers and make them understand in more detail. Even a complicated and detailed topic can be broken down into small contents and then published online with the desired one-liner, pictures, tables.  This helps in bringing the targeted audience in a comfort zone to understand complicated topics, assuring interest generation in your delivered content which in turn leads to building a  potential lead funneling.
Infographic used by IBM for their cloud marketplace launch, isn't it attractive? The infographic turns out to be well-organized, on-brand, and easy-to-understand content for the targeted audience serving the motive of transmitting the idea of their cloud marketplace availability and the usability procedure.

Be a voice by podcasts
Content delivery through original human voice has a different touch altogether as proved by a survey conducted in 2020, 49% from an age ranging between 12-32 years in the USA listen to podcasts with an average of about six listening hours a week making the podcast a trend to watch for in 2021 as a part of your content marketing strategy.
A podcast helps promoters have a clear and crisp medium of communication to communicate their value proposition to a confined audience proving to be a well-suited channel of content marketing this year.

Easy access to resources ranging from planning and choosing the right microphone for your podcast to publishing and making money from it has made it extremely simple for budding podcasters and brands to get started with podcasting and gain visibility.

Harvard has a weekly podcast production called Harvard Idea cast(HBR Idea Cast) which brings in leaders of industry as well as management. The people who want to listen to them can either subscribe to hundreds of them or choose any one of them according to their preference. The podcast here acts as a brand for all the content which is published for Harvard. It makes sure to attract all the target audience, creating and enhancing the already established brand image of Harvard and to reach out to a large number of people through a medium that is not common and is different from their traditional way i.e., the articles.

Elevate Case Studies
Case studies are the most impactful way to reach out to customers, to explain their problems, and then give suggestions on how to solve them. Case studies involve the real-time problems faced by a customer. Through case study content marketing, a problem faced by a customer can be taken and discussed in the form of a case, with suggestions and recommendations given in the end. Through case studies, any potential customer can see and understand that the business takes the problems of a customer seriously and works upon them. This creates a positive image of the business in the eyes of the customer, thus attracting potential leads and converting them into loyal customers.

Get information through paid ads
When combined with inbound marketing, paid ads are one of the most impactful sources of conveying information. Ads can be shared on social media, YouTube, banners, sponsored content. Through these ads, a business can position itself where it wants to be seen.
Even through ads, products as well as their details like shipping charges, return policy and other attractive features can be seen to attract the targeted audience and to hopefully convert them to the paying audience. Through Paid ads, there are very high chances that the content will make a positive impact on the audience and will definitely help in generating leads by reaching the targeted audience.
Revolve, an item of clothing, and accessories company that uses paid and sponsored ads on social media (like Facebook) to target the desired audience. The content ads show the details of the products and the free shipping and return policy. 

Build SEO friendly content
According to a sales hacker head of Content Brooklin Nash, “I expect to see high-quality SEO continue to be a critical piece of content marketing in 2021”
SEO trends will never go out of style, it will be in trend forever. Investing in SEO strategy and keyword research to find all the opportunities for the business will be in trend in 2021 even.
According to the data, 35% of the website traffic comes from organic search, hence proving that search engine optimization is very important for creating a piece of content. After writing the articles, SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant can be used to check that the content has been optimized for organic search. 

Interaction through communities
Personalized marketing has been increasing this year, so building and creating communities for the same. By creating such communities, the content and the business would reach a large number of audiences.
Through these communities, brand awareness and metrics are increased but what also is created is a sense of belongingness in the individuals which make them feel valued and important.” Folk loves this sense of community belonging. It makes them feel valued, so this trend should continue picking up the pace”. Lauren Pope, content marketing manager at G2 says “Every content team is going to hit peak content velocity, with every writer creating they can without sacrificing quality”. She also tells the benefits of entering such communities, “You tap into those writers’ massive audiences on platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and just word of mouth marketing. This generates more experts who are excited to write for your publication.”

Video and webinar discussions
This year saw no events, so video and webinar content has been growing this year and will not stop and will continue to rise.
Video is a quick, interactive and effective medium to convey a message and educate the audience. Customers are interested in videos, they find them interesting and engaging, and customers today want to learn quickly, so video content marketing can be of great help here. You can use an online video maker to create your videos for free. According to Wyzowl’s research, 69% of the customers prefer to learn about a brand’s product or service through video. “My guess is video marketing including the boom in the live video will continue to grow in 2021”, according to the prediction of Masooma Memon, a SaaS content writer.
More attention will be given to live webinars than the pre-recorded video. Sessions like exclusive AMA sessions, masterclasses, fireside charts can be done. People today are not interested in long slides; they want to ask questions and have interactive sessions. The chance to be in a small group and then ask questions from the experts is very appealing to the customers.
This helps in increasing the ROI and helps in building a personal relationship with the customers. Video can be shared on social media pages, websites. Facebook Live posts have 178% higher than average engagement over regular posts, and increased referral traffic by 213% over the 2 months.
Dollar Shave Club’s video content went viral. They have humorous and entertaining videos. One of their videos has over 27 million views on YouTube. By establishing itself as a brand online, it has been able to have impressive growth and brand recognition.

Commix Of AI And Content
Artificial Intelligence, voice search, augmented reality are some of the upcoming trends and will continue to rise in 2021. AI is futuristic, AI in content has been predicted for years.
Tools like API GPT-3 and Contentyze which use AI to take data and create summaries, captions, and even full blog posts have been popular this year. The scary part which comes with AI content is the loss of jobs with content writers, but AI in accounts has made the job of account manager easy rather than depriving him of his job. It has allowed them to accomplish and gain more. “The huge leaps in AI tech lately have some interesting things in store for us as marketers, so I’m hoping I can get access to this in 2021”, Rachel Pilcher, a B2B, and SaaS conversion copywriter say.

Talk through blogs
Blogs are impactful content and allow creativity. With blogs, proper promotion of a product or a business can be done using links, social share buttons, and incorporate product information. All the necessary information can be shared and the loyal customer will always read blogs and get all the knowledge of the new or existing product or service.
“Out There Starts Here” by Expedia is a great example of a blog that shares travel-related information like hotel recommendations, great places to visit, and travel-related activities around the world. It is very active and regularly publishes blogs that keep its readers engaged and interested. The blog helps in fulfilling the goals of the company which is to gain customers and boost brand awareness. They even post reviews of the customers who referred to the blog before planning a trip in order to give them a personalized touch.

Share information on Social Media
Today there are around 3.6 billion global social media users, so investing in social media marketing is a very wise decision. There are a number of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Linked In, Snapchat where the required information like blogs, articles, photos, live videos, pre-recorded videos can be shared. Facebook is the primary source of content sharing. 25% of the marketers today use social media campaigns at the individual pieces of content level. Today it is not just about the number of clicks, likes, rather it is about conversations, number of comments. Today around 56% of marketers rely on engagement metrics to determine campaign success while 21% focus on conversion data.
Let’s take an example of the Lush Cosmetics Instagram account. The page shares the Lush products line, displays different color and scent options for the products, and even shows various ways how a product can be used. They have a colorful and interactive profile and are visible through their wide customer base.

Why having a content marketing strategy is important?

The main aim of content marketing is to attract the desired customers, generate potential leads, and hence increase conversions.
The methods keep on changing, new methods replace the old methods, but the main aim behind it remains the same which is to create top-notch content based on the data which can be trusted and is reliable. The strategies discussed above are in and will be in trend in this and upcoming year. The focus now will be to create content that is of high quality, which tells about the details of the business without necessarily utilizing much of the resources.
This is what will be happening in 2021, high-quality data-driven content and even SEMrush offers tools and blog posts to make the data-driven approach to content marketing easier. So, to start with, first decide what is the customer base and what type of content is best suitable and then start working on it!