About 91% of B2B marketers make use of content marketing nowadays mainly to increase customer reach. Because of this, several companies and organizations in B2B have invested in content marketing as their primary method for digital marketing.
But just like any other digital or even traditional methodologies, you must make sure that you constantly keep up with the latest content marketing trends and statistics. Especially under the new normal this 2021, there are several content marketing trends that you should watch for in 2021.
Studying the trends that are emerging every now and then will let you be able to anticipate the trends and updates that can have a massive impact on what direction you will take as a content marketing professional.
The increase of the consumers’ use of different devices that allow communication and collaboration between other marketers and people irrespective of the distance and time require content marketers to stay on top of their mind to sustain the efficacy of their techniques.
Some emerging content marketing trends involve content personalization, cross-departmental collaboration, machine learning, and digital transformation.
Content Personalization
The first content marketing trend that you need to be aware of in 2021 is to make sure that you reach your content to other people that speak to them on an individual or personal level.
Expectations have changed over time, and managing the relevance of your content to their desires is a must.
Demand Gen asserts that content personalization produces an increase of 20% in sales and effectively generates leads. Content personalization entails knowing more about the market by having more accurate data about your customers in order to have more opportunities of establishing connections with them.
There are several trends that make use of content personalization to be spontaneous with the different changes happening today.
Cross-Departmental Collaboration
One of the content personalization trends in 2021 is the reflection of a healthy culture within the workplace manifested through cross-departmental collaboration.
This type of collaboration paves the way for better communication among concerned stakeholders.
Communicating effectively and understanding one another’s functions in the market is the key to making sure that the readers or the audience feel that all possible concerns are catered in a safe space through your contents and nothing is missed.
Machine Learning
As a subset of artificial intelligence, Machine Learning has become one of the specific trends that you need to be aware of this time. Machine learning transforms content marketing by improving the productivity of your content, creating customized content among different demographics, finding the right content in search of different audiences, and tracing data to enhance more of your content marketing strategy.
This kind of trend in content personalization is affordable that allows effective content automation and recognizes content through images and videos.
Digitalization of Brick-and-Mortar Shops
You should also look at another trend in content marketing that persuades brick and mortar shops to turn into digital or online shops.
Digitalization requires the utilization of digital marketing strategies that will effectively present the products offered to the target market. Inevitably, this leads to the use of content marketing strategies that appeal to the market on a personal level.
To effectively sustain the different content marketing campaigns, blogs have been one of the media. With the digitalization of brick and mortar shops, content marketing has allowed them to promote their brand by allowing their content displayed in blogs to be promoted on social media platforms emphasizing the art of storytelling.
Content Repurposing
Another trend that you should be watchful about is the opportunity of reaching new audiences and maximizing all the distribution tools and channels present that allow you to promote your content in different media and platforms.
Not all methods of promoting your content are effective; hence, there is a need to repurpose your content so you can make sure that no content piece is put to waste.
Content marketing is further expanded because of this trend called content repurposing. This allows people to read and understand your content in different forms that cater to their different sensory needs while maximizing your resources.
Multi-Channel Marketing
This specific strategy for content repurposing lets content marketers interact with customers through the combination of indirect and direct communication channels such as retail stores, email, mobile, direct mail, websites, social media, and others.
Multi-channel marketing allows content marketers to make use of different marketing channels to increase the customer reach through a more comprehensive method of distribution. This also makes it easy for customers to be converted regardless of the medium used.
Live Audio and Video Streaming
With the influx of media nowadays, live audio and video streaming has been widely used in the digital world.
To effectively repurpose content, one of the ways that encourage interaction among people is the availability of content in different engaging formats such as audio and video. In live audio streaming through radio podcasts and live audiobooks, customers can enjoy audio content while driving a car, doing chores, or basically any other activity on the side.
The value of the live streaming industry is expected to reach $184.3 billion by 2027 and it is not without a reason. More and more people are inclined to watch live videos where they can ask live questions that anticipate answers immediately and grab the opportunity to have a live interaction with the sellers.
This kind of trend has allowed marketers to explore different streaming techniques to effectively catch the attention of people and that includes repurposing content in such a way that fits the live video format.
Content Optimization
Making use of different tools that will provide the necessary data that search engines will use to determine what your content is all about so you can reach users with purchasing intent.
Optimizing content for better and wider reach has never stopped evolving but there are certain emerging trends these days that may change the way you produce content for good.
Keyword Research
Greater than 50%of searches are found to be zero-click searches. More than half of Google searches end without doing any single click.
Consequently, the trend nowadays is that consumers should already obtain the answers they desire without clicking a single result. Hence, this is a crucial process in content optimization that should let content marketers get adapted to.
You need to stay on top of the keywords you are using in order to remain competitive.
Voice Search
About 27% of the people around the world use voice search to search for different pieces of content information without having to type in the search bar.
Having one of the most complicated content optimization strategies, voice search optimization must be one of your priorities in content marketing before it becomes too difficult for you to penetrate the competition.
Influencer SEO
There are 89% of marketers who assert that the ROI from influencer marketing is better than most marketing channels.
As influencers in different social media platforms earn the trust of your potential audience, the return of investment in terms of content marketing can be promising; however, the most crucial factor that must be examined is finding the right influencers who have the right audience you want to target.
Community-Driven Content
Perhaps, one of the most revolutionary content marketing trends over the years is the production of community-driven content.
Community-driven content is a type of content that appeals to a community of people with common interests and persuades them to take action. Effective community-driven content can potentially amplify your brand organically and result in ROI.
Often, it is your content that creates the community. In order to consistently produce this type of content, your topics must be relevant to a certain audience, consider the opinions of the community members, and engage them to respond or act upon your recommendations.