Top 3 Content Trends Every Brand Should Know in 2021
The digital marketing landscape is constantly changing – strategies used by small businesses and brands last year might be enough to keep them ahead of the curve this year.
In order to stay connected with users and their audience, businesses need to be able to keep up with current trends. Below are three of the most important content trends every business needs to incorporate into their current content marketing strategy for 2021.
Consumer-Targeted Content
When creating content for a social media platform or web page, almost all businesses’ first reaction is to gear their message to be promotional. This means writing with the sole purpose of selling products or services, without first thinking about how the audience will respond or react.
But as more brands really started to look at what Google was asking them for, a new content marketing trend was born: consumer-targeted content.
When producing user-first content, brands should prioritize the audience‘s needs over their own promotional needs. While it might be easy and time-efficient to post a couple photos of your product with a caption that reads “Get yours today!”, this kind of content will not effectively speak to your audience or give them what they’re looking for.
In addition to some types of persuasive content, brands also need to publish content that is informational, entertaining, and inspiring. This type of content truly helps brands begin to build a strong relationship with their audience – people want to know the brand is there for them regardless of whether or not they have purchased any products or services.
The best way to determine the needs of your audience is by researching them and getting to know the specific personas that you’re targeting. This can be accomplished by asking questions, conducting polls, or engaging in comments and conversations. After getting to know your audience, you can really start to create content that resonates with them and adds value to their feed.
Re-Focus On E-A-T
The number of small businesses online is increasing each and every day, and with it, the amount of content that is being produced. With a seemingly infinite amount of content to ingest, individuals have started being more and more selective with the content they choose to view and interact with.
People are busy – they don’t want to waste their time viewing inaccurate or invaluable content when there could be more worthwhile content out there. In an effort to signify to users that your brand’s content is worth their time, we recommend realigning your content marketing strategy with E-A-T.
E-A-T — which stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness— is a concept used by Google to evaluate the quality of a website’s content and whether it can be trusted.
When it comes to content creation, brands need to focus on proving their knowledge and experience, providing consistently helpful content, and building confidence. If not, users will be quick to unfollow your content and find another brand that will provide higher quality content.
Brands that want to focus on proving E-A-T in their content marketing strategy should start by earning backlinks from other websites with authority, especially popular websites in their industry, and linking to authoritative sources when providing data or other facts. Brands should also be regularly updating their website with high-quality content, which means no grammatical errors, no incorrect details, and no irrelevant information.
Purposeful Content
Gone are the days of writing content with the sole intention of hitting a specific word count. Rather than adding irrelevant fluff, brands should incorporate these new content trends which involves writing purposeful content.
When writing purposeful content, one of the most important actions a brand can do is perform better research. This means including up-to-date data, statistics, and information from reputable sources. Brands should also be using this research to provide a more in-depth exploration and description of topics, as they will no longer be able to get away with the bare minimum.
This trend is not limited to just textual content. Brands can effectively create purposeful visual elements by designing custom photos, videos, and other branded imagery.
Purposeful content has the power to improve overall user experience. If users enjoy your content, then they are more likely to stay on your website or social media feed for longer.
Not only will these content trends help businesses better connect with users, but also rank higher on SERPs. When a brand has a solid understanding of what users are looking for when they submit their search query, they will be able to craft more purposeful content that both users and search engines will value.
If you would like more information about avoiding a social media crisis, need help managing a social media disaster, or other digital marketing services please contact Pink Dog Digital at (410) 696-3305, email us at info@pinkdogdigital.com, or visit us on the web at www.pinkdogdigital.com.