Content holds a lot of significance when you think of optimizing your marketing goals to improve your brand reach. Whether it is inbound marketing, improving user engagement across different platforms, or building an impeccable brand presence, content marketing lets you materialize your goals successfully.
To follow the best industry practices, marketers have to be informed about the latest trends and engage with the right strategies to reach out. While publishing high-quality content periodically has become a necessity, you cannot allow irrelevant moves to interfere with your marketing.
Writing for an online audience involves several careful considerations. For instance, your content needs to understand consumer psychology to craft impact-driven content that brings in the anticipated results. This can’t be done without researching the niche market. Besides developing insight into the right audience and market demands, marketers need to leverage the latest techniques to generate value for the company.
The right resources coupled with focused approaches enable you to augment your content marketing strategies for a successful breakthrough. Today, content writing is much more than keyword optimization – writing content for a brand is tied up with a lot of other factors, a defined content strategy, the right content management tools, content relevancy, and much more.
Here’s a look at what’s trending in the content world in 2021 and the best ways to streamline content for your business growth.
Why Has Video Content Become All the Rage?
If you think content marketing is only about blogging, you are missing out on a lot of things. Blogging still has its place, but there are other lucrative ways to drive to your site, and writing alone may not do the trick.
Visual content has a huge impact in optimizing content for improved user engagement. Video content – whether it is LIVE streaming videos on social media, webinars, or online courses – has come a long way – influencing content marketing in exceptional ways.
Should You Be Repurposing Old Content?
Content writing does not always create new stuff. You can look for exciting ways to recycle old content for improved results. Not only will it save you time, but you are likely to optimize audience outreach significantly.
Repurposing can be done in many ways. It makes sense to explore different approaches to revamp your content with fresh insights. Below are some ways you can repurpose old content pieces to create valuable content that won’t disappoint.
Identifying Top Performing Content
Content repurposing can be tricky for anyone who is not conversant with required strategies. Repurposing content doesn’t mean reposting any random post – you need to select the right piece to create the necessary impact. The first step is to identify which post is getting maximum hits. Understanding what the readers want can help you to make the right selection and adopt suitable methods to make a difference. Some pieces tend to click with your audience, and it’s up to you to pick the right ones for your repurposing strategy.
Reproducing Long-form Content Into New Posts
A great way of repurposing content involves breaking up long-form content into several formats for newer ways of engaging with the audience. For instance, you can choose an eBook and transform it into several articles and blog posts. You can add interesting visuals and new concepts to get your message across to readers. In case you are running out of options, consider exploring a different angle to shed light on an existing topic.
Translating Written Content Into Videos
While repurposing content, you don’t have to limit yourself to one format. It is always better to branch out to new formats to boost website traffic. If you think recycling an old post isn’t such a bright idea, you can think of translating it into video content – a video series, webinar, or an explainer video.
Tweaking Old Content With New Information
Some old posts have the potentials to turn heads – with a couple of tweaks, you can revive old pieces and make new revelations. You need to mine out relevant information and engage with it strategically to make the most of your repurposing efforts. On second thoughts, look beyond paraphrasing and altering sentences – repurpose with a purpose, throw in new facts, restructure, and re-evaluate – stay ahead in the game.
Submitting Old Post to Guest Posting Sites
While repurposing, you can always explore new territories – and exploit multiple mediums to improve audience engagement, drive traffic through different channels. Cross-platform promotion can be a game-changer, or you could submit an old post to guest blogging sites and drive traffic successfully.
Adding Visual Components to Old Posts
It is not uncommon to use visual content while repurposing. There are several benefits of recycling written posts into visual content. Ultimately, graphics and visual elements have proven to enhance user engagement alarmingly.
AI and the Changing Face of Content
Machine-generated content has become a trend in the industry with the rise of AI. AI-enabled content has paved the way for innovation and content optimization. Many users are still skeptical about the scope of these applications, but AI has already started to turn things around as marketers continue to adopt newer means to stand out.
AI tools like GPT-3, Word AI, and Article Forge have created a buzz in the industry. They allow users to generate data-driven content to reach out to target readers. On the flip side, these applications might fall short when it comes to personalization and conveying human emotions. After all, successful content writing needs to capitalize on consumer behavior, and without conveying human emotions, your content will not improve audience engagement or create an impact.
Keywords, Keywords, Keywords
Speaking of content writing trends, how you leverage keywords can make a huge difference as far as long-term results are concerned. Keyword research determines the competency of your content strategy in big ways. While selecting long-tail keywords can benefit you, you have to be wary of keyword efficiency. The right approach, then, is understanding how to use trending keywords while keeping efficiency at the center.
User-Focused Content Is on the Hot Seat
Anyone aware of the content trends will know why the audience is the pillar of any content strategy regardless of marketing objectives. When you are writing content for your brand, you are not just representing your brand. The aim is to keep your audience informed and help readers connect with your brand in a way that influences decisions.
If you are to reach out to the target audience and improve visibility across different mediums, you should ditch worn-out strategies and create content that caters to the ideal buyer persona, addresses customer pain points, and solves issues along the way.
The user-friendly content is not all about consumer psychology, for there are other aspects to watch out for: navigation, the style and tone of writing, structure to name a few. Keeping the writing clean and easy-to-reads tops the list, but you also need to adopt effective ways to make your scannable to get your message promptly.
Questions that will make you improve your user engagement –
- Who is your target customer?
- What demographics should you be targeting?
- What age group are you looking for?
- Where do your target customers hang out? Which social media channels should you leverage?
- Which marketing stage are you looking at? Which content format will be appropriate?
Content that drives maximum traffic has a lot to do with relevance and efficiency. There many ways to make your content stand out without losing your mind. Applications like Buzzsumo, Survey Monkey, and Ahrefs come with intuitive features that allow you to get a glimpse of the most talked-about topics and market trends and assist you to select topics that bring in a ton of traffic.
SEO Continues to Dominate
Content writing discussions are incomplete without SEO. Content is not written to speak about a brand – it is much more than that; you write with the search intent in mind, addressing the right parameters to ensure your content is found, appreciated, and drives social shares.
Optimizing content with the right keywords is important, but you cannot ignore other SEO factors. SEO strategies can be of several kinds – on-page, off-page, or technical – based on marketing objectives. No matter how you strategize content, SEO is here to dominate every conversation, for better and worse.
Going Social With Content!
If your content strategy doesn’t include social media engagement, you probably need to rethink your decision. Content marketing has to employ the right strategies to attract more traffic from social media. There are several ways to use social media channels to distribute content and help readers connect with your brand.
Articles, blog posts, eBooks, and all forms of SEO content can drive engagement. But sometimes, your content strategy could also include surveys, contests, and polls to let the audience interact with your brand and help you grow your social media presence.
(Interactive) Content is King
The adage content is king still holds a lot of significance. The challenge is to make it interactive to drive engagement. Creating interactive content can mean several things, from video content, polls and surveys, to quizzes.
Your list can include –
- Contests
- Giveaways
- Quizzes
- Polls
- Surveys
- Webinars
- Infographics
- LIVE Content
Interactive content involves communicating your ideas creatively to influence readers. There are several aspects to developing interactive content: deciding on the right format, promoting content across appropriate platforms, brand positioning, and so much more.
Final Thoughts
Content writing is primarily targeted to cater to specific marketing objectives. Quite naturally, your readers are a serious part of the journey. Creating premium quality content that delivers results could mean employing the right resources to stay relevant in the industry. A detailed overview of the trends will not only equip you with valuable information, but you can customize your strategies to improve your brand presence and bring about the necessary changes to impact your business in big ways.