TechDogs-"Content Marketing Trends For 2021 & Beyond"

Content Management

Content Marketing Trends For 2021 & Beyond

By TechDogs Editorial Team

TechDogs
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Overview

Everybody loves content! That's as true in 2021 as it was two decades ago, when blog posts, flashing banner ads and (very ugly) web pages were the main forms of digital content. Today's content comes in various forms-GIF, video, audio, ebooks, blogs, images, text and much more. It's distributed across all sorts of channels including blogs, social media, video streaming and more, that we never dreamed of back in the archaic early days of the Internet. Consumer expectations for high quality content and seamless content delivery across channels, touchpoints and devices has also increased. Understanding the latest content trends and statistics can help you plan a more effective and efficient content strategy. We looked at top industry sources including Zendesk, HubSpot and Gartner to identify five of the top trends in Content Marketing for 2021.
TechDogs-Created Awesome Content? Now Market It Flawlessly-"Content Marketing Trends For 2021 & Beyond"
We often say "content is king" when referencing anything having to do with marketing or media. There's a really good reason for that. Content forms the foundation of what draws consumers to brands - from ads to social media posts to visual and audio assets to longform media like ebooks and white papers. Content is your lead magnet. It's your brand messaging. It is literally the heart and soul of your brand story.

Since content comes in so many forms and is delivered through a variety of touchpoints, we know it can be overwhelming, complicated and even a bit baffling to plan your content marketing strategy and approach. Understanding the latest content marketing trends can help you understand where valuable content fits in with your goals, your target audience and your current initiatives. Below, we've listed five oh-so-hot effective content marketing trends that help set the stage for content marketing in 2021 (and beyond).
 

Trend 1: Content Is All About Customer Experience (CX)


TechDogs-Trend 1: "Content" Is All About "Customer Experience" (CX)-2D Image Of Omni-Channel Concept-A Hand Holding Shopping Bags
Customers expect a good experience and good experiences are built around great content creation but what does that mean, exactly? Well, for one thing, it means you must take an omnichannel approach to creating and delivering the content to the right customers, regardless of what touchpoint they're using to interact (or learn about) your business. Yup, you have to be everywhere!

Zendesk reports that high-performing companies are over 50% more likely than low performers to have adopted an omnichannel content approach. Good content also means personalized content. In their 6th Annual State of Marketing report, Salesforce writes:

"As customers navigate a series of 'new normals', personalized, empathetic engagement has never been more important. Delivering messages and offers that resonate with an individual's unique needs and expectations requires deep insights."

TechDogs' Opinion: Delivering high quality content to the right customer across every touchpoint requires technology. Customer experience platforms, customer data platforms, marketing automation tools that facilitate personalization and digital asset management platforms that enable organizations to create, store and share assets are all crucial to delivering high-quality content that potential customer expects. Adopting omnichannel content strategies and capabilities requires a whole-organization approach. Sales, marketing and CX teams must now collaborate to create the best content possible. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2023, 25% of organizations will combine traditional marketing, sales and CX into a single function because teamwork makes the dream work!
 

Trend 2: Content Comes In Many Flavors


TechDogs-Trend 2: "Content" Comes In Many Flavors-Several colorful Jelly Beans On The Blue Surface And Inside The Glass As They Comes In Many Flavors
Content means many things to many people. It can be anything from a social media post about a product shared by a user to a YouTube ad from a multinational corporation. HubSpot's 2020 State of Marketing report lists an average of eight primary types of content, with the top three being videos, eBooks and blogs.

70% of the companies HubSpot surveyed for the report indicated their company actively invested in good content marketing (which makes us wonder what the other 30% of companies are investing in). Effective content marketing success is measured in sales, web traffic, lead generation and social engagement, among other things (and in that order). If you think about content as one thing, it's time to start broadening your perspective. It's also helpful to understand the most successful types of content management (by channel) reported by marketers. Unsurprisingly, photo/imagery and video posts are the most successful content types on social, with the most popular content cadence being 3-4 times per week.

TechDogs’ Opinion: Marketers will embrace visual content more than ever in 2021, with social media playing a large role as the distribution channel of choice. Martech tools (and, really, all technology) with baked-in social marketing features will amplify and facilitate this trend.

Social media platforms will also help create new digital content marketing funnel of opportunities for brands with features like Watch Party (introduced in 2018), that allows multiple users to watch and comment on the same video on Facebook. Didn't we all enjoy a social media party during the 2020 pandemic? Ain't no party like a social media party coz a social media party don't stop!
 

Trend 3: Video Content Dominates The Content Marketing Landscape


TechDogs-Trend 3: "Video Content" Video Editor-2D Character With - Video Editing Concept  - Video Production Platform
Video. Yeah, we get it. It's not as if video wasn't already popular before 2021. Still, consumers now want to receive information and learn quicker than ever before and video content is the right tool for engaging audiences and delivering messages quickly. Thus, video is rapidly becoming a foundational content type for many organizations. It helps that video is a great way to drive revenue. According to video production platform Wyzowl, 88% of marketers reported a positive ROI when using video in 2020 and 86% of marketers were using video as a marketing tool, up from 61% in 2016.

Video formats and opportunities continue to expand; time for callback to Facebook Watch Party above. Consumers love video, even when it comes from brands, not just TikTok and Insta reels. Wyzowl reports that 96% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service. Nearly 70% of people tend to prefer short videos when learning about a product or service versus just 18% who prefer a text-based article. Top channels for sharing and distributing video are YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

TechDogs' Opinion: Everyone will continue to love video. Marketers will continue to use it in their campaigns because it is extremely effective. How effective? Wyzowl reports that 94% of marketers say video helped increase user understanding of their product, 84% say video helped them generate leads and 78% say video has helped them directly increase sales - statistics are delicious! We think it's safe to say that if content is king, video content is the most prized subject in throne room.
 

Trend 4: Brands Are Embracing User-generated Content (This May Cause Some Problems)


TechDogs-Trend 4: "User-Generated Content" Circular Image With The Text - User Generated Content And Symbols Of Images, Videos, Text, And Audio etc, Used To Create Engaging Content
Any content created by a user about a brand or company is considered user-generated content (UGC). This includes text, videos, images and reviews. Emarketer lists influencer and user-generated content as a major digital trend for 2021. However, it's exceedingly difficult to manually monitor and vet this type of content on social media and retail platforms. Examples of "bad" content include negative/fraudulent reviews, false or unverified information and social campaigns gone horribly wrong like the time that Entenmann's mistakenly used the hashtag #notguilty when it was trending for a devastating murder trial - that was a major facepalm moment.

As brands continue to embrace UGC to amplify messaging, introduce new products and (desperately) try to get on board the "trending" train, Gartner predicts that the need to monitor this type of content will increase, with 30% of enterprise organizations prioritizing UGC content moderation services by 2024.

TechDogs-"UGC Content Moderation"-Snapshot From Twitter - Entenmanns Tweet-Who's #notguilty-The Trending Hashtag
TechDogs’ Opinion: Soliciting, curating and sharing UGC is an excellent way to scale your content marketing efforts and product photos or videos help build consumer trust while leveraging the social and commerce channels that consumers use every day. UGC will likely continue to play a big role for brands across all industry sectors throughout 2021. If your content marketing approach includes UGC (and even if it doesn't), it would behoove you to investigate a content moderation service and/or tech tool. Yes, this is serious. That's why we used the word "behoove."
 

Trend 5: Content Communities Will Drive Audience Engagement


TechDogs-Trend 5: "Content Communities - Audience Engagement"-2D Image Of Characters Inter-Connected To Their Social Network Connections And Community, For Audience Engagements
Do you think everyone loved Carrie Underwood's Sex in the City column? Heck no, it was adored by the community of women who learned from her experience and wisdom of dating in the city. Similarly, you need to find your people, your community with content that calls out to them. Community marketing isn't about making a quick buck; it's about interacting with consumers, earning their trust and loyalty and reaching a larger audience.

Masooma Memon, a SaaS content marketer writing for brands like Sendible, Hootsuite, Trello and more believes that this feeling of a collaborative community environment would boost audience engagement. According to her, whether the content you are creating is for social media, your blog post, or a webinar, it'll continue to focus on making your audience feel like a community. This sense of belonging to a group is appealing to people. Therefore, this approach should continue to gain traction since it helps people feel appreciated.

TechDogs' Opinion: Brands will employ Content Marketing to create a community for their customers in 2021. Brands will save content expenditures, increase social media engagement and use community interactions to get input on new product initiatives by joining content communities. In addition, building communities, especially on relevant content sharing and creation, will help digital marketing teams broaden their reach with even fewer resources by increasing communities across the technology and focusing on personalization in marketing.


Conclusion


There's no doubt about it - marketers and consumers love content, especially video content. Customers are expected to watch 100 minutes of video per day in 2021, up 19% from 2019. (Yes, we know you already exceeded that number binging on the first season of Shadow and Bone!) Nearly 70% of marketers say video has a better ROI than Google Ads. Social media platforms are embracing new video features, ads and tools to help brands leverage video (and more easily share it).

Of course, content isn't not just about video. UGC, images and text are all widely used by marketers and well received by customers. The big content story for 2021 is as much about how people are consuming content as it is about the type of custom content ideas they prefer. It's also about the technology that helps create, amplify, share and monitor content. Today's content marketing tools are as much a part of the content story as the content itself is. So, go forth and produce lots of content but make sure you understand the trends that drive it and determine the content that works for you and your existing customers. That's the best way to ensure your content investment pays off.

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