It’s a new year!
2020 is officially behind us, and it’s time to advance content marketing to a new level.
The reality is that content marketing has already advanced since the latter half of 2020.
If you don’t know, then it’s time to catch up.
This complete and ultimate guide will teach you fresh content marketing strategies to apply in 2021.
By the end of this guide, you’ll learn how to:
- Promote your content the right way.
- Use content formats that work.
- Apply new content marketing trends in 2021.
- Create the best content for your brand.
- Take advantage of advanced techniques, strategies, and tips.
If you want to get a quick head start in generating new traffic to your website, you’re going to love this guide.
Let’s dive on in.
Chapter 1: Prioritize Video Content
It’s 2021, and video marketing is still old news.
If you haven’t yet implemented a video marketing strategy, here are a few reasons why you should get started:
If you’re still not convinced, here are more:
If you paid close attention to these statistics, then you’ll know that a few of them are scheduled to take place either in 2021 or a few years from now.
If you haven’t already developed a video marketing strategy, then you need to get with the program in a hurry!
Fortunately, video marketing strategies are a bit easy to construct.
The major leg work is done with creating video content.
Brands all over the internet are finding creative ways to implement the use of videos in their content.
One of our favorite methods of doing so is including an optional video at the beginning of every blog.
This video gives readers a convenient option to learn about the concepts you’re introducing in your blogs in a short video.
By making your audience happy, your site’s user experience (UX) will improve drastically.
But, that’s not all…
If you regularly create videos on YouTube, you can post them throughout your blog whenever they’re relevant.
Brian Dean from Backlinko posts his own YouTube videos throughout his blogs like this:
This not only helps to educate his readers, but it also shines some light on his YouTube channel.
As you can see, implementing video on your website isn’t difficult at all!
Though, there is a lot of ground we still have to cover regarding optimization and video marketing techniques.
To help put you in the right direction to kicking off your video content campaign, here are main tips to follow:
- Focus on YouTube - YouTube is the second most popular website in the world after Google. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, your videos will live on YouTube forever. Create a YouTube channel, customize your channel, and start producing videos for your audience and the world to see.
- Optimize Your Videos - Most videos on YouTube receive much of their traffic from “suggested videos”. This happens when a person searches for a video, watches it, and clicks the next video on the right side of the website. You can optimize your videos to appear in the “suggested videos” category by centering your video description and tags around a popular topic. For example, if Tex-Mex is a popular cooking trend on YouTube, include that keyword and its variation in your description and tags. This way, YouTube’s algorithm will pair your video with other popular videos on the same subject.
- Use a Script - Let’s face it; it’s so easy to freeze up and jumble your words and thoughts in front of a camera. Create a script you can access to create clear and thoughtful videos. Your audience will thank you for it.
Creating video content takes a lot of work, but anyone can do it.
Follow these strategies to start diverting your video traffic back to your website to convert.
Chapter 2: Keep Focusing on Email Marketing
Email marketing isn’t dead, folks!
It’s yet alive and thriving.
When you really think about it, why do you create content?
Is it to show off how smart you are?
Is it rank for popular keywords?
That can’t be the end goal.
Even if your blog is successful, it means nothing if people are reading your content and leaving shortly after…
Email marketing allows you to capture potential customers who read your blog and place them in a sales funnel.
Eventually, you can send them an email about a sale you’re having or promotion and they’ll likely listen.
Email marketing is ultimately how you monetize your blog.
Once you get your audience’s attention, you can capitalize on it by capturing their email addresses.
There are so many things to discuss in this chapter…
Let’s focus on helping those who run a blog.
The standard blog nowadays looks something like this:
Maybe, a popup will show up immediately to ask you to sign up for a newsletter.
The homepage for most blogs just contains a blog feed.
This was an alright practice in previous years, but it needs to stop in 2021.
Brian Dean used to have a blog feed as his homepage a lot of years back.
After running an experiment between that format and his new homepage, Brian found a clear winner: his new format.
Brian boosted his conversion rate from 10.22% to 60.5%!
Neil Patel, another marketing genius, follows the same format:
Instead of marketing his newsletter, Neil showcases his website analyzer tool.
Eventually, he’ll capture the visitor’s email address and loop them into his email newsletter anyway.
For blogs, follow this same trend to immediately gather new email list subscribers.
Don’t beat around the bush.
Get straight to the point and ask for a sign-up, especially if you’re confident that your blog provides epic content!
Once you have your audience’s attention, send simple newsletters to really drive home your content.
Freelancer has mastered the art of creating dynamic newsletters using this format:
Here is how you can use this format for your email list:
- Subject - Create an enticing subject line to make your readers click. People get thousands of emails every day. Make it worth their while to click and read your email.
- Hook - Once you have your audience’s attention, use a captivating hook to keep them there.
- Preview - Showcase the main points you want to communicate in your blog. Make sure these points are irresistible (Ex. How to make more money freelancing in 2021).
- Link - Post of a link to your blog below.
- CTA - Don’t just post a link. Tell your audience what you want them to do after reading. For example, tell them to leave a comment or a like.
The last technique we want to point out here is to send exclusive content through your newsletter.
This way, you can give your audience something to look forward to when subscribing to your email list.
Also, you can have some sort of unique value proposition to convince your audience in saying:
“Hey, this is cool.”
“I’m going to subscribe to read it”.
eBooks, whitepapers, special case studies make the best exclusive content.
The trick to convincing your audience to give up their email address to receive access to your content is creating something that sits at the pinnacle of your industry.
For example, if you’re a marketer and spent the last year performing an experiment to much success, then you can market this experiment through your newsletter.
Ranking case studies are extremely difficult in this case, and social media isn’t going to do the trick.
If you have some kind of insider secrets in your industry that’s worth sharing, include them only in your newsletter.
If what you have is truly intriguing, then your email list is going to overflow!
Chapter 3: Scale Your Content
Here’s a question you should answer before moving forward:
How much content do you produce in a month?
According to
HubSpot, companies who produce 16 blogs every month are more successful than their competitors.
This equates to four blogs every week.
To put it exactly, you’ll need to dedicate nearly 50 hours every month for blogging.
That’s more than two full days!
It may seem overwhelming at first, but scaling your content doesn’t have to be difficult.
Like other companies who scale their production, it’s a strategic process.
In this chapter, we’re going to go over some effective strategies for scaling your content production the right way.
To begin, let’s discuss your purpose for writing.
Why do you blog?
Is it to build awareness for your products and services?
Is it to rank for popular keywords?
Or, are you just blogging to blog?
Every successful blog has a purpose.
Let’s take one of the most successful marketing blogs, HubSpot, into account.
They blog to showcase their free and premium resources.
The Meistertask blog creates productivity content in hopes that project managers will sign up for their platform.
This cooking blog just aims to create helpful recipes that receive a bunch of social shares and a high website ranking.
It works - take a look:
Once you identify the purpose of your blog, it’ll be easier to create content that will achieve your goals.
Next, comes the task of arranging your content ideas into one central location.
This is simply called a content calendar.
The first step of scaling your content efforts is creating one for your business that all of your marketing team can access.
Take a look at this content calendar made on Asana:
Take a look at this content calendar made on Google Sheets:
By creating a content calendar, you can set specific due dates for your blogs, add collaborators, and streamline the entire content marketing process.
This is much better than deciding on some blogs to write and communicating your thoughts to your team.
This is pretty much it when it comes to scaling your content.
- Understand the purpose of your blog.
- Create a content calendar to organize your ideas.
The more organized your content marketing strategy is, the more content you can produce every month.
Chapter 4: Publish Research Pieces
Most content creators are still stuck in the last decade.
For example, everyone is writing posts about “SEO tips”.
While you can certainly add to it, the topic just becomes redundant after a while.
This is why independent research pieces are growing in popularity.
According to
BuzzSumo, 74% of research article publishers received high amounts of web traffic.
By creating a research article, you can succeed in gaining interest from journalists and bloggers that say:
“Hey, this was new and interesting.”
“Let me use this as a source!”
Unfortunately, churning out a research article can cost a lot of time and money.
But, it can be equally rewarding, too.
Here are some takeaways to help you build heavy research articles in 2021:
- Choose the Right Topic - It can be tempting to create an extensive research article on SEO. Again, there is so much data on SEO, you won’t really add anything new. Instead, focus on specific topics in your industry and create data that hasn’t been seen before.
- Pay Close Attention to Validity - Unlike blog posts, you aren’t really held to a high ethical standard. With research pieces, you’re trying to build trust. Carry out your experiments using real scientific methods to avoid others questioning your findings and build more authority in your niche.
- Use Visual Aids - No one likes to read a purely textual 10,000-word research article. Add visual aids that can drive your points home and give your readers’ eyes a break.
- Promote Your Findings - Reach out to the top influencers, bloggers, and journalists in your space to communicate your findings. It couldn’t hurt to purchase a press release to promote your findings as well.
Creating research pieces should be an ambitious project.
Investing into this type of content creation can work wonders in establishing your reputation in your niche.
Chapter 5: Follow Growing Trends
It can be difficult to predict which keyword trends are going to take off…
And, which ones are going to drop off.
The amazing reward of writing ultimate content on a growing trend is that you can improve your reputation and rank first for that topic.
Here is an insider trick to spotting growing trends before they happen:
Use Google Trends!
By using Google Trends, you can find out if a particular keyword is growing in interest or shrinking.
You can also compare two trends against each other.
This is a great feature, but it’s not helpful in determining new trends you don’t already know about.
Now, if you look at the “Related Queries” category, you can find growing trends.
First, search for a keyword that you think will trend in the future.
Next, look at the related queries for that keyword like so:
The “breakout” term is Google’s way of telling you that these keywords are likely to blow up.
Very cool!
Once you have an emerging topic, don’t just create a list or small guide.
Create an ultimate resource worthy of ranking #1 on Google.
In the next chapter, we’re going to show you how to create ultimate content.
Chapter 6: Create Ultimate Content
Here comes the moment of truth.
Content marketing is all about creating the best content that’s so in-depth and massive that it can’t help but get attention.
This is where ultimate content comes in.
By creating ultimate content that teaches your audience practical and actionable information, you won’t only gain a top spot on Google’s SERPs, but you’ll also receive valuable backlinks from others that say:
“This is a great source.”
“Let me link back to it!”
Writing ultimate content takes a lot of time, blood, sweat, and tears.
Which is why you should follow these tips:
- Quality > Quantity - It’s hard to scale ultimate content. Don’t sweat it - take your time. Make sure each article you put out is amazing, and the results will speak for itself.
- Outsource - You won’t be able to do all of this work on your own. Make sure to hire content writers, graphic artists, and animators to help you put forth stellar content that will rank well online. You can find these professionals on Upwork.
- Create a Resource, Not a Blog - There’s an easy explanation for why Wikipedia pages always rank #1 for millions of keywords on Google and other search engines. They create timeless resources, not blogs. Do the same, and you’ll experience similar results.
Again, don’t sweat it…
Writing long-form resources can be tough to think about.
If you have a team and an organized production process, you can get the job done.
Chapter 7: Promote Your Content
Content marketing is half curation and half marketing.
If you spend 100% of your time creating content, it won’t perform well.
You should use the same aggressiveness you created your content with the same way you spend promoting it.
This means…
Stop writing content and posting the links in your social media posts…
And, stop just emailing your subscribers random blog posts they may not even read.
Instead, follow these tips for promoting your content across the web.
- Repurpose; Don’t Share - Many people make the mistake of posting their content straight on social media. This isn’t what social media users log in to see. Instead, repurpose your content into videos, infographics, and images your audience can interact with. Make sure that your content is compatible with each of your social networks.
- Ask for Backlinks - If you’ve followed the tips we’ve laid out in Chapter 7, other reputable websites won’t have a problem linking back to your content. Make sure you are honest and don’t waste their time when sending them an email about a backlink opportunity.
- Reach Out to Influencers - Journalists and bloggers are always looking for a great story. Use Twitter and email to reach out to them both about using your article as a source to their stories.
These great, timeless promotion tactics will help you build awareness to your content, so all of your hard work doesn’t go down the drain.
Chapter 8: Content Marketing Tactics for 2021
Now that we’ve made it to the end of this guide, it’s time to train you to lead a successful content marketing strategy in 2021.
Here are additional tips to reinforce your strategy heading into the new year:
- Write for Shares - Don’t ignore the power of social shares. A useful trick to accumulating more shares is to include a bunch of independent data you’ve gathered through research. Since readers won’t be able to copy your sources, they’ll just share your article instead.
- Use Twitter Threads - You’re not restricted to small tweets when promoting your content. Instead, create multiple tweets in a thread breaking down some pointers in your blog. This is a great way to engage your audience and give them a preview of the blog you want them to read.
- Personalize Your Emails - If you plan to reach out to influencers and bloggers, make sure that your emails are personalized. Be honest in your outreach and don’t give them the vibes that you’re just sending the same email to all of your contacts.
- Experiment - This guide isn’t going to do all of your work for you. Put in the time and effort of conducting experiments, particularly A/B tests, to see which content marketing strategies work and which ones don’t.
Build Your Content Marketing Strategy in 2021
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