Content Marketing Trends For 2021

While 2020 was a year of dramatic changes, there are certain content marketing trends that will continue to reign supreme in the year to come. Here are my top 5 for 2021:


1.    Consistency Is Key

I took a media course during my MBA where I wrote a paper on a fintech that uses storytelling to market itself. What makes this firm stand out is how it incessantly produces content. To remain top of mind among digital consumers, you’ll need to pump out quality content relentlessly. By creating an editorial calendar, a firm can take advantage of the power of content to garner more online attention.

In 2021 and beyond, it will be a necessity. In his book They Ask You Answer, Marcus Sheridan writes about the importance of creating a culture of content in companies if they want to succeed. Firms that regularly produce content will be the winners and it’ll show in their bottom-lines.

2.    Conversation Is King

We all know content is king. But creating stories that are conversational pack more of a punch than aggressive ads when you’re trying to sell products and services. Content marketers will need to learn how to sniff out story angles that address the needs of their respective target audiences.  

It’s no surprise that conversational storytelling will be an important trend among content marketers in 2021. It makes sense then the best content marketers will have a grasp of how to write stories that sell.


3.    The Journey Is The Destination

Expect to see content marketers use digital-journey mapping as part of their marketing campaigns as they keep up with the influx of online customers brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. This was an important part of what I did while working at Schneider Electric, a B2B marketing environment. While journey mapping is more prevalent among B2B spaces, it’s also used amid B2C environments.

Journey mapping entails developing a visualization of the proverbial road a person travels on in order to accomplish a specific goal – whether that’s clicking on an ad or making an online purchase. It can entail just about every phase the person experiences in the digital journey, including discovering, trying, buying and post-purchasing support. Once a content marketer gets a better handle on the various pit stops on the person’s online journey, they can develop more polished content and narratives around those phases.

4.    SEO, SEO, SEO

If you’re business wants to reach the highest echelons on search engines, you’ll need to understand the value of search-engine optimization (SEO). And if the content-marketing-job posts out there tell us anything, it’s that understanding SEO-laden content will remain a key trend going into 2021.  

SEO entails using optimized words in your content in order to drive up both the quality and quantity of web traffic. There are multiple SEO tool out there you can use to manage your web traffic. I like Google Console, mainly because it’s free. But it also does a great job of making “your site shine in Google Search results.”

 But there are others including Ahref. Expect SEO-laden content to remain a key trend going into 2021.

5.    It Is A Growing Field

Many firms are lacking content marketing specialists who can help them tell their stories and develop data-driven campaigns. We’ll likely see a growing trend when it comes to content marketing roles in 2021 and beyond. The market is expected to grow by $269.24 billion (US) from 2020 to 2024, according to one report. One of the leading causes of this growth is due to social media, the report finds. “Enterprises are establishing their presence on different platforms, such as Facebook, to use them for content marketing, which helps them to reach a larger target audience more effectively. Thus, the increase in the use of social media among consumers will drive the growth of the content marketing market during the forecast period.”

If you have a passion for storytelling and creating quality content, content marketing might be the right fit for you.