Preparing to successfully ring 2021 and not keeping an eye on the content writing trends 2021 is just like you are dreaming of driving a luxury car that doesn’t have fuel.

If you dig out content writing, you will find that its strings are entangled in the vast landscape of content marketing.

And who doesn’t know about content marketing?

Content marketing is hands down one of the most happening marketing techniques in the digital world, if not the only one.

Companies are investing more in content marketing than ever before.

These stats are from 2017. Things are even more promising for content marketing in 2021.

And no one is complaining against that because it can win many battles on the business front single-handedly.

It is:

• Perfect for building BRAND AWARENESS AND ENGAGEMENT without pricking people’s minds
• The best way to increase AUTHORITY AND CREDIBILITY without any need for standing on tips to look tall
• The right technique to DRIVE QUALIFIED TRAFFIC without losing them to your competitors
• The easy way to enhance Convertible Leads And Sales without sounding like a huckster

Content marketing can do all this for your business, but if you know how to combine content and marketing in one place.

That’s why today’s content writing is no more scribbling a few catchy lines and threading a content copy with fancy words.

It is evolved into a whole science that is continuously changing.

It bombards you with the latest content creation trends that leave no margin for you to lag behind your competitors.

You have to stand firm on your own grounds along with finding ways to surpass your competitors.

Content writing is a combination of ART and SCIENCE. Besides unique writing flair and a knack for creativity, understanding readers, competitors and following a robust strategy is essential to create words that IMPACT and SELL. More on @

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Unfortunately:

Most marketers think that the science part of content writing is related to SEO. So they merge SEO with content writing.

In fact, I searched for the keyword content writing trends 2021, and that’s what Google gave me…

Sample:

…SEO checklist for content writing.

Yes, SEO and writing should work hand in hand, but the content itself has a persona that is essential to be defined.

So, irrespective of how to design SEO strategy with content marketing or what your current SEO strategy is:

Focusing specifically on trends in content writing is also important.

It helps to create content that:

• Tickles the taste of today’s consumers
• Stands the storm of new dynamics of the content writing requirements

So without any delay, let’s dive into new content industry trends that every content writer and marketer should know.

Future Trends of Content Writing Expected to Reign in 2021

 

Here are given 9 latest trends in content writing you need to know to stay ahead of the competition:

 

TREND # 1: Bridging the Information Gap

There was a time when creating a 500-600 words article was considered enough.

In other words, the content was created just for the sake of creating content — to fill up some space on your website or to add to already overflowing digital content clutter.

Why? Because:

Someone found that the attention span of today’s customers has become shorter than a goldfish, and they no more like to read lengthy content.

Well, we don’t know where those goldfishes are because studies show that today’s consumers are like dolphins.

 

Your readers are smarter than a goldfish. They are DOLPHINS, looking for a valuable content experience that they can remember for a long time because of its 1) Worth 2) Information 3) Distinct Factors and 4) Edge. More on @

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Readers are looking out for lengthy, valuable content, and they are sharing it like crazy.

So now, a few scribbled lines and chunks of paragraphs with little to no information are not enough.

Detailed, in-depth, information loaded content has taken the central stage because:

• Google loves it when you provide more and more valuable information to readers.
• Audiences want to land on an all-inclusive article so that they don’t have to go anywhere else to get relevant information on the topic

In fact, different studies have shown that Google gives preference to valuable in-depth content on SERPs for rankings.

And today’s content writers and marketers are aware of this fact.

They now try to give an extra edge to their content by:

• Doing extensive research on the topic
• Giving an in-depth insight into their content

For example, if your competitor has given 10 points checklist in a blog, go for 15 points to stand out and keep up with new content writing requirements.

Pros:

• Valuable, in-depth content doesn’t let the audience go anywhere else.
• Informative article is like a one-stop solution for all the related questions and problems.
• If found valuable, audiences are likely to come back to consume more articles.
• Detailed articles establish you as a reliable authority in your niche.

Cons:

• It is time-consuming because collecting information, summarizing, and writing is not easy.
• Brainstorming to bring some edge can be mind-boggling.

 

TREND # 2: Producing Evergreen Content

Driving continuous traffic to your site is just like setting a bait that attracts visitors continuously to your site.

Obviously, that bait has to be…

• Useful
• Attractive
• Valuable

…for the readers only then they will like to take the bait.

Hope you don’t think that filler content can do all this – but yes, evergreen content can do it.

Simply: Evergreen content is a piece of content based on a topic that has a longer life-span, stays relevant, and valuable to the audience for an unlimited time period.

It is just like an evergreen plant that doesn’t wilt, shed, or loses the color of leaves in any season.

If you dig out B2B writing trends 2021, you will find:

Creating evergreen content is going to be an essential part of content strategy.

Content marketers will invest more in creating evergreen content in 2021 that can keep their business goals GREEN for a longer time rather than wilting after a few days – while killing all goals.

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One of the best examples of evergreen content is Backlinko’s blog on Google’s 200 Ranking Factors.

This blog was published a few years ago; can you guess how many links it has?

Around 75.2K from 3.9K referring domains.

And this blog still gets links…

…even in 2020.

So no wonder that evergreen content is going to be a huge part of content writing trends 2021.

Here are a few formats of evergreen content:

1. Everything You Need to Know About
2. Successful Case Studies
3. Pros/Cons of Something
4. How-to-do Something
5. Guides and Tutorial
6. Roundups
7. Why Posts

Pros:

• Evergreen content takes time and money for once, and after that, it only gives benefits.
• It is one of the best content marketing tactics as it pushes all business goals in one go.
• It stands the test of time and different situations without fading away.

Cons:

• Sometimes it gets hard to find unique evergreen topics that haven’t been touched before.
• It gets hard to give an edge to evergreen content that has already been written so many times.
• You might have to invest money if you go for original research on a relevant topic.
• Understanding the needs of the audience and market requires time.

 

TREND 3: Focusing on Value Not Sales

Content written for the sake of selling never sells today’s consumers.

Your consumers can detect selling content within seconds (yes, they are that sensitized now!), and they are fed up with it.

Content that takes on stances like:

• Having XYZ issues? We can solve it.
• Rest are trash. We got the best thing for you.
• We have this and that and a bit more this and that.

Your target audience already knows about their problems.

What they want to know is how you can solve their problems without ripping them off their hard-earned money?

 

Content marketing acts as a good-will ambassador of your brand that puts you as a problem solver at the center of all problems of your target audiences without showing you as a seller who is after their money.

 

Take this example of SWEOR, where they are giving freebies to their target audience that shows their care for them.

 

So content strategy trends 2021 are going to see the tilt of businesses to provide value rather than just selling their products.

Because businesses also believe that the ‘value’ factor in their content is most significant in the success of their content marketing.

Source: Content Marketing Institute

Pros:

• Showing your care and concern for customers make your brand more credible and dependable.
• Your relationship with the target audience excels from seller-buyer to more of a well-wisher.
• It makes conversion less of a hassle and sales more easy-breezy.

Cons:

• It can be hard to think of an idea that doesn’t shatter your budget and gives the best ROI.
• Bringing a genuine tone of care is important to trick the audience.

 

TREND # 4: Using Interactive Visual Content

Valuable text words are important, but when they combine with the visual aid, they become even more impactful.

Let’s admit that no matter how creative words you carve out, they can’t compete with well-crafted and interactive visual content that not only communicates the message effectively but also gives a better understanding.

The reason is simple:

The human mind welcomes visual content more happily than plain text.

Considering these facts, it is better to have visual content along with your plain text to add deeper value to the overall customer experience.

But instead of just creating bland banners and cut paste images, go for engaging visual content that enhances users’ interest.

Pros:

• Visual content is a great way to enhance engagement and reduce bounce rate.
• Great investment as a linkable asset to get quality backlinks.
• Good to increase visitor interaction and activities on the website.
• Establishment of a strong brand image comes along as a perk with the use of visual content.

Cons:

• Finding a designer who can conceptualize your ideas perfectly can be a real hassle.
• Brainstorming to find the perfect color scheme and imagery plan out for your brand can take some chunk of your brain.

 

TREND # 5: Revamping Old Content Smartly

Content marketing future trends are going to see a fresh twist in the idea of repurposing old content to leverage more benefits.

Content writing is not only about creating content from scratch.

It is also about utilizing your best writing abilities to make every piece of content on your website purposeful.

That’s what gives way to refreshing old content to make it fit to compete with the present war on SERPs.

Revamping old content includes two things:

• Rewriting to add more value that readers are looking for
• Re-optimization to make it relevant for ranking against new content

 

Repurposing Old Content

The key to the success of popular content marketers is that they always find ways to remain in the game.

And one of their tricks is to keep their most liked and popular piece of content relevant every year.

Don’t invest time in repurposing content that didn’t do well the first time.

 

Repurposing content is just like revamping your car. Obviously, giving a new look to your 20’s BMW is better than investing money on renewing 1970’s foxy that no one even manufactures now. More on @

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For example, Brian Dean keeps on refreshing his 200 Google Ranking Factors blog with the recent changes and new updates…

…and you can see that it is still the top-ranking blog against its target keyword.

The reason is simple:

This blog still catches up with the latest technical content writing trends 2021 with:

• Updated information
• Catering to today’s user intent
• A fresh touch of redesigning

So it is still here, fetching new links and winning.

 

Re-optimizing Old Content

One of the biggest fears of content marketers is to see their cherished content getting buried on SERPs.

There can be multiple reasons for this, and one of them is:

Your content is missing out on the changing SEO needs and trends.

So launch a big-time re-optimization project for content:

• That was once valuable for readers
• Still powerful enough to compete against fresh content
• Still gets a fair chunk of traffic but is buried on SERPs

Here is what you can do to re-optimize your content:

1. Conduct an SEO audit of your content
2. Check the backlink profile
3. See keywords you are targeting
4. Compare the content quality and quantity with the top-ranking competitors

These steps will help you find where you are lacking and what you should do to bounce back at the top on SERPs.

Here is an example.

 

Ahrefs re-optimized one of its blogs according to users’ search intent and found a tremendous increase in its traffic

 

Pros:

• You get brand new content without spending any time.
• More possibility of getting Google’s and user’s attention.
• Useful content stays in the game for a longer time.

Cons:

• There is a possibility that you might repurpose worthless content.
• Even a single keyword change or paragraph addition should be made while focusing on users’ intentions.

 

TREND # 6: Following a Robust Strategy

Content writing doesn’t happen on the footprints of intuition.

• You read a few articles…
• Processed the information…
• And wrote what you felt like writing…

Yes, you can create content like this.

But no, you can’t expect to get valuable results with this approach.

Even if you hit trending content writing topics with this namby-pamby approach, you will not reap the perfect results.

That’s why you need a viable content writing strategy that tells you:

• What you are dealing with
• Where you are heading
• What suits you the best
• What is the most appropriate roadmap

Once you know all this, it becomes easier to create content that gets read and sells.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, around 69% of marketers have a documented content strategy.

That’s good!

2021 is going to see more rise in this trend.

Here is what your content writing strategy should include:

1. Clearly defined goals
2. Analyzing your unique requirements
3. Understand audience needs and desire
4. In-depth analysis of competitors
5. Defining ultimate success factors

Once you pen down your content powered by this strategy, you can achieve goals because:

Every word you create will be crafted with a well-put thought and focus.

Pros:

• You get a clear roadmap to achieve your goals.
• Achieving goals and driving results become more systematic.
• There is less possibility of hotchpotch because everything is clearly defined.

 

Cons:

• It requires time, brainstorming, and a deep understanding of different scenarios to drive a workable strategy.
• Converging the whole team on one center point requires sharpened leadership skills.

 

TREND # 7: Creating a Distinct Voice

Just imagine that you are closed in a room filled with hundreds of people, and…everyone is shouting!

What will you do to get your voice heard and acknowledged?

You will shout even louder and with a distinct tone – right?

Exactly, that’s the situation businesses are handling in today’s digital world.

Too many brands, too much noise… and too little margin to get heard.

You can’t attract the attention of readers by doing what others are doing.

That’s where you need to create a distinct voice so that you can cut the noise and make your voice get heard across the clutter.

That was the first thing we did at Globex Writing – instead of joining the heard of sheep, we decided to make our own position through our content that doesn’t just shout: bleat…bleat!

From our website content to blog posts, you will find a distinct crisp of words in our content.

We combine together all the elements of writing that give our words a profound meaning and distinct voice from others that oozes:

• Friendliness
• Warmth
• Humor
• Hope
• Positivity
• Care

 

It gives our target audience an idea that:

Online success is not a hard nut to crack, and we are with them through this bumpy journey.

It gives us a firm and prominent position.

2021 is going to see a boom in this trend…and it should.

More and more brands will try to establish their distinct voice because:

That’s the only way to get heard!

Pros:

• You get a unique persona that separates your brand from other businesses.
• Getting the attention of audiences in too much digital noise becomes easier.
• It becomes easier to get your share of success.

 

Cons:

• Coming up with your own content voice needs research and a knack for creativity.
• Maintaining a consistent style and voice throughout various content copy is difficult.

 

TREND # 8: Measuring KPIs

Every piece of content we produce is backed by a purpose and goal.

But you need to measure the outcomes of all your content creation efforts to find out if your content became a hit or miss case to achieve those goals.

Writing content without measuring its KPIs (Key Point Indicators) is just like sailing a boat without having a compass and an idea of directions.

What will be the possible result of this daredevil act?

Well, maybe, you will get lost.

And no business marks its presence to become a forgotten past.

So it isn’t a surprise that businesses prioritized result measurement in 2020…

… and this trend is going to reign in 2021 as well.

Here are a few KPIs you can measure for your trending topic content writing:

• Return on investment (ROI)
• Conversion rate
• of web visitors
• Email responses
• Social media engagement
• Brand awareness and loyalty
• Rankings on SERPs
• Customer engagement and retention

Once you know where you are heading, you can adjust your business according to that and tweak things where required.

Pros

• You get clearly defined goals instead of staying in the dark.
• It enhances the possibility of getting the best ROI with an eye on the progress.
• You can tweak the campaign along the way based on the KPIs to get results.

Cons

• You have to invest some money to buy premium KPI measuring tools.
• Keeping an eye on various KPIs all alone can be problematic when you have other things to do.

 

STEP 9: Investing in AI-Powered Content

Lately, Automatic Intelligence has become one of the biggest buzz words in the world of technology.

And content writing trends 2021 are also expecting to see a huge proliferation of AI in content production for multiple reasons:

●        Automate quality content production

●        Save time with more refined outcomes

●        Make data-driven approaches to content handling

●        Meet various content demands with a larger scope

Here are a few AI tools and application to tickle your excitement to step into 2021:

 OpenAI Text Generator

 

After the publication of OpenAI system, it immediately got the spotlight and flashed some promising headlines:

Guardian said that:

“AI can write just like me. Brace for the robot apocalypse”.

 

When you know that Guardian is saying that a system can match Guardian’s status, you know something HUGE is on the way to the content writing world.

Content Production with Structured Data

 

Feed structured data to the system and get well-refined content in return without moving a finger and single brain cell.

How does it sound?

AMAZING.

Well, technology has made it possible.

The Associated Press has already done a successful experiment, and it changed the story making scenario for them.

Now is the time when you are likely to see the magic of AI in the trending topics for content writing in the upcoming year. And we are more than happy to welcome it!

Pros

• Automating content production with structured data cuts the hassle of spending hours on writing.
• You get the help of AI to analyze data in a better way that you might not have thought about.
• Content presentation becomes more precise and understandable.

Cons

• You still can’t let the content go without proofreading.
• Fully relying on the system can be a problem because there is always a possibility of the system’s error.

 

Conclusion

Content writing trends 2021 is going to be all about:

• Giving a better user experience than ever before
• Incorporating advanced technology to bring proficiency
• Efforts to carve a different image than others
• Keeping previous useful trends in the loop for continuous results

In other words, it is going to be a combination of everything that makes you stand out among competitors and relevant on SERPs.