Apply these techniques for a winning content strategy in 2021

Now it seems like the only certain thing this year is that everything is uncertain. However, despite the unpredictability of 2021 you can’t go with the flow and publish content without a strategy in place. Doing so will only cause more stress and chaos in your team, inconsistency in your content, and this will ultimately lead to lots of missed business opportunities. Even though it is hard to predict this year’s content marketing trends for small businesses, there are a few techniques that should be the cornerstone of your content strategy.

But remember that these are no hard and fast rules: you should test them out, adjust, and test again until you find what resonates with your prospects and customers and works best for your business.

Create content that matters

Your content represents your business. So do you want to come off as overwhelming and irrelevant or as helpful and understanding? If you aim for the latter, focus on creating content that is aligned with what your prospects and customers need: content that offers them a solution to a problem they have, answers a question or resolves an issue they are having hard time with, or provides them with relevant and useful knowledge.

Think about the last piece of content (maybe a blog post or a video) that really resonated with you. Why was this piece of content so memorable to you? Is it because it answered your question, helped you solve a problem, or informed you on a matter you find important?

This is also the type of content you need to deliver to your prospects and customers: relevant and valuable. Let quality, not quantity, guide you. This will make you stand out, and your audience will remember you.

In order to create relevant content, you need to think from the perspective of your prospects and customers. You don’t need to rack your brain days and nights what content to create. There is plenty of information that you can already pull out of your conversations with customers.

• Go through all your customers’ questions in your email and answer them in the form of a series of blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, or webinars.

• Send your customers an email survey asking them what you are doing well and where you can improve. Think about adding a small survey section into your newsletter. That way, you can receive regular feedback from your most loyal customers.

• See how your customers are using your product or service and create case studies or testimonials to showcase to others who might benefit from them.

Be human

With all the stress and uncertainty of 2020 that are going to stay with us in 2021, it just isn’t right to be selling aggressively, spamming people with emails that they haven’t even signed up for, and completely ignoring the situation in which your customers and prospects find themselves now.

Perhaps you too are barely making ends meet, worrying if you will be able to hold it together. That is why now more than ever it is important to be human. You need to incorporate compassion and empathy in your content. Demonstrating empathy doesn’t mean you should stop selling and give your product or service for free; being empathic comes down to addressing your customers’ needs, problems, and fears in your content.

How can you be human in your content?

First and foremost, you need to really understand the goals and challenges of your ideal customers. Only then can you create valuable content for them.

• For example, if you are selling a CRM software to other businesses and your buyer persona is a business owner looking for more quality leads, you can write a blog post or create a video explaining how lead nurturing can help them develop relationships with their leads throughout the buying process.

• If you are selling directly to consumers and your buyer persona is a new mother who is considering starting with postnatal yoga, she might want to read if this is safe and what other new mothers’ experiences are, so you can offer her an e-book with other mothers’ testimonials and an explanation of the health benefits.

You should engage with your customers and involve them in developing the solutions they need; you should proactively use their feedback to improve your product or service.

• Ask your customers to evaluate your product or service once they have purchased it. One question you can ask is “How likely is it that you would recommend our product/service to a friend or a colleague and why?”

• You can create LinkedIn polls or polls in Insta stories: that way, you engage in real time with your prospects and customers by asking them for their perspectives about various topics.

Publish user-generated content.

• You can do a photo tagging contest in which your customers share creative photos and tag your business and the winner can receive a discount to your product or a free membership/subscription to your service.

• You can ask your customers to co-create content: they can add a chapter to your ebook or write a guest blog on your website and share their expertise on a topic that can be useful to other customers.

Show the human side of your business.

• Add a creative “Meet the Team” page on your website, take photos or short videos of your team during your new product launch or ask your team members who are going to attend a (virtual) event to take plenty of shots of themselves and post them on social media.

• Spotlight employees on your company’s social media channels on a regular basis. Featuring your team shows to the world that you value the people you work with while it encourages your team members to become advocates of your mission and business story.

Use social media but don’t overwhelm

These days digital channels are often the only way to stay in contact with your prospects and customers. Now that the number of social media users has hit 3.6 billion and nearly 50% of internet users spend more time on social media due to the pandemic, embracing social media in your content strategy is essential.

However, before you start posting stack upon stack of content on all social media channels, take the following tips into consideration.

People are starting to experience content fatigue due to the increased time spent online and this can lead to a digital burnout. So you should be posting only really relevant content.

• It is crucial that you switch the “What do I want to post today on social media?” mindset to “What does my ideal customer need to hear now? Does he/she even want to hear from me now?”

• Always highlight the benefits of your product or service for your prospects and customers instead of the features. What is in it for them? Here is a powerful example from Apple’s iPod marketing:

“storage for 1GB of MP3s” —> feature
“1,000 songs in your pocket” —> benefit

While the feature is 1GB of storage, Apple focused on the benefit. You too can apply Apple’s tactic in your content marketing: what is it that your product or service allows your customers to do, what is the problem that you solve for them?

Focus on nurturing relationships instead of obsessing over how many likes and followers you have.

Having 200 real followers who are genuinely interested in your brand and click your call to actions are much more valuable to your business than 10.000 followers who don’t even read your posts let alone consider purchasing your product or service.

• Find 3-5 people who you want to partner with on a new idea or a service/product offering. Follow them and engage with their content. Start a conversation with a personal message showing you know what they do and ask a simple question that will pique their interest.

• Do some research and find the people you want to attract to your business (the people who you really want to buy from you or hire you), follow them and start engaging with their content: like and comment on their posts and ask them questions that spark conversations.

Focus on one or two channels where your ideal customers are most likely to be. Don’t spread yourself too thin trying to be on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, and Reddit.

• If you are a business that provides services to other businesses (B2B), you will probably want to start with LinkedIn as opposed to Instagram.

• If you are B2C, you have higher chances of success on Instagram than on LinkedIn.

User experience is key

People expect speed, ease, and convenience. You need users to stay on your website, find exactly what they are looking for, love the content you have written and the form in which you deliver it to them, and click your call to action (check my previous blog post on how you can do that).

Have you ever clicked on an article or a video that captured your interest only to get on a page filled with obnoxious pop-ups and ads? Do you remember how many times you left a web page because the navigation of the website was awful or it took you more than five minutes to find the contact details or pricing information?

How your prospects and customers are interacting with your content is just as important as with what content they are interacting.

Respect your web users’ attention.

If you want to give your website visitors at least the 10 seconds they need to scan your content, steer clear of intrusive pop-ups and auto play videos and gifs: not only do they distract your web visitors but they also block content, look spammy, and they are awful on mobile. If pop-ups are essential for your lead counts, choose ones that offer something really valuable, aren’t triggered right away, and don’t block the whole page.

Improve your page load speed.

The Google Page Experience update is coming in May, and it will influence your search ranking. To understand how a user will perceive the experience of a specific web page, Google will evaluate a set of signals such as how quickly a page loads, if it is mobile-friendly, runs on HTTPS, and more. But I am not a web tech expert, I am just giving you a heads-up to do your own research on what this Google’s update would mean to your website.

Don’t send emails and newsletters from general email accounts.

I mean accounts like ‘info@,’ ‘contact@,‘ ‘sales@,’ ‘marketing@,’ ‘admin@,’ ‘support@,’ and so on. These addresses receive the most spam, so they will often be the most likely to be accused of sending spam. Besides, sending emails from an email account with a name in it (for example, mine is andriana@ab-mediacommunication.com) adds a personal touch and you can instantly reply to a question and start a one-to-one conversation.

Video and virtual events are here to stay

Our new – or not so new anymore – remote way of life isn’t going away, and video isn’t either. Video, virtual events, and live streams are bound to grow as content mediums. According to HubSpot, video has become the most commonly used format in content marketing, overtaking blogs and infographics. If you haven’t been making use of the power of videos and live streams, now is the time to start.

However, bear in mind that people consume information in different ways. While some of your prospects and customers might love videos, Insta stories, and webinars, others prefer in-depth blog posts and articles, and others only listen to podcasts or the radio. Everyone has their preference in how they want to consume content. Test and find which content forms work best for your business.

How can you apply video and virtual events in your content strategy?

• If your buyer persona is a business owner of a tech company, you can get them to watch an informative video that tells them everything they need to know about your product or service and why they need it in 2-3 minutes instead of reading a 50-page white paper or 30-slide presentation.

• You can do live streams with your team as you launch a new product or announce a new service, do wine tasting workshops, do Q&As, do interviews with experts in your industry while people are able to ask questions and interact. Basically, you can go live with anything that might be interesting to your target audience.

• Product tours are one of the best ways for your customers to learn everything they need to know about your product or service. Not only is a live product tour an effective way for you to reach out to your customers but also a great way to engage them. You can also record the product tour and place it on your website.

Conclusion

Having a robust content strategy in times of uncertainty is key. Even though it is difficult to make forecasts on which content marketing trends will be most successful for small businesses in 2021, there are a few techniques that you should center your content marketing around:

• create content that matters
• be human
• use social media but don’t overwhelm
• focus on user experience
• use video and host virtual events.

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I hope you have found these tips helpful. Have you already applied any of these techniques in your content strategy? If yes, which? If no, what are you going to start with? Let me know in a comment.

Featured image: Jo Panuwat D, Shutterstock.

Do you need a hand with your content strategy? Email me and I would love to help you.