Top 10 Ideas for Content in 2021

Most of us have a few brands that we trust time and time again. But how can content marketing help you to generate that level of loyalty for your own product or service? While you might know how brilliant your business is, communicating this to your potential customers is a completely different ball game. Customers establish trust in your business persona, it’s voice, and that’s where content marketing comes in.

Content marketing is a perfectly balanced cocktail of tactical strategising, timely distribution and original ideas. Perfecting your strategy and distribution is a matter of knowing your target audience inside out, keeping a consistent eye on the data and learning the tricks of the trade.

But constantly coming up with original ideas for content? That can start the tumbleweed blowing in even the most inventive minds.

Sometimes thinking of unique article ideas comes easily and inspiration strikes exactly when you need it. But this article is to help you out during the other times when it seems like there is a whole lot of fresh air between your ears and you need a nudge in the right direction.

We have collated a list of ideas for content that can help you populate even the most ambitious 2021 content plan. We’ve thrown in some of our favourite examples to show you exactly what we’re talking about.

If something piques your interest, think about how it could be tailored to your business. The Ingeniums team knows how to bring these ideas to life in any niche or industry. Want to know more about what we can do for you? Drop us a message, we’d love to hear from you and get stuck into a new creative project!

Table of Contents: Top 10 Ideas for Content in 2021

1.     Show Thought-Leadership with Reviews

2.     Empower the Niche you’re Targeting

3.     Boost your SEO with Timely Tips

4.     Find the Best Products for People

5.     Answer the Obvious Questions

6.     Solve Consumer Problems with Valuable Advice and Links

7.     Show Your Personality with Behind-the-scenes Content

8.     Prove your Worth with Case Studies

9.     Experiment with New Formats

10.  Create Infographics for Easy Social Sharing

Show Thought-Leadership with Reviews

Your company might not always be the most ground-breaking, but you can still be influential.  Reviewing relevant products, websites or services can establish your brand as a knowledgeable thought-leader in your industry. Rather than claiming to be an expert in your field, show your readers you are by offering valuable feedback on what others are up to.

Web design agency, KIJO, have been designing and developing bespoke websites for luxury brands for years. To drive website traffic and position KIJO as a leading web design agency, the Ingeniums team produced a series reviewing the websites of some of the world’s most successful luxury brands. Each article looks at a website or two, analysing what features are the most effective. We highlight the features that would be a smart investment for anyone looking to design a luxury website. By avoiding the hard sell and simply showing their customers what investing in a good web design can do, the series works to build trust, spark interest and drive traffic. Since the series began, website traffic has almost tripled across the site. 

Empower the Niche you’re Targeting

We have worked with KIJO to develop their ‘WordPress for Enterprise’ and ‘Elementor’ series’, creating ‘how-to’ articles and delivering insider tips on how large businesses can get the most out of WordPress. The articles are involved, educational and sometimes technical; they are a brilliant tool for business marketing managers who want to know more about WordPress. This type of content requires a good deal of thorough research, team collaboration and listening to consumer feedback. It’s for a fairly specific audience, but it’s well worth the effort to produce something valuable that will engage a highly intentioned segment of the market.  

Boost your SEO with Timely Tips

Ranking on search engines isn’t something that you can achieve once and then set to one side. It requires a consistent output of relevant, timely content. This is when articles delivering seasonal top tips are so valuable. Take our client, Coleshill Mowing. They provide gardening maintenance services all year round. However, the services people are looking for vary considerably depending on the time of the year. We produced content that was in line with the latest search data to keep one step ahead of changing consumer trends. Our gardening blog provides thoroughly-research top tips on what jobs needed doing every month. In this way, Coleshill Mowing continued to rank for the most important keywords and their readers were provided with the insider knowledge they were looking for all year round.

You can refresh this kind of content year on year to save you time and money in the long run. It also allows you to be highly responsive to changing times, something businesses have had to learn the hard way throughout 2020.  

Find the Best Products for People

Anyone looking for a new product or service will want to do a bit of digging before they commit to it. But we’ve all been there, relentlessly Googling, comparing prices, trawling through reviews – it’s more work that we just don’t want to do. Wouldn’t it be great if someone else did all for you? Enter content marketers and their trusty lists.

Save your target market a job and bring the information they’re looking for to them! Do the hard work of collating valuable products and services and people pushed for time will flock to you in relief. For plugin creator WPX, we collated lists of the best plugins and themes that provide all kinds of added WordPress website functionality. By showcasing knowledge, you establish trust in the reader, and over time this will translate into more interest in your products.

Answer the Obvious Questions

Frequently asked questions are so named because they are, you guessed it, frequent. Use your FAQs as a starting off point to provide more detailed responses to the questions your ideal customers ask time and time again. The demand is already there, produce the right content to make sure it’s all channelled in your direction.

Search engine data is a goldmine when it comes to sparking new content marketing ideas. AnswerThePublic is a brilliant tool that scrapes search engines queries and shows you exactly what questions your potential customers are asking Google. Provide answers to these questions for straight-forward content marketing success.

Solve Consumer Problems with Valuable Advice and Links

The service, tool or product you provide is probably only one part of a wider solution to a consumer problem. As experts in your field, let your readers in on the other trade secrets that can make their life easier. Crono has developed a timekeeping app to help businesses reduce unnecessary admin and keep on top of time management. Their app is one tool companies can use in the battle to improve workplace efficiency. Crono’s content marketing strategy positions them as part of a wider solution. With helpful links to other resources, expert advice and time-saving tricks for businesses, their website is a valuable resource for any business wanting to save time.  

Show Your Personality with Behind-the-scenes Content

Content marketing isn’t about instant conversion. The hardest job is showcasing brand identity and establishing a long-standing reputation for a company. Often, a highly effective way to do this is with something fun and unique that removes some of the usual barriers between business and consumer. Stuffy, corporate businesses are swiftly making way for more open-minded, imaginative companies. Show off who you are and what you stand for by letting your audience see something they normally wouldn’t. Interview a team member, show customers behind the scenes or let them in on where you source your secret ingredient.

At Ingeniums, we make sure to practice what we preach. We have recently produced several articles that lift the lid on our creative processes and how we continue to succeed in a crowded market. For us, showing why and how we do what we do, with complete transparency, is one of the best ways to build a lasting reputation with our valued readership. 

Prove your Worth with Case Studies

It’s a content marketer’s job to imperceptibly show, rather than tell, readers that ‘this brand is great, you can trust it!’ An ideal way to do this is with case studies. Break down your biggest success stories into easy to follow narratives. Show what you do best by explaining the issue, how you solved the problem and the results that followed. Web design agency KIJO does this for the majority of their projects. They turn highly technical solutions into something every business owner can understand.

Experiment with New Formats

Podcasts, instructional videos, live question and answer sessions- there are so many ways to get your business seen, beyond the written word. Consumers are diversifying their content consumption methods and content suppliers must do the same.

Create Infographics for Easy Social Sharing

Infographics containing relevant and helpful information can showcase your business’s knowledge and leadership and even influence wider industry conversation. Add to that the opportunity for branding, and infographics can be used to encapsulate your broader brand message and boost your exposure.

Overall, an infographic is a highly valuable brand morsel that can be swiftly shared around the internet, piquing interest and driving traffic back to your site. Embed click to tweet buttons and other social sharing options to make it easy for your readers to share.

Keep Content Marketing Agile in 2021

Coming up with fresh and interesting ideas for content is an ongoing challenge. We find that target market research and keyword data is often the most logical place to start when you’re struggling for ideas. But when inspiration hits, roll with it! Exploring fresh ideas can start a content creation domino effect and before you know it, you’re spoilt for choice. As long as you remain focussed on delivering value-adding information and providing your audience with what they actually want, how, when and where you say it is up to you.