Your articles are being buried.

Every month, WordPress users alone produce about 70 million new posts and 77 million new comments.

That means every article you post will be competing with at least 70 million pieces of content on your search engine.

So how can you make your article stand out and top all search engine results?

It’s a challenge, especially for new content marketers.

Which is why we are sharing with you 6 unconventional writing rules that will help you generate better engagement and sales with the content you’ve created in your content strategy and marketing plan.

1 – Start a Conversation

Relax. You don’t need to use a professional tone when you write.

Your readers are individuals who share the values and passions within your niche. They have already placed their trust in you as a professional with authority in your field.

What you have to do is to meet with them on their level and speak like them with relevant content.

Have a conversation with your readers, just like you are talking to your friends, family or colleagues.

Don’t use complicated jargon or technical words – or have an air of authority in your writing. What you need is high quality content.

You want to create ethos: a personal emotional connection with your readers. With ethos, your audience will feel more comfortable to read on and hear what you have to say.

This doesn’t mean you have to lose your professionalism; being casual and professionalism aren’t opposing ends of a spectrum.

So long as you maintain proper grammar and kind respect towards your audience, your audience will look up to you as an approachable figure of authority.

2 – Add Personality To Your Writing

Adding on to the previous point,

There’s nothing wrong with using humour in your writing. In fact, humour actually humanises your writing voice.

These small attempts at humour create a realistic conversational tone with your audience.

Your readers will open up to you, because they can relate better to your writing.

Put in a joke or two after every few paragraphs to engage readers with your digital content.

But beware of overusing them. Having too many jokes within your content, will only lead you to lose the focus of your article – and eventually your expertise in the subject matter.

The type and amount of humour you use also depends on your audience. If your audience are of a younger generation, having more humour in your text will appeal to them.

So start by understanding your target audience. Targeting a more mature audience? Use less humour and write towards their personality.

3 – Introduce Something Completely New

It’s easy to write a hot topic that everyone’s talking about.

And here’s the truth:

The internet is filled with a mess of content, most of them containing no-brainer or low-value points.

So when you write a new article and do content creation in 2021, think about presenting unique information or insights that nobody else has considered before.

And being unique doesn’t mean having to come out with research-grade content. All of us have unique future content inside us that can be used for content marketing.

Also, don’t forget to include appealing visual content that is relevant to your target audience. We suggest to use an editorial calendar that keeps your content team in check.

Here are some examples:

• Sharing your work/life experience
• Sharing a case study.
• Sharing your unique thoughts.

Sure, it can be more challenging to come up with a new topic, but it will be more rewarding.

Instead of creating rehash-ed content from existing information that can be easily found online, set yourself apart the noise by creating something totally unique to you and your brand.

But how do we introduce something completely new to our niche?

One way to breakthrough in finding new information rather than following the content marketing trend is to use a technique called: topic clustering.

Topic clustering is done by grouping multiple pieces of content together based on a shared topic. It helps you identify what has already been attempted before and talked thoroughly.

Once you’ve finished identifying the hot topics of your niche, ask yourself this:

“People have considered x, y, and z, but what about A?”

Whatever ‘A’ is, will potentially become the topic of your article and the new hot topic for your niche.

4 – Reveal the Bigger Picture Piece by Piece

Think back to the last engaging topic you had with your friends.

How did it come to be?

Did someone want to discuss the topic and simply brought it up? Or did a series of small talk and chat eventually brought the topic up?

Or you can always get each member of your content team to contribute.

The same applies when you write a content article, you can introduce the main topic in two ways:

Outlining your content to your audience before getting into the meat of it.

Connecting with your audience with an idea, example or thought, then expanding upon it to reveal the bigger picture.

While both approaches will engage with your audience well, the latter has recently been more successful in capturing the attention of readers.

This is because the second method gives a better flow, that feels more natural in a conversation compared to the first.

It is also a more exciting approach because in many ways, content writing is just like telling a story. Instead of just presenting facts, you guide readers through a story and keep that engaged.

5 – Feature Other Writers in Your Content Piece

According to Social Media Today, 92% of people who browse online trust user generated content more than any other forms online.

User generated content is content generated by other people for your website or brand. This can come in the form of blog posts, illustrations, videos, reviews, hashtags and more.

As you may probably know video content is one of the growing content marketing trend.

The reason why it’s so effective is because it shows collaboration and authenticity.

Apart from showing that you value other people’s thoughts, readers generally tend to have better trust when a particular topic receives thoughts from not just a single person, but a few experienced people.

So take the time to reach out to other subject experts, conduct interviews and feature them in your content piece as part of your overall content marketing strategy.

By using user generated content as part of your content marketing strategy, you also leverage the network of the people you collaborate with, to spread your content.

Imagine having your own curated quality content, complementing with content creation by users – this will indeed enhance the overall content experience.

6 – Don’t Aim for Lengthy Articles (for content marketing in 2021)

The common advice you’ll hear is to write long articles, as longer articles are better for search engine optimization (SEO).

Well, not really.

Google doesn’t actually rank articles on how long they are, but it ranks concise and resourceful articles that serve to satisfy the needs of searchers. It’s just that usually the resourceful articles are usually longer.

This means, you should stop focusing on article length. Rather, focus on making your content article the best one on the planet.

Aim on creating the best content article ever on the planet.

How do you create great content as part of your content strategy?

Use tools like Buzzsumo and Ubersuggest, to do research on the type of content and titles that people are interested in. Then create a content piece that covers every angle of the topic as much as possible.

So What’s the Takeaway?

All these 6 tips are unified under one common objective: make conversations that are worth talking about. And that my friend, is one key take away you should not miss in your content marketing in 2021.

Whether you are appealing to their ethos, bringing new insights or making shareable content, you should write in a way that encourages open sharing and discussions that people want to learn more about.

Keep this in mind as you write content that’s ahead of your crowd in 2021.

Better yet, optimize your content, whether it’s written or video content for voice search and long-tail keywords in 2021 and beyond.

Leave your comment below, what marketing trends or content marketing trends do you foresee in 2021.

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This post is a contribution by:

Dorian Martin is a professional writer, editor, and marketing advisor with extensive academic experience in mass communication and computer science. Dorian’s career portfolio consists of guest posts, research articles, and academic papers of a “how to write a dissertation discussion” variety for students in need. His expertise extends to digital marketing, big data, and blogging industries, as he writes for his blog in spare time.