5 Blogging trends that will remain with us post Pandemic

By Felicia Guthrie

COVID-19 has changed our daily lives and many of these changes will stick around long-term, including some of the marketing trends that were front and centre during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. So which blogging trends will remain with us post-COVID? Well, let’s take a look!

CREATE VALUE

In order to create value, it’s important to blog with purpose. So, think about what yours is. Studies show that that 77% of consumers want you to talk about how your brand can help them during and post-COVID. For consumers, it’s important for them to know how you and your business can help THEM. How can it benefit THEM? If you’re a small business owner, an entrepreneur, an influencer, or a thought leader, one of the ways you can share your experience and expertise to help people is through blogging. Take the valuable knowledge you’ve gained and use that to create blogs that would be useful to those that want to either follow in your footsteps, need guidance from an expert during these times of struggle and uncertainty, or who want to know new ways they can use your products or services in the current climate.

TRANSPARENCY AND AUTHENTICITY

Transparency and authenticity has been something we’ve stressed for years, but it has moved more and more to the forefront during 2020. Consumers are looking to brands and businesses for transparency on a number of relevant issues, from their COVID-19 efforts (how businesses continue to react and take action), to sustainability, social justice issues (from their responses to Blackout Tuesday, to BLM, and to #PullUporShutUp), and more. Transparency and authenticity go hand in hand and will continue to be important to a brands success. When blogging (and as a business in general) be clear and honest about your brand, your values, and whatever it is you’re trying to convey. Don’t muddle your blogging or social media up with confusing or hard to understand industry jargon – or even worse – be disingenuous. Consumers want you to be clear and truthful and insincerity can cost you loyal customers.

VIDEO

During the pandemic, especially during the lockdowns, people began spending more and more time online which means more time watching videos as well. One way we saw this was with the further rise of TikTok, not only were millennials now flocking to the platform, but we saw TikTok trends, like making the dalgona coffee, being present on other social media platforms as well. While we may think of YouTube and TikTok when we think of video sharing, video will continue to stay with us post-COVID, even in blogging. There are a few ways that you can work videos into your blogging content, for instance, you can incorporate videos into your blog posts or repurpose your blog content into videos for other platforms.

• When writing a blog post, don’t be afraid to not only include visuals such as infographics or photos, but also add videos. For example, you can try adding helpful, short, tutorial videos to accompany your written content (when relevant) to help readers who learn visually as well.

• During the pandemic, when most of us had to work from home, we may have had to work with, and make the best of, what we had. For many, that may mean reposting or repurposing older content. Blog content you’ve already created can be repurposed in so many ways (more on that later). Moving forward with our new normal after the rise of COVID-19, you should continue to look at ways that your work and resources can work for you, like taking your blog content and turning it into a short video for YouTube, TikTok, or other social media platforms.

ADAPTABILITY

During the pandemic, particularly in the early stages, businesses had to tweak their strategy or pivot completely in order to be relevant to changing daily life. This year has shown that your ability to adapt is the most important thing to focus on. One brand that has been able to adapt pre and post-COVID-19, for example, is KFC. When their UK locations ran into a chicken shortage in 2018, we were hit with the clever FCK ad. As a response to the pandemic, they again displayed adaptability by playing with their well-known tagline “It’s finger lickin’ good,” and dropping the “finger lickin’.” In both cases, these campaigns were relevant to current issues but still felt true to the brand. While these campaigns did not necessarily incorporate blogging, they are a good example of using your content to be relevant to uncontrollable and unpredictable change. While you may and should be following an editorial calendar with planned blog topics, blogs are usually written and published within a short amount of time, so this allows you to really be timely and relevant with your content. Be sure that you’re on top of industry news and trends as well as world/local news. Consider how it may be relevant to your brand and go from there. For example, during the pandemic, many people were trying new recipes. If you’re a food or beverage company, you can create a blog featuring new or interesting recipes to try from home.

REPURPOSE YOUR CONTENT

During the pandemic, many aspects of businesses were put on hold. Many business owners had to move their businesses more online or change up their strategy and deliver in new ways. For example, businesses who couldn’t create as much in-person content may have had to take things virtual or repurpose and repost older content. There are times, like perhaps when everyone was on lockdown, when you just can’t create the same kind of content you were before, but you can work with what you have or create new content that is relevant to both your business and the changes of the world as a whole. So, take those blogs that you worked long and hard on and create something new with them. For example, as mentioned above, you can take the theme and information from a blog and turn that into a video for Instagram’s IGTV or Youtube. You can create infographics that you can use in newsletters or on Facebook and LinkedIn. You can grab helpful snippets and turn them into social media posts. You can even create a podcast with your blogging content. Alternatively, you can also use your non-blogging content to help you create blogs. Is there a question people keep asking you? You can create a blog about it. Have you published a podcast episode or YouTube video? Take the information from there and turn it into a shorter (or longer!) blog post. There are so many more ways that you can repurpose your content! You can even create updated or condensed versions of your older content.

Blogging trends can sometimes come and go, but when there are major changes for your consumers, it's great to stick to the foundations. If you feel like you’re still struggling to get on track with your blogging, reach out to us at hello@songbirdmarketing.com to learn how we can help you!