21 Top Blogging Trends and Predictions for 2021

This year, blogging is at the top of my to-do list. I have set some big goals for myself to get my business back on track. And with those goals, I decided I needed to dive into data and see what trends and predictions are going to make for the biggest impact in 2021.

And let’s just say it from the get-go, last year REALLY sucked didn’t it? I’m really so grateful to have made it through, but…

…I’M SO GLAD 2020 IS OVER!!

And although my husband and I have essentially been quarantining since last February, I was a terrible blogger this past year. Ugh, actually I totally sucked at it! I think I only posted maybe 3 times– which is totally pathetic.

And, I think I only emailed my list like once. **gasp!** Yeah, I know. ☹️

You’d think that, along with so many others, I’d have taken advantage of more time to write, right? But I just didn’t have it in me. I could not muster the energy to do anything other than what I absolutely had to do.

Maybe that’s crazy, but it’s the God’s honest truth.

I mean luckily neither my husband or I lost a job last year, and we still had a home and food to eat and plenty of toilet paper to use.

BUT I did lose my Dad to Covid complications two days before Thanksgiving, which has been devastating for my family. So that just topped off this terrible, ridiculous year for me. I may blog about that experience later this year.

Geez, sorry, didn’t mean to make this start out depressing!! Because honestly I have a lot of hope for this year. And I want to grab 2021 by the metaphorical horns and get on with life again. How bout you?

Girl, I have got you covered!

If you’re working on or planning your content for the upcoming twelve months, you’re going to want to read this post FULLY, because (as of now) these are the trends that you should be considering in your content plan.

I’ve been reading like crazy and I’ve consolidated the top 21 blogging trends for 2021 right here, so you don’t have to go digging all over the internet to find them yourself!

TL:DR- I’d still love to hear from you in the comments, even if you just skim this list, and let me know what trend you found surprising or important?

BUT FIRST– why should you be blogging in 2021? Isn’t that OLD?

No way! Nuh uh! Not so!

• In fact, data shows that 77% of internet users still read blogs on the daily.
• And blogs exceeded over 600 million as of 2020.
• Plus, blogging gives you a voice in your niche and/or industry
• Helps give you way to engage with your audience
• And, (even though it SUCKS) the pandemic has increased online traffic

So what do the experts say that we should focus on this year? Let’s get into it…

#1- Focus on Most Important Qualities of Blogs

Which are the following according to GrowthBadger’s survey of top bloggers as to what they attribute most to their success making money online.

• Content
• Headlines & Intro
• SEO
• Email list subscribers
• Blog Name and URL
• Social Media Shares and Follows

This is mainly info you need as a beginner, but if you’ve been blogging a while and still aren’t focused on these things, doing so may create a pivot point for your growth!

#2- Develop the Leading Content Types

The next trend that seemed to be on everyone’s mind is that the TYPE of content moving forward is just going to get more diverse.

Gone are the days of just typing out long blog posts with tons o’ text and calling it good. If you’re in it to make money, you need to diversity your content types.

Here’s what’s predicted as leading (at least right now) for blogging in 2021: (source: GrowthBadget)

• Non-live Video (this keeps your viewers more engaged, helps them get to know the real you better, and go for less curated)
• Paid Promotions with brands
• Live Video
• Partnerships and Collabs
• Managing a Community or Forum
• Sell an Online Course
• Provide a Free Tool
• Start a Podcast

Of course trying to do all of these at once would not be advised. But think about what you could add to your repertoire and what additional content types might work well for your audience.

#3- Use All Your Data

There are more tools than ever right now that you can use to help discover and use the data from your own blog or website.

Yoast, Jetpack, and WordPress just to name a few, provide great data sets and all kinds of statistics that can help you develop and adjust your plan on an ongoing basis.

Check out the tools from your webhost too. I use Bluehost and they have loads of free data that they provide me, as well as additional tools that I can pay for.

The more you understand where you’re having success vs. not, the easier it will be for you to move forward and improve!

You can also use your data to create goals and targets that you want to hit, which will help keep you motivated and focused.

Trust me, when you don’t create goals or milestones, you don’t feel like you’re achieving anything, and you feel like you’re driving nowhere!

#4- Focus on Quantity of Posts

According to Hubspot, “business bloggers that blog 20 times per month generate 5x more traffic than those that blog 4x per month.

I mean, yeah, 20 times vs. 4 times is a huge increase in the amount of posts to produce each month. But when you consider your goals, it might be a good idea to run the numbers and see what kind of money you might make if your traffic did increase 5x.

For instance, I’ve recently been listening to The Blogging Millioniare’s podcasts (which are great, short and sweet btw), and he suggests that your goal should be to post at least once per week.

So, you can start the year knowing that you want to post at least 52 times and start breaking those down into buckets or types of posts.

If you want to post more than that, which if you do will likely increase your traffic and therefore income, you’re probably doing yourself a favor.

Marketing Insider Group gives these suggestions regarding quantity of posts:

• “The more frequently you blog, the more traffic you tend to get.”
• “11+ posts a month is a magic number…” (so that’s closer to 3 posts per week)
• “The more posts you already have on your blog, the more traffic and leads you receive.”
• “Align your publishing frequency to your content goals. Consider what resources you have for content creation.” (they suggest you might want to hire a blog writing service or use pro writers to help you)

#5- Create Highly Visual Content

You know we’re all drowning in content right? So you have to find a way to make yours stand out a little more, to keep folks on your pages just a little bit longer.

Some things you can add that will add loads of interest:

• Screenshots if you’re teaching something
• Stock images
• Videos
• Charts
• Polls
• Shareable snippets (like images they can pin to Pinterest)

You also want to vary your text, and add color, backgrounds, different fonts and sizes, etc.

See what I did there? 😉

Basically the easier and prettier you make your content to digest, the more likely someone will engage with your stuff.

#6- Grow Using Visual Search

What is this you say? Well, it’s fairly new over the past few years, but it’s a blogging trend that is set to EXPLODE in the coming years.

When someone visual searches, they take a photo or image and stick it in a search engine to find that item or items similar to it.

Visual search also relates to “click to purchase links” that you can directly post in your articles, social media posts and even inside digital products.

This is affiliate marketing on steroids!

People continue to use word of mouth, and endorsements from those they know to make a large majority of their online purchases. So why not cash in on that??

Some things you can do to help are becoming more efficient using detailed, long tail keywords to get shoppers to your product. And show LOTS of images of the items, in all kinds of angles, uses, lighting, and etc., which will help the search engines find your item easier.

And it’s super key to make sure you utilize keywords for image attributes, and definitely use every alt tag and caption option too!

#7- Voice Search is on the Rise

With a focus on making the world more user friendly for people of all abilities, voice search is likely only going to continue grow.

This might have primarily been created for those with vision challenges, but more and more we’re all just talking to our devices and making them do the work for us.

Heck, I even got an Echo show for Christmas and really didn’t even know what to do with it at first. But now, um, I’m totally hooked on telling Alexa to find stuff for me!

Smart speakers are becoming more and more sophisticated, so you’re going to want to optimize your blog for voice search with your SEO.

Another way to help market yourself this way is with Google’s “My Business” listings. Just something to consider.

There are also some plugins that can make it so a user can just have everything on the page read to them, so you want to make sure nothing gets lost in translation. So, keyword the heck out of everything you do to make it easier for someone who may be just listening to your blog post, to get your intentions to really come across.

#8- Include Interactive Media

Another blogging trend that can really help make your blog stand out, and make your posts easier to read, is to include interactive content.

Here’s a few ideas:

• Trivia and Quizzes
• E-learning with badges to earn
• Surveys and Polls
• Interactive Caculators
• Apps and/or Games
• Interactive Books
• E-Comm Carousels (goes with visual search too)

Including one of these media types will keep your reader more entertained and thus likelier to spend more time on your site- win win!

#9- Keep Content Relevant and Useful

This may seem like a no brainer, but you’d be surprised how many people just blog about whatever they want to, whenever they please.

If you want some serious traffic growth you have got to make sure that what you write about is first useful or helpful to someone, and that it’s relevant, or timely.

I mean, do you blog about the 4th of July in January? That’s just silly.

You should always consider what problem your content is the solution for. How does it help your reader?

If you can’t answer that, you probably should not be blogging about it!

You may even want to ask you reader at the end of the post, if they found it useful or helpful. They may not always answer, but if they do, that feedback is gold.

Video content is also really on the rise in blogging trends. And there’s a big focus on diversity and inclusion for all people in relation to your content.

Plus, people don’t want to read fake news, and they’re tired of click bait too. Don’t be that person.

And another interesting tidbit I discovered about this is that you could be held legally liable in some Countries if you do post crap. Like in South Africa, there’s new regulations that online content is all considered “regulated press”, so it’s all subject to their national Press Council. Especially when it’s info that’s related to current events or news.

So be careful, and make sure to provide accurate, fair and unbiased facts, or you could end up facing legal troubles internationally!

#10- Create a Summary PDF of Your Blog Posts

Again, we’re all overwhelmed with so much content. But, there’s genuinely good stuff that you want to read, and may not always have the time to do so.

Sure you can utilize your “Add to Reading List” feature on your phone or web browser, but do you ever go back and read those?

Another option to make it easier for your reader is to offer a PDF file of your blog posts that your reader can download and read later.

I don’t know about you, but I visit my download folder MUCH more often than trying to go back and find some random web page that I came across one day.

Bonus, you can also use this to get people to sign up for your email list, by offering the PDF once they give you their deets.

OR, if it’s really good info, you can even sell the PDF! What? Yeah, I recently found someone who turns some of her posts into short e-books and offers them for $5 a pop. She makes a few hundred dollars a month doing this.

Another quick win you can do is add a widget to your blog that shows how long the article will take to read. Several blogs I read do this, like Hubspot and Medium just to name a few.

Related Reading: Make Money Selling your Stuff on Poshmark– Learn All the Tricks!

#11- Focus Down on Your Niche

You know there’s a bazillion blogs out there right? Okay maybe not quite that many, but A LOT!

So, with all that competition, now more than ever, you need to help your blog stand out and provide tons of value to your audience.

That’s your cue to get real clear on what your niche is exactly. And once you decide that, you’ve got to blog about it like crazy! Become the authority on whatever that is.

According to Search Engine Journal, “brand authority will matter more than ever in 2021.”

I’m actually pretty good at helping people get clear on this, so if you need some assistance, let me know and let’s chat!

#12- Changing Trends in SEO

Keyword research should ALWAYS be one of the first things you do before you start writing or even planning any content.

How will you even know what people want to know if you don’t do some research? There are tons of options to help you find keywords too. The two I use the most are Google Trends and UberSuggest.

The best target keywords are changing all the time. So even if you do plan lots of content in advance based on research early in the year, it might be useful to review every month to make sure your chosen keywords are still trending.

Evergreen content is stuff your audience will find value in for many years, whereas trending content is what might only be relevant today or next month, but maybe not next year.

Search Engine Journal recommends that your content should be 80% evergreen and only 20% trending keywords. That’s something that would have been helpful to know YESTERDAY!!

#13- Even More Affiliate Marketing

Keep in mind that bloggers are influencers. And the influencer market will become a $15 billion industry by 2022. Um, what?? Yeah, you read that right!

And you can’t make affiliate income if you don’t get traffic- so see how these all work together?

Well, you want to increase your traffic first of all, and you do that by following these tips and more of course. But it will also help to get involved in as many affiliate programs as you can, and promote them often.

More companies are developing internal affiliate programs all the time, so check with all the brands you love and want to promote to see which ones you can partner with.

According to AWIN, content produced by affiliates for brands has increased 175% over the last few years. And businesses know that and don’t want to miss out on their piece of the pie too, so they’ll be looking for you as an affiliate as well.

#14- Partnerships and Collabs are Increasing

Just like affiliate programs, these are blogging trends for 2021 that are going to keep rising as well.

The main difference, from what I’ve gathered, is that when you partner with a brand, it’s more of a long term relationship. You might even sign some sort of contract or create terms of agreement in conjunction.

With affiliate marketing, you don’t really have a direct contact with the company, you sign up for their general program, advertise and earn if you direct folks to any sales. With partnerships and collabs, you usually do have someone you work with individually and you agree upon certain terms.

This could be how many times you post about the item, when, and/or where. And it’s usually an agreed upon amount that’s most likely greater than affiliate income. (But not always!)

Also, this year more brands are going to want ongoing relationships, not just one-off collabs. Keep an eye out for opportunities!

#15- Long Form Content Rules

Okay, we’ve know like, for a while, that supposedly longer content gets more traction. The search engines like it, you get use of more keywords, and more organic traffic too.

And guess what, that’s not changing anytime soon!

Top blogger Neil Patel says that long form content can really help boost your competitive edge.

He recommends that your posts are at least 2,000 words long, but even better if they’re 3,000 or more. It really helps you generate more leads, for longer, and create more organic traffic and even increase backlinks.

YEAH….

Well, you can’t argue with the data, so get writing beauty! Position yourself as the authority!

#16- Flexible Content Planning

If you hadn’t noticed, the world around us is cuh-rah-zeeeee!

So not only do you need to plan your content, but you’ll want to also plan alternate or fallback options too.

In other words, depending on what’s going on in your country, community, niche, etc., you might need to adjust your plans throughout the year.

Don’t let this derail you or scare you. It’s just something that we all need to get used to it seems, being able to pivot as necessary. (I learned this at work, a long time ago.)

Stuff changes, and you’ve got to be willing to change too!

#17- Optimize Body Content

I know I discussed this a little at the beginning. But apparently it’s a big deal with HOW you post too. The way you write can be just as important as what you write.

LONG sentences and paragraphs are much harder to read.

That’s

why

I

leave

space.

The experts say short, choppy sentences, with lots of white space make it easier to read.

In any case, writing like this helps you stand out!

#18- Guest Posting

Again, Neil Patel has lots to say about this…

He explains that the benefits to guest posting must be mutual for the host and the guest. When you write a guest post on someone else’s blog, what you want is to get a referral link back to your own.

This helps improve several things, your domain authority, your traffic potentially, and your credibility for sure.

So it might be a good part of your strategy this year to plan on creating and accepting guest posts.

Think about who you’d want to partner with, reach out to them with a proposal and see what happens!

I’ll be honest, I have not gotten into this at all, and I really want to implement all of these tips this year. So I’m definitely going to be adding guest posts to my content schedule.

Speaking of…if you’re interested in writing a guest post for my site, or are interested in one from me– drop a comment and we’ll get in touch!

#19- Email Marketing

Yes, email marketing is still alive, in fact it’s working better than ever!

Think about it- how often do you check your email vs. go check out every single blog that you love. It’s not even close right?

Most people check their email multiple times a day. So it’s still the BEST way to keep in touch with your audience, according to many experts.

It gets traffic to your site, it helps keep your brand relevant in the mind of your audience.

People are not even going to see your social media posts as much as they will your emails. Feeds are constantly flowing by, but an email will stay in an inbox until someone does something with it!

Make sure to familiarize yourself with email best practices too. Again, focus on personalization as much as you can. And you can even create interactive experiences in your emails too, with surveys and whatnot.

Live countdown clocks are really big these days too- especially if you’re trying to sell someone something.

So if you don’t have an email list yet, now’s a better time than ever to get one started! I’ll be posting more about how to do this at a later time, and explaining how I’ve grown my own on autopilot for the last few years.

#20- Promoting Yourself Across Platforms

And I’m not talking about text, videos, emails and such, which are helpful, but if you want to be successful at blogging this coming year, you’ve got to increase where you share your stuff.

This means you’ve need to have options for people to save your content to their social media accounts.

You may also want to consider cross promoting your blog posts on sites like Medium, Reddit, Facebook, Quora and more.

I’m sure there are many others, but those are the ones I’m most familiar with and have used.

#21- Social Media

Last but not least, get your butt on social media!

I know, I’ve been keeping mine on a backburner for the past few years. I’ve had so many other things I’ve needed to focus on, but really, it’s time for a comeback.

Backlinko says that the average person has at least 8.6 social media accounts as of August 2020. And 63% of the world’s population is active on social media, when looking at those who are eligible at 13+ years old.

And here I am specifically talking about social media sites only- YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, WhatsApp- those ones.

The more you can plan to post across all of these platforms, the better. One statistic I read said that social media drives 31% of referral traffic to websites– that’s a lot my friends!

And it’s not enough just to post, you’re going to want to engage with your audience there too. Respond to comments, like and comment on other’s posts too. The more you reciprocate the better!

Conclusion

You made it to the end! Woo hoo!

Those are my Top 21 Blogging Trends and Predictions that you should focus on this year.

Of course I can’t guarantee anyone’s success, but it stands to reason that if you incorporate as many of these into your plan as you can, you’re going to see some definite growth!

I am really looking forward to being consistent with my blogging this year and not letting myself get burned out.

I really hope that you can use this info to help your own blog, website, or business head into 2021 and make this the year you hit all your goals!

Let me know in the comments which one(s) you’re going to implement or focus on. Or what surprised you or if this was helpful at all? I might make it an annual report!