Almost every business has a website, and many businesses are using content marketing to attract more visitors. But what content should you create? And how can you make sure that your campaign is effective? In this blog post, we will discuss the best types of content and how to choose between them.
What is a Content Marketing Strategy?
Content marketing strategy is a set of decisions made by content marketers. These decisions can be classified into three categories:
- The first category is the decisions that affect the content marketing strategy itself. Examples include the selection of the brand’s voice, the selection of the medium, and the selection of channels.
- The second category is the decisions that impact how the text and visual content is created and distributed. For instance, choosing the software for content production, producing different kinds of content (including articles, infographics, and videos), and choosing the channels for dissemination.
- The third category involves the decisions based on the campaign’s performance. Here, content marketers analyze the results of their content marketing strategy and may decide to increase or decrease the budget for content promotion.
Benefits of Using Diverse Content Formats
When it comes to content, variety is the spice of life. Mixing up your content formats not only keeps your blog or website interesting for readers, but it can also help you reach different segments of your audience and improve your overall marketing results. Here are some benefits of using diverse content formats:
- You’ll reach more people: If you only create blog posts, you’re limiting yourself to a smaller portion of the population who reads blogs. By adding other content formats – such as e-books, videos, or infographics – you’ll open up your content to a larger group of readers.
- You’ll get more engagement: Not everyone is interested in reading text-based content. Some people prefer to watch videos, listen to audio files or look at pictures. Varying your content formats allows you to engage with more people on their own terms.
- You’ll get more shares: When you mix up your content formats, you give people different things to share on their social media channels. This can result in more traffic and exposure for your business.
- You’ll improve your SEO results: Google likes websites that offer a variety of high-quality content. By creating diverse content formats, you’ll improve your chances of ranking higher in search engine results pages.
Types of Content to Drive Maximum Engagement
There are many types of content marketing, but not all of them will be effective for your business. The best way to choose the right type of content is to first understand your goals and what you want to achieve with your content marketing strategy. Once you know your goals, you can match them with the different types of content and find the one that will work best for you.
Let’s look at some ideas of content marketing trends you can use to build your strategy.
1. Blogs
When you think of content marketing, one of the first things that come to mind is probably blogging. Both bloggers and content writing businesses have used blog content to build and monetize loyal followings. You must write related and informative blogs to hook your viewers and drag more leads to your funnel. For instance, if your business is an AI website builder, you can cover topics such as “What is headless commerce?”.
When combined with SEO best practices, blogging has a powerful impact – B2B websites that have blogs get 67% more leads, compared to those companies that don’t go this road.
SEO is an essential component of any inbound content marketing strategy. Inbound marketing refers to the process of attracting visitors to your website by creating valuable content that appears on search engine results pages (SERPs).
2.GIFs/Memes
Long-form expert content is not required for all content marketing formats. While informational content works well for many businesses, your customers may occasionally prefer to be entertained.
This is where GIFs and memes come in. A GIF is a type of image file that can be used to make animated images. A meme is a picture with text overlaid on it that goes viral on the internet and social media platforms.
In the world of viral marketing, GIFs and memes reign supreme. Viral marketing is the epitome of word-of-mouth marketing. When one person sees a viral post, they spread it to many people. And it’s only getting bigger.
The end result?
Increases in brand awareness and social media engagement appear to be instantaneous. GIFs and memes are especially effective in B2C social media strategies aimed at reaching new audiences. They also proved their effectiveness in emails – those containing interactive elements like GIFs got a 73% increase in click-to-open rates.
Make GIFs and memes work for you by first defining your brand’s voice, tone, and risk tolerance. These viral content categories have a tendency to veer off-brand.
3. Podcasts
Podcasts are digital audio files that are typically distributed online in installments. Customers can download the audio files, listen to them on your website, or subscribe to podcasts through apps such as Spotify.
The fact is that you can gain more popularity when you use podcasts. But more importantly, you can turn them into a wholesome selling channel. The studies show that 38% of listeners purchase products mentioned in their favorite podcasts.
There is no doubt that podcasts can be a powerful tool for your content marketing strategy.
4. Webinars
Webinars are live or recorded presentations that include a presentation, usually by an expert in the field, followed by a question and answer period. Webinars can be used to generate leads, build relationships, and close deals – on the average, 73% of attendees turn into customers.
To produce a successful webinar, you need to promote it heavily through your other channels such as email marketing and social media. You should also consider using paid advertising to reach a wider audience.
Webinars are useful for different purposes. They help in creating a sense of community among the audience.
5. White Papers
A white paper is an authoritative report that promotes a specific method of action in order to educate readers and assist them in solving relevant problems.
White papers are longer than blog posts (typically 3,000 to 5,000 words) and are primarily based on research and data.
Furthermore, white papers are available as downloadable PDF files, whereas blog posts and articles can be found on a website page. It can really help you increase your audience and a very good content marketing technique. Moreover, 91% of IT buyers claim it’s their second favorite source of information about the product.
6. Video Marketing
The effectiveness of video marketing in SEO and social media continues to grow. A staggering 93% of brands that used video on social media gained new customers.
Some of the content marketing strategies on this list work best for B2B or B2C, but not both. Video, on the other hand, provides opportunities for all types of businesses.
As platforms such as YouTube and TikTok continue to grow in popularity, video marketing will become a must-have for content marketers.
Here are just a few types of video you can use to promote your brand: motion graphics, customer reviews and testimonials; how-to videos; behind-the-scenes excerpts; interviews; polls and quizzes; and many more. Because consumers value authenticity highly, you don’t need a full professional setup to create lead-generating videos, just use video making tools you’re comfortable working with.
Post videos on multiple platforms such as your website, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram to maximize your reach.
Conclusion
Different content formats can help you create a powerful content strategy. While some formats, such as white papers and webinars, are more suited for lead generation, other formats such as blog posts and articles, are better for driving traffic to your website.
A variety in the content you make will also be your gauge on which platforms of style your audience will patronize your products, helping you focus more on that specific strategies for your campaign and to earn more profit. Plan and invest in content marketing now to help your brand in the best way. You may reach out to experts to ace this game.
When creating content, be sure to consider your goals and what you want to achieve with your content marketing strategy. Match the content format to the goal, and you’ll be well on your way to creating successful content.