What comes to mind you hear the phrase “content marketing”?
Some think about blogs or social media posts, while others identify with case studies. Truth is, all these are correct, and there are even more types of content marketing at your disposal. So, what defines content marketing anyway?
Defining content marketing?
Content marketing is a marketing strategy that involves planning, creating, distributing, sharing and publishing relevant, valuable and consistent content to a targeted audience.
The main goal is to increase brand awareness and engagement, attract visitors, generate sales leads, or drive purchases and revenue.
Common types of content marketing include:
- Blogs
- Social Media
- Infographics
- Video Content
- Case studies
- Webinars
- eBooks
- Podcasts
Why is content marketing important?
You probably heard of the phrase “content is king”. That remains true when it is done right in the sense that it is relevant, consistent and valuable to your target audience.
As a content marketer your need to build trust with your target audience without coercing them to make purchase right away.
Content marketing lets you build this kind of relationships with prospective customers by delivering high-quality content consistently.
By building trust with content, you can increase your sales while reducing your marketing spend.
What’s more, unlike other forms of digital marketing, content marketing can be deemed as a long-term marketing strategy for your business.
You can bet on content to continually drive traffic, create brand awareness and generate leads over long periods of time.
Hubspot lists a few ways content marketing helps build brand awareness and generate more leads for businesses:
- Educate your leads and prospects about the products and services you offer
- Boost conversions
- Build relationships between your customers and business that result in increased loyalty
- Show your audience how your products and services solve their challenges
- Create a sense of community around your brand
Let’s look at some types of content marketing formats you can use to build up your strategy.
Types of content marketing
1. Blog Posts
Perhaps the most popular content marketing technique, that not only allow you to demonstrate your expertise and authority on a subject, but they also positions you to educate (and perhaps entertain) your readers on a regular basis.
When combined with SEO best practices, a blogs can be an incredible tool to build and monetize loyal followings.
Blog posts are incredible SEO tools: they help drive organic traffic to your site, increase the number of indexed pages on your site, and provide your site with more inbound links.
To get the most from blogging:
- Ask yourself, “Who is the audience, and what is the goal?” Answering these initial questions helps you create blog posts that yield better content, and makes it more likely to be read and shared.
- Be sure you are optimizing your blogs, increasing opportunities to rank better on search engines. Based on your blog topic, search keywords and keyword phrases with high search volumes and find opportunities to work them into your subheadings, title and the content itself.
- Post social media content linking to your blogs to boost exposure and drive site traffic.
- Publish at least two blog posts per month, weekly, or more, if you have the resources.
2. Social Media
With all the different platforms – and different audiences on those platforms – social media is one of the most dynamic types of content marketing.
You can customize your content by platform, utilize various media like videos or live streaming, and direct traffic to your website from your posts.
Social media can boost SEO by sending signals to search engines, connect you with target audiences, offer a channel for customer service, and keep brands top of mind with fresh content.
To get the most from social media:
- Decide which platforms make the most sense for your brand and how you can use them.
- Ask yourself, “What are the typical ages of the platform’s users? Do users go there for education or entertainment? What types of content work best on different platforms?”
- Publish content in line with your brand voice, on a regular basis, and be responsive to users’ questions, reviews, and comments.
- Don’t oversell. Be promotional 20 percent of the time, and helpful or entertaining the other 80 percent.
3. Infographics
A lot of complex ideas your brand might want to deliver to its customers are way too hard to explain using only a blog post.
Sometimes you need the visuals to go with it in order to be able to properly explain your solutions.
That’s where infographics come in handy.
Infographics are visual ways to present ideas. Usually, they prioritize bullet points and numbers, instead of long-form content you’d see more frequently in blog posts.
An infographic is a nice way to show a complex idea to your customer without having to rely on as many words in order to get it done.
4. Video Content
Who doesn’t love to watch quick videos on interesting topics?
Ever since the popularization of broadband connections and the rise of the YouTube era, the internet has never been the same.
That’s because more and more of the content produced has navigated towards videos over the past few years.
Videos are hard to produce, but they generate the greatest results.
After all, people spend at least 100 minutes watching videos a day, and 48% of customers rely on videos to reflect what they are interested in.
If your company can create good video content, it is more likely to convert and nurture a lead than if it only invests in written content nowadays.
5. Case studies
A case study is a piece of content you create that outlines your success with a particular client.
Case studies are particularly effective in the B2B industry, where purchases usually involve higher costs and more risk.
When you write a case study, highlight your customer first and your product second. In other words, your case study should read like a story about your client that shows your brand as a successful supporting role.
By showcasing your satisfied customers, you show sales prospects that you can deliver positive results for them.
Tip to make case studies work for you: Include specific details about your customer’s success story and always quantify positive results when you can.
Parting Shot
I just mentioned but a few of the available content marketing types to trigger you explore them. Don’t be tied to just one type but tryout different techniques and see what works best for you. All the best!