One of the secrets to content marketing lies in knowing the type of content that will actually transform your content marketing; drive returns on investment and deliver on expected results.
These are the kind of content you want to create if you plan to enjoy consistent positive results with your content marketing effort.
And knowing about these content types is the ultimate goal of every content marketer.
Unfortunately, a lot of content creators are either ignorant of the kind of content that will drive results for them or they don’t know where to start looking for such content types.
If you’re one of these groups and you’re tired of getting zero results from your content then this tutorial is for you.
In the following paragraphs, you will learn about the seven types of content forms that can change your content marketing effort, drive improved engagement and deliver your ROI.
Now, let’s dig in…
Blog Posts and Written Content
Legendary for its incredible popularity as a content marketing form, written content has been one of the most original and most widely used type of content across both the social media and the blogosphere.
In particular, blogging has helped a lot of content creators to get improved traffic to their blogs and drive practical results for their business.
It has also worked a lot for social media marketing too, especially on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc.
Written content boosts SEO
As one of the major boosters in Search Engine Optimization, written content has helped a lot of businesses in improving their search visibility, driving organic traffic and getting a more targeted result with their content.
Coming to digital strategy, in areas with low internet connection or access to mobile data like some locations across Sub Saharan Africa, written content has provided an alternative avenue for brands to reach populations within these localities either by advertising via blogs, sponsored posts or other forms of written content ads.
Video Content
With its increasing popularity, video content is gradually becoming one of the most preferred types of content for brands and digital marketers.
The surge in demand for video content over the years has brought about an increase in users among top video content sharing platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram etc.
Right now, even social media platforms originally designed to promote non video content like Facebook are making moves to redesign their platforms to encourage the creation of video content.
What this demonstrates is the fact that there’s a whole big market for video content. And as a content creator, there’s a very big need to focus on adding videos to your content strategy, especially now.
To get started, you can work on using live stream videos as part of your content on platforms like Youtube, Instagram, Facebook etc.
Benefit of Creating Video Content
The number one benefit of using live streaming as your number one video content type is that it is easier to produce, saves time and creates a lot of engagement with your audience, compared to a pre-recorded video.
So, if you run a tutorial blog like I do, from time to time, you can live stream your trainings from any of these social media platforms and share it directly to your blog.
That said, there’s also the recorded video content. This one does a lot at increasing your overall shares etc. You want to use as much video content as possible where you have the chance. But in any case, before paying lots of attention to videos, be sure that this is the type of content your audience really wants.
Audio Content
Audio content comes in the form of podcasts and recorded audio posts.
According to statistics, a lot of brands are adopting audio content and podcasting in particular, as a means to reach out to their audience.
In fact, a whopping 55 percent of Americans have listened to a podcast. You can reach a large number of beyond your current audience demographics, if you choose to produce Podcast as part of your audio content strategy.
To make things easier, you can convert your existing blog posts to podcast or create an episode based audio podcast where you discuss issues related to your niche or host experts; discuss diverse topics that’ll still drive traffic over to your blog.
Pictures and Infographics
Alongside pictures, Infographics are important content elements that are primarily used in the B2B and B2C industry to graphically represent data and drive a more compelling content.
Using Infographics or pictures adds a punch to your content. Pictures in particular can add context to your content, making a written content more clickable.
On the other hand, Infographics just like a more engaging picture allows extensive marketing statistics to be expressed in a clear and compelling style.
Of course relevant pictures will always speak a thousand words. So, when used together, these two elements can drive increased engagement for your content.
Case Studies
A case study is a research or in-depth study or demonstration of approaches used in order to arrive at a particular outcome.
As a content creator, you can use a case study as a detailed description of your experiences with or on a particular project or client.
Using customer cases for instance, you can vividly describe your experiences while providing particular services to a client or solving a specific problem, including details like the steps you took, while you used them and the results you derived.
Using a case study as part of your content can serve as a good social proof. It describes to potential clients your competence while also demonstrating to them your ability to solve specific problems.
When used effectively as content strategy, case studies can boost your ROI especially if you’re a beginner. It can also drive a faster ROI while positioning you as an expert, before your audience.
The case study is an excellent content strategy for beginners in the serviced based industry.
Ebook Content
EBooks are long form content. In the content marketing world, eBooks are mostly used as lead magnet, to attract leads or encourage email subscriptions.
Beyond these purposes, creating eBooks as part of your content strategy can also help in providing additional value to your clients while positioning you as a thought leader in your industry.
Besides using it as a direct content strategy, eBooks are one of the most strategic tools used in information marketing and it is also one of those types of content that you can sell directly to a client and get paid for it.
Although it might take a ton of time to create one, using eBook as part of your content strategy can help you in getting a high value email subscribers or getting paid for each copy sold.
Expert Interviews
Expert interviews are another gold mine in the content industry. Interviews are one type of content forms that can easily improve your brand perception before your audience.
Depending on your content strategy, you can interview an expert either as part of a video, written or audio content form.
This will in turn deepen the conversation on the subject matter; expand your audience while the expert’s perception rubs off on you as the host.
For expert interviews to work effectively as a content strategy, you need to select and host the right kind of expert on your interview, know how to discuss topics that matter to your audience and then get your guests to share your interviews with their audience.
Final Words
As a matter of fact, the first step towards creating a very effective content is to understand that people prefer different kinds of content formats, based on different reasons.
And then find out the kind of content that works for your audience based on their peculiarities.
There are various ways to identify this including researching competing brands, running tests on Google and social media.
In everything you do, to drive better result with your content, do not just focus on creating a single form of content. Find out what works for your audience and then create content in these formats and share it across different platforms.
So, there you have the seven popular types of content and how to use them to drive improved results for your content marketing. Want to learn more and drive better results with your content? Join our content marketing master class.
Now, it’s over to you! What’s the best content form that’s worked for your clients?
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