Types of Content Marketing
There are many different types of content marketing and it’s often difficult for small and medium enterprises (with small marketing departments) to maintain the pace and volume of content produced by their larger competitors.
If you are in a situation in which you compete against much larger companies for the relevance of content and online searches, you may need to create website content that can counteract this.
Below we will list some of the many different types of content marketing that you could use for your website. Once you have decided on which ones you would like to try, make sure you incorporate them into a solid content marketing strategy in order to maximize your potential results.
Different Types of Content Marketing
Blogs
Blog posts are usually found within a website and should be published regularly to attract new visitors. It’s better for SEO purposes to have your blog hosted on your website, rather than a third-party provider.
The articles that you write should provide valuable content for your audience and be encouraging for them to share your messages on their social networks and other websites.
We recommend that your articles be at least 1,000 words in length, but it could be interesting for you to experiment to see if your audience prefers longer or shorter form content.
There are plenty of benefits in regards to eCommerce blogging and if you aren’t sure where to start, take a look at how to start a blog, blog post ideas, and writing a blog post.
Guest Bloggers and Expert Contributions
Welcoming a guest blogger or expert contributor who will participate in your blog is one of the simplest and most effective ways to produce high-quality content.
Guest bloggers are very enthusiastic about taking advantage of a new audience, while at the same time providing a good image for your company within the sector. This makes guest posting an incredibly effective form of content marketing whether you are writing them or receiving them.
For example:
• There is a blog about furniture and a local manufacturer creates an article for the blog in exchange for a small mention of their business in the article.
• You have a furniture business and write an article for a blog in your industry in exchange for a bit of publicity or a link to your website.
Guest posting is a very popular and effective way to increase exposure, whether you are the blog or this business used in the example above.
Some of the main benefits include:
An increase in blog traffic
Guest bloggers are often followed by a large number of followers, which attracts visitors.
They could share their guest post with their audience and it also has the potential to rank within search engines for additional traffic.
Greater visibility on social networks
There is a good chance that your guest blogger shares the content on several social channels, thus achieving better exposure. This can boost traffic to your blog and possibly lead to new business.
Establishing the reputation of your blog
Whether you’ve been producing content for years or if you’ve just started, having a guest blogger is key to capturing the attention of your potential customers.
Emails
Email marketing is more alive than ever but often creativity fails when planning this type of content. We know that we have to send welcome and confirmation emails and offer discounts and promotions. But when it comes to integrating email marketing into content marketing, few go beyond sending a newsletter from time to time.
To take better advantage of this tool, consider making a series of emails around a topic that will provide interesting content to your subscribers. Each email must provide value for itself, but you can also link to your website to expand the content and thus increase visits.
You can use platforms such as ConvertKit and GetResponse for your email marketing needs.
Videos
The vast majority of B2B advertisers ensure that videos have better results than any other form of communication. If you have not yet become aware of this medium, it is time to hire a production or marketing agency to create website content and reach potential customers through video marketing.
Whether it be the testimony of a customer or a demonstration of products and/or services, this type of content could help you achieve great brand credibility in a short amount of time.
Videos are the formats that work best if what we seek is to be shared on social media as it’s so easy to consume and digest.
Even more attractive is the use of video in the funnel of marketing and sales, since this content can be shared to attract potential customers, as well as nurture them once they have become customers.
The video is one of the most effective marketing tools today and its popularity is continuing to rise.
Product videos can also be combined with recordings of interviews with experts. In most companies, there are people who have a special ability to speak on camera.
If you are willing to be interviewed, you can substitute a long transcript of an interview for a video and make your voice part of a content marketing strategy.
Interview Experts in Your Niche
Interviews are a great opportunity to create content in an affordable way while establishing relationships with influencers. If you want them to work when it comes to attracting visitors, you’ll need to think carefully about the headline, choose the most impressive quotes to promote the content and give thought to the questions so they do not sound the same.
One of the main reasons why marketers cannot maintain the pace of content creation of a blog is due to their inability to go deeper into the aspects that generate confusion in their buyers.
This problem could be solved if you start integrating contributions from experts in your sector when planning content for your blog. With industrial companies, for example, you can interview your fellow engineers, or sales and operations departments. People who have a high level of knowledge but can explain it in layman’s terms.
With this, you will be able to know more about the doubts of your buyers, highlight relevant aspects of the company’s competitive advantage, and generate fresh new content.
Interviewing experts in the field is a simple way to educate the audience of your blog and yourself while ensuring that the content is as useful as possible for your target. This type of material can become the backbone of your blog.
The material collected in an interview generally speeds up the writing process for the writer, because the expert provides a lot of useful information for an article, simply by talking.
If you want to offer a complete and varied perspective on a topic, ask the industry experts what they think and collect their comments in an article.
To start, you can search for more posts of this type and write to the professionals who have collaborated on them, since they may already be receptive to doing so. To easily collect your opinions, the easiest thing is to send them a survey through Google Forms or Typeform.
Tips to make and write a good interview:
Ask yourself the questions that your potential customers have
The purpose of an interview is to educate your audience, so be sure to speak the same language. Ask yourself the same questions that your audience encourages them to read, comment, answer and ask more.
Speak informally
Few ways of presenting content are as boring as mechanical interviews. Your audience wants to read the transcript as if they lived that conversation in first person in a natural way. Do not be afraid to include imperfections, laughter, and other human indicators that give the interview an authentic touch.
Make it short
Interviews can engage readers for a long journey, but a limit is needed. If you think reading the interview will take your audience more than five minutes, consider splitting it into two parts. It is very likely to generate return traffic on your blog in addition to having another piece of content ready to be published on another day.
Landing Pages
A landing page is a page specifically set up to get a visitor to complete an action. This action could be submitting their email address, downloading an eBook, completing a survey, and much more.
These pages are designed to get some form of information from the visitor completing this action, which can be then used for your marketing efforts.
Check out this guide on Landing Pages to find out more.
Social Media
If you haven’t noticed, social media has taken over the world and changed the way we communicate. Content marketing through social media is absolutely essential, especially for eCommerce websites. The amount of qualified traffic that these channels could bring you can be immense and a lot of companies rely solely on these channels for generating business.
Guides
Guides are a fantastic way to generate traffic and build authority, especially if not many of your competitors are making them.
You could make a guide about your products and how to use them, or just even for something related to what you sell.
If you sell lawnmowers, for example, you could create a guide about lawn care, and even upsell or cross-sell some products. People could read your guide just for the tips, but then see that you sell these products too and make a purchase as a result.
eBooks
eBooks are one of the most common and most effective resources of content marketing. Offering free eBooks can be an incredibly effective way to get more visitors back to your website and to give something of value to your readers.
eBooks are lead generation tools that potential customers can download after filling out a form with their contact information. They are usually longer, more detailed and published less frequently than articles in blogs.
Electronic books are the next step in the Inbound Marketing process. After reading a blog post visitors may want more information on the subject and for that be willing to send their contact information to download an electronic book on this subject.
Webinars
This type of content marketing not only works wonders to increase visits but can also bring interesting leads and help you establish relationships with the influencers in your sector.
To organize a webinar, you will need to have specific software, such as Hangout + Youtube, Adobe Connect, GoToWebinar or Webinarjam. Make sure you do some tests before the event so that everything goes smoothly.
You can even choose to run them live or pre-recorded, whichever suits you best.
Although you can organize the content of the webinar on your own, it is always a good idea to have the contribution of an expert in your sector to attract more visitors. And after the event, do not forget to publish an article with the transcript.
Podcasts
Thanks to podcasts you can reach the public that does not have time or interest in reading your content every day. The number of listeners is growing, in 2016, an average of 57 million podcast listeners per month is estimated.
This figure is only growing and can be much higher now. Also, if you have interesting people to interview, consider podcasting as another content format to try.
To create a good podcast, you have to come up with an approach that fits your brand values and select a series of themes that give play to produce content on a regular basis. Once again, having expert guests will help you add value to your audience. You can use software to create a podcast.
Roundups
Roundups are a very popular form of content marketing. They consist of contacting experts and known figures in your niche and having them submit a small piece of content for you. This would usually be in the form of quotes or tips.
This enables you to create a full article on your website that features these known figures, which in turn could boost your authority within your niche.
As a sign of appreciation for their time and contribution, you would be expected to link back to the people who featured in your roundup. This can be to their website or social media profiles, whatever they prefer.
Also, these figures could share your article on their social media channels since they have been featured in something. This could mean some nice referral traffic for you in return.
Lists
This type of content marketing is very popular among readers. Lists are concise and incredibly easy to consume. Notice how you’re reading one now?
For your lists to work, you have to make sure they are up to date. Try to choose only things you have tried, or ask an expert to give you an opinion formed about them.
Additionally, this type of content can also be in the form of a checklist. This is basically a worksheet of tasks to complete step-by-step in order for the reader to achieve something in the end.
Opinions
In modern life, we have so many options that we often have a hard time deciding. From the best ice cream flavor to the details of our marketing strategy, it’s increasingly challenging to be up to date with everything we need to know to get it right.
Therefore, users increasingly value the opinions of people with experience. Take advantage of this trend in your content marketing by publishing opinion articles and recommendations by experts.
This type of content can garner a lot of responses from the readers in the form of comments, so it can be really stimulating and engaging for the community.
Studies
Studies are a great way to add value to your audience, both in the short and long term, and get other sites to publish links to your pages. In addition, publishing your own case study can reinforce your positioning as an expert.
For your study to succeed, seek to answer the hottest questions in your industry and be as objective as possible. You can rely on data sources that already exist, make your own surveys or combine both methods.
Make sure if you create a case study it’s about something your target audience would actually find interesting. There’s no good putting resources into a boring subject that no one would read.
User Generated Content
If you can get this type of content on a consistent basis then you’re doing well.
User generated content is exactly what the name implies; content generated by your users.
Websites such as Reddit run entirely off of this model.
But how about in eCommerce?
Let’s take a look at Adobe.
They created the Instagram hashtag #adobe_perspective
The premise is that people share content they’ve created using Adobe products, and can be rewarded if Adobe uses that content on their channels.
Both parties win here, and Adobe creating this hashtag is a perfect example of user generated content for eCommerce done right.
Statistics & Facts
Statistics and facts can be presented in different ways when it comes to content.
You could turn them into case studies, infographics, quizzes, quotes and more.
They could be presented as short-form content for the readers to easily digest or you could use it for a full-blown case study for something in your industry.
These can be relatively easy to correlate from multiple sources and then be turned into many different types of content marketing methods and formats.
Infographics
Infographics are a great way to present information by using eye-catching visuals to simplify a message. They are great content formats to use if you are trying to share a large amount of data in a clear and easy way.
You could even convert your blog posts into infographics as well, which could increase the number of social media shares it generates. They have been increasing in popularity over the years and many content marketing experts consider them to be essential for online promotion.
You can create your own infographics using websites such as Easel.ly and Canva.
Courses
This won’t be applicable to every niche but creating courses can be a great form of content marketing. Courses can be both free and paid, but the free ones could be more likely to generate better leads.
Let’s say you sell products that are geared towards entrepreneurs, executives, and business owners. You could create a short course about topics they would be interested in such as time management, project management, critical thinking, communication, leadership foundations, and more.
Quizzes
Quizzes are fun and can help people pass the time. This could keep people on your website for longer, which helps your bounce rate and could lead to them exploring other pages when they may have otherwise left.
They can also capture email addresses and enable people to share their results on social media, which is great for marketing and getting more traffic.
Quotes
“Quotes are great to read and can be inspirational and motivational for many people.”
They can also make up a portion of your content marketing, especially on social media channels when you’re running low on other ideas. It’s important to know that quotes are considered to be intellectual property, and we are not lawyers or are giving you legal advice, permission, or recommendations here.
You can’t use a quote to sell your products if you don’t have the authors written permission.
But, quotes can also be passed into the public domain, which means they can be freely used.
GIFS & Memes
This type of content is the easiest to look at and consume, but also the most unprofessional for a business.
Having said that, there are some niches which could get away with posting memes and gifs, but they shouldn’t make up the bulk of your content marketing strategy and should only be used when applicable.