‘Content marketing is a commitment, not a campaign.’ – Jon Buscall
As any digitally savvy business owner will tell you, content marketing is the very linchpin of the modern marketing wheel. It’s the great leveller – reaching more potential clients through the Internet is no longer limited to the big boys. Through a website, blog or app, even a relatively young business can reach the vast majority of their target audience with the right content.
Creating the right content for your audience is no easy feat either – it takes several iterations of content creation and distribution to find what works best for your audience and for your business. Nevertheless, one constant struggle for those starting out on their business is to figure out which type of content works for their target audience. Here are 7 content types that may be suitable for your business:
Images
The most basic and rewarding content to implement for your business is images. They work for just about any industry in the market. They are easy on the eye – much more interesting than plain text. They are also easy to share and tweet, and conveys information much more easily. Enough said!
Stock photographs are available free of cost under Creative Commons license (such as Pixabay, or you can buy licensed images from numerous sites such as Shutterstock or iStockphotos. Some popular online image editing tools include Canva, iPiccy or PicMonkey – extremely handy and makes the process more enjoyable.
Videos
Videos are believed to yield the highest ROI among all the content types out there. Whether it’s a product review, demo, explainer videos or music videos, the benefits and advantages of video marketing stack up quite favourably. Search engines love videos, consumers love videos. Videos are fast becoming a powerful weapon in a marketer’s armoury.
Infographics
Immensely shareable and informative, infographics are the favourite type of content for many marketers. Visual flow of information makes it easy to understand and digest chunks of information. Another benefit of using infographics is that it eliminates redundant text and info, and gives precise succinct information on any topic.
Infographics can seem daunting to most people. They need some thought going into the content flow and structure. Get help on the design front with free tools such as Piktochart or Canva.
How-to Guides
Another evergreen type of content is a How-to guide. Guess where more and more people are going to find out how to do something? They look for information online, and educate themselves with not just the information, but also about your brand and quality of content.
Interviews
There’s great value in learning from other people’s experiences. Interview from industry stalwarts or even newbies can be interesting if crafted to add value to the reader. Ask questions that show their expertise, and also how they overcame challenges and problems. Information and inspiration serve as a great combo to get reader’s attention.
Podcasts
A podcast is like a radio show on the internet, except that it’s not limited to professionals, and users can listen to it anytime they want. It’s a new media content distribution technology that has taken the world by storm. Anybody can host a podcast, although it needs some preparation and infrastructure setup to get started. You will need a good quality microphone, recording software, editing software, hosting and storing platform. This is a good guide on how to make a podcast.
Checklists
Who wouldn’t love to have handy little lists that make life easy? Checklists make for good lead capturing content. Find a process that has many moving parts and make a thoughtful checklist which could help save some time.
Image credit: Bloglovin’
This article was contributed by Influenshine, a company which helps businesses build brand awareness, increase website traffic, increase app downloads, convert leads to customers, manage their online reputation and build brand loyalty through digital marketing, PR and growth hacking techniques.
