In this digital marketing world, it’s a battle for eyeballs. As more and more audiences look for valuable and entertaining information each day, businesses of all sizes are fighting tooth and nail to communicate with them and win their attention.
This is where content marketing came through the whole affair like a breath of fresh air. It offers a seamless way to speak effectively with today’s audience as well as educate them. Once you nail the audience’s attention, then you can easily build trust with them and engage them, boost conversion, and even generate leads.
To be successful with a content marketing strategy, though, you need to understand what types of content you should create to engage your audience and achieve your specific goals. However, choosing the right content for your marketing isn’t a cakewalk.
Therefore, we offer some of the best, engaging content to add to your content marketing arsenal. Let’s dive in!
#1. Videos
Videos allow you to simplify your messages. More than that, this dynamic content makes it much easier for your audience to understand and digest the information you offer them.
It should come as no surprise if the latest video marketing statistics say that more than 95% of audiences retain messages faster and better when they learn it through video.
There are so many things you can achieve with video. If you want to explain your product or service concisely, you can create explainer videos. If you want to gain audiences’ trust, testimonial videos can be your go-to. Or, if you want to showcase your company profile, corporate videos are the best way to go.
#2. Infographics
Other than the video, the infographic is another visual content that you should consider to include in your content marketing campaigns, especially when you have statistics or a bunch of data to deliver.
This type of content combines compelling imagery with succinct text to help educate audiences on a wide variety of topics. It helps you to provide interesting information about a certain topic that your audiences can easily skim through.
According to the stats, infographics are shared and liked at least three times more than other types of content on social media. With this incredible shareability, infographics are one of the best content you can rely on to generate tons of high-quality backlinks and perfect your overall SEO practices.
#3. Guest Posts
Guest posts offer you a chance to establish your brand as an authority in your field. By writing a high-value article for others’ websites, you can be considered as a reliable resource for the industry you’ve written about.
What’s more, if you can publish your guest post on such an authoritative website, they will also give you a high-quality backlink that directs to your own site. In this case, guest posts are also an effective way to drive more audience to your website.
With all those benefits, it makes sense that at least 60% of blogs write 1-5 guest posts per month.
#4. Social Media Posts
With a massive number of worldwide users (3.5 billion), social media has become mainstay platforms for most marketers to distribute their content. It’s the place to meet the target audience and to build and nurture relationships with your existing customers.
With social media posts, you won’t only find and engage your audience, but also increase traffic to your content hubs. If your followers love your social media posts, chances are they explore more about your other content and are tempted to get to know you more. So, it’s safe to say that social media posts can boost your other type of content’s visibility.
#5. Memes and GIFs
Your contents don’t have to be all too serious and formal. Especially if you’re targeting a digitally savvy audience (younger generations), you should be using memes and GIFs in your content marketing strategy to communicate with them in a friendly, casual way.
Many Gen Z and Millennials use GIFs and memes to communicate with their friends. 55% of 13 to 35-year-olds send memes every week while 30% send them every single day. It means using GIFS and memes in your marketing is a fantastic chance to win their trust and build a relationship with them.
Both memes and GIFs help your audience to view your brand with the same fondness and familiarity they do their friends. That’s said, you need to make sure that the memes or GIFs you include fit the context of your content.
#6. Ebooks
Ebooks offer a longer form of content that can educate your audience with inspiring messages that still align with your brand. It’s an effective type of content if you want to cover a breadth of ideas with rich data and insights, offer step-by-step playbooks, or give your audience complete how-to guides with multiple sections.
Ebooks are one of the best content to generate high-quality leads because you can collect your audience contact data when they register for the download. In this matter, half of the B2B marketing (50%) claim that ebooks/whitepapers are the most effective types of content for their content marketing purposes.
#7. Checklists
A checklist is the type of content that provides your audience with a complete step-by-step process to achieve a specific outcome. It’s easy to create an extremely helpful, too. If you’re a small business that is on a limited budget for content creation, this type of content might be your go-to.
Checklists allow your audience to get crucial information in no time. It’s incredibly easy to use a straightforward and concise way to inform them what they need to do. Therefore, it opens a massive opportunity to engage the audience in no time and convinces them to keep back for more.
#8. Podcasts
Podcasts gain so much traction nowadays. It’s because human voices can convey much more meaning through a tone that stale text can ever be. That’s why this type of audio content provides a powerful way to connect with your audience with its storytelling ability.
Since people love stories, it makes sense that 82% of people listen to podcasts for more than seven hours each week. By creating engaging podcasts, you have the huge opportunity to build a deep, meaningful relationship with your audience. They can retain the information you deliver with podcasts while they’re driving, exercising, or sipping their morning coffee.
Wrapping Up
There isn’t one cookie-cutter content marketing strategy that will guarantee your success in overall marketing campaigns. Your strategy will differ depending on your industry and demographics of the audience. So, make sure you understand who you create the content for and what you can expect with the content creation.
That way, it’s much easier for you to choose the right content to answer the audience’s questions and nurture relationships with them so they can gain the confidence to convert into loyal customers.
Author
Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).
Twitter: @breadnbeyond
Email: andre@breadnbeyond.com LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreoentoro/