12 types of Content Marketing
12 essential types of content marketing and their best practices
Are there truly types of content marketing and their best practices, and if there’re, why are people unable to decide on the type of content marketing strategy that suits their brand?
As you’re soon going to see, content marketing can take many forms and target many audiences and buyers. Its possibilities are endless.
For instance, when you first launch your inbound marketing strategy, you may feel overwhelmed by the variety of content available to you.
Where do I begin? What types of content will be most beneficial to our strategy? Lead generation, increased traffic, increased visibility, notoriety, and so on!
Each content has its uniqueness, and it is your responsibility to understand what this content brings to your business, both in the short- and long-term perspectives, before launching!
Well, this blog article is bound to help you choose the best types of content marketing that’ll sync well with your content marketing strategy, so I encourage you to read this article till the end to learn more.
What is Content Marketing?
In a nutshell, content marketing is a broad strategic concept in which a company creates content to enhance its brand image, attract, and ultimately retain customers.
Often, content marketing campaigns aren’t centred on a specific product. Rather, they help to shape and refine the company’s image, voice, and mission.
What kind of content do we produce for a content marketing campaign?
There are no restrictions or limitations on the type or quantity of content that a business can create for this type of strategy. Everything is determined by the company’s goals and target audience.
To better illustrate this description and provide you with ideas for your own business, we’ve compiled a list of 12 different types of content marketing and their best practices.
1. Blog Posts
Blog posts are a good starting point for content marketing efforts. It’s your chance to talk about popular industry topics, establish yourself as a thought leader, explain how your product solves common problems, and drive potential customers to your website.
Do you need advice or assistance in obtaining highly valuable and engaging blog articles for your digital marketing efforts? If your answer is yes, please, contact Tradmill Digital Marketing to discuss how we can help you.
Once you’ve created blog content, you can use it to create social media posts, videos, podcasts, eBooks with an extended version of the same text, and more.
Blogging Best Practices
• Determine the pain points and burning questions that your content needs to address.
• Conduct keyword research to supplement your content with real-world search queries.
• Use eye-catching, SEO-optimized titles and test them to see if they generate interest and thus clicks.
• Experiment with different formats, but articles of at least 700 words are recommended!
• To generate topics, use analytics, social media, competitive research, and feedback.
2. Podcast
A podcast is a collection or series of digital audio files that can be downloaded or listened to over the Internet.
A podcast is a type of web-based audio broadcasting. It can be listened to while driving, commuting to work, or even working. It’s a content medium that doesn’t require the full attention of your target audience, like a video or a blog post.
In the United Kingdom, there were over 19.1 million podcast listeners as of 2021. (UK).
Also, according to Oberlo, Podcast statistics show that 51 per cent of US consumers over the age of 12 listen to podcasts, a figure that has been steadily increasing year after year. Furthermore, 32% of Americans listen to podcasts every month.
Podcasting is a unique way to provide your ideal buyer with valuable, in-depth information while also developing a deeper relationship with them, which is why we strongly advise you to follow podcast best practices to ensure the quality of your podcast is better than your competitors.
Podcasting Best Practices:
- Come up with a catchy podcast name and cover art.
- know your target audience
- Create content that resonates with your audience.
- Invite guests to your show.
- Encourage feedback and reviews from the audience.
- Always look at podcast statistics
3. Case Studies
Case studies are essential for customers who are in the decision-making process. They aid in determining which solutions are most likely to solve their problem.
A case study describes a real-world problem encountered by a real-world customer and how your product solves it.
This is the bottom-of-the-funnel content that can greatly assist in converting users; hearing a true story about a satisfied customer experience is very telling.
Case Studies Best Practices
- Clearly explain the problem.
- Include a lot of evidence, such as rave reviews from your customers and ratings.
- Structure each case study so that it has a beginning, middle, and end – with your product at the centre of it all.
- Concentrate on the business issues you resolved.
- Ensure that your case study is relevant to your overall strategy and leads to business leads.
4. Ebooks
Consider an eBook as a digital file containing a body of text and images suitable for electronic distribution and display on-screen like a printed book.
They’re mostly in form of long-form blog content if you’ve never created one before. They are not a novel, nor are they a multi-page advertisement for your company. Instead, they serve as a means of providing valuable information to potential clients.
Electronic books (also known as e-books) are intended to develop your expertise or know-how even further.
You can turn it into a downloadable digital product to which your blog visitors can have access in exchange for their email address.
Your eBook should provide them with important and valuable information to help make their lives and work better.
Ebook Best Practices:
- It should not deviate from the subject you’re handling at the moment.
- Be objective by using facts, statistics, and figures to boost your authority.
- Make sure you have a full and engaging cover and feed with great graphics.
- Give it a professional appearance by adhering to publishing and formatting conventions.
5. Infographics
People adore infographics because they appear to be entertaining, simple to understand, and packed with information.
For all of these reasons, incorporating infographics into your content strategy is a wise decision. The best part is that you have a lot of creative freedom when it comes to designing your infographics.
Best Practices for Infographics:
- Begin with solid data!
- Before you begin, consider exactly the message you want it to convey to your audience.
- Cite all of your data sources to establish trust and authority.
- Include your company’s URL on your infographic so that anyone who sees it can contact you.
6. Testimonials and Reviews
Testimonials can provide prospective customers with information about how people feel working with a company or using its specific product or service.
Furthermore, online reviews on third-party sites such as Google, or Trustpilot are a valuable off-page SEO signal.
Kindly follow this LINK to leave behind a review of your experience working with Tradmill Digital Marketing, Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
Testimonial Best Practices:
- Make it simple for your customers to leave feedback.
- Never fabricate testimonials.
- Create an automated follow-up request that is sent to customers after they purchase from you
- Make your testimonials visible.
- Do not remove negative feedback.
- Incentivize customers with a discount or other reward for sharing their opinion
- Add a review or testimonials widget (if you can) to your website home page and other key pages so that visitors can quickly leave feedback without ever leaving your site
7. User-Generated Content (UGC)
User-generated content is exactly what it sounds like: content created by people outside of your organization. This strategy necessitates the involvement of real people, is very unique and creative, and is very cost-effective.
Let’s take as an example, Apple’s “Photo for iPhone” campaign. It’s a typical example of UGC; the company uses footage from real photos and videos of people using their iPhones in print ads.
Companies of all sizes can use social media for user-generated content (UGC) campaigns to get noticed and share fan creations.
You can also find UGC in places where it naturally occurs, such as blog reviews and product reviews.
User-Generated Content Best Practices
- Identify your objectives.
- Be aware of what to share on specific channels.
- Be open to various types of UGC.
- Encourage your followers to share your content.
- Be unique, entertaining, and provide value to your audience.
8. Social Media Marketing
Businesses are largely embracing social media marketing because of its wider reach and cost-effective nature.
Each social media platform provides unique opportunities, and you must take good advantage of it to maximize your return on investment and grow your business.
Most B2B businesses will see the greatest return on investment from LinkedIn. Businesses that sell to the general public should use Facebook or Twitter.
Social Media Marketing Best Practices:
- Include eye-catching photos or illustrations in as many posts as possible.
- Make an effort to foster genuine conversations by responding to threads and contacting users individually.
- Use relevant and trending hashtags to increase your visibility.
- Share content from industry influencers to pave the way for future collaboration.
9. Webinars
Webinars are online seminars that you can design and deliver to your target audience. They can be live or recorded (or both), and they allow you to share your thoughts on industry topics, your products, or anything else.
The goal of a webinar is to create targeted content that motivates your audience to take action, while also collaborating with the sales team to effectively follow up on leads after the webinar.
Collaborative webinars are an excellent way to work with another brand. Many of the Content Marketing webinars, for example, are co-hosted with other brands to boost awareness.
This brings in multiple sources of expertise, increases the value of each webinar, and engages audiences across all brands.
Webinar Best Practices:
- Define the webinar’s goal at the outset.
- Place the webinar along the conversion path.
- Publicize your webinar
- Create a lead nurturing strategy after distribution
- Collaborate with the sales team to close deals.
- Examine its performance (ex: for a webinar, YouTube provides you with plenty of KPIs)
10. Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the best and most cost-effective types of content marketing you can ever think of.
Email is one of the most effective content marketing formats for cultivating a long-term relationships,
Always remember that prospects will generally only sign up for your newsletter if they receive something, “an ethical bribe” or bait in return. They expect to receive quality and relevant content from you, once they subscribe to your email list.
Email Marketing Best Practices:
- Before sending emails, ensure that all of your recipients have rightly signed in to your email list.
- Determine how frequently users will receive emails.
- Experiment with and optimize your headlines to determine which message is most effective.
- Segment your emails messages based on the needs of your subscribers.
- Keep in mind that, with very few exceptions, each marketing email should only contain one call to action (CTA).
11. Video Marketing
Among all content types, video is a true marketing tool: it is the preferred format of Internet users. Videos are easier to consume and allow you to pass your message across within a short amount of time.
Explainer videos supplement your other marketing efforts by explaining the advantages of a particular solution, the specifics of a product, or the nuances of a puzzle.
The B2B decision-makers appreciate the video format as well. This allows them to make the most of their free time, especially if the video content is five minutes or less.
Video Marketing Best Practices:
• Come out with the goals of your videos.
• Make sure your video concludes with a CTA that directs viewers to your website or offer.
• Pay attention to audio quality! Bad audio quality is more likely to turn off a viewer.
• Review your video analytics to determine when and where users click.
• Your video shouldn’t in most cases be too long.
12. Tutorials
This is very similar to the former, except that its main goal is to instruct or pass on information that will help viewers solve problems.
Have you noticed how tutorials are gaining more attention on the internet? A well-optimized tutorial can achieve several goals, either separately or jointly:
Tutorial Best Practices:
• Understand how your products work
• Demonstrate your expertise
• Increase your expert notoriety and authority with Google
• Position your pages on strategically selected keywords
• Improve your Internet presence and visibility
• Satisfy a need expressed by your customers/prospects
• Increase your prospecting
Tutorials can be textual or audiovisual, depending on your content strategy.
Are there any content marketing challenges our team can help you resolve? Then contact us for solutions to your problems
If your business needs a digital transformation or any digital online advice, you should go ahead and get in touch with Tradmill Digital Marketing. You will fall in love with the results that these specialists can offer you in the long run! Call us on 07818 406870 or email us at paul@tradmill.co.uk
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Very well presented. Every quote was awesome and thanks for sharing the content. Keep sharing and keep motivating others.