Your Guide to the Different Types of Content Used in Content Marketing
Figuring out what types of content to include in a content marketing strategy can be tricky, so we’ve made it easy by compiling a list of some of the most helpful content to include in a content marketing strategy.
Every industry is different, and there are so many types of content out there, but not all of them will be useful to reach all kinds of customers. The truth is that what works for one industry may not work for another. This makes it all the more important to know what resources are available to craft a strategy that engages and retains your audience.
What’s the Goal of Content Marketing?
Before we examine the different types of content used in content marketing, we need to remember the goal of our efforts. On top of needing to work out content development and a plan to put everything into motion, you also need to remember that all content marketing should lead back to establishing your brand as the expert.
From blog posts to podcast production, always look for ways to position your brand as the market leader that exists solely to solve customers’ problems. Each piece of content produced should serve the customer in some way.
Here Are Some of the Most Effective Types of Content
At Charlotte Content Marketing, we understand that it can be tough to sort through all of the options out there when putting together a content strategy, so we’ve created a handy guide you can use to implement various types of content. This list features some time-tested approaches that have proven potential to generate leads, engage customers, and lead to lasting customer relationships.
If you’re a struggling business owner who is feeling overwhelmed with choices, below are some easy content marketing strategies you can use on your website, on social media, and in other digital spaces around the web:
Here are common types of content to include in your content marketing strategy:
Podcasting
Blogging & Local SEO
Q&A & FAQ Content
Lead Magnets
Newsletters
Collaborations With Influencers
Video Content
Social Media Content
Live Streams & Webinars
Landing Pages & Informational Resources
Not all these solutions will work for every business, so feel free to pick and choose what’s right for you. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, Charlotte Content Marketing can help.
Charlotte Content Marketing provides comprehensive content strategy support and can create a customized approach to help you engage with customers and generate leads. Get in touch with Charlotte Content Marketing today using our contact form, or call (704) 323-6762.
Podcasting
Podcasting works for some industries but not for others. You’re encouraged to do market and customer research first to see if this fits your brand well. Search for podcasts involving your industry, products, and services to do this. If you find quite a few, chances are good there’s an audience for this type of content.
Whether you have an audience already or not, you could record a weekly podcast where you talk about what’s hot in your industry or address topics that matter to your customers. Once again, your goal here is to establish your brand as the authority.
What to Include in Your Podcast
If you record a podcast, use it to provide recommendations, offer tips, and interview guests, but don’t use it to try to sell. The goal of a podcast for business is to sell ideas and emotions, not products and services. Think of it as a way to build a community with your customers.
Additionally, podcasts offer a way to engage with audiences in ways that text content can’t, and the best part is that podcasts can be listened to while on the go. This allows customers and leads to take your brand with them while out and about, giving you more opportunities to keep it top-of-mind.
Where Should You Promote Your Podcast?
As for placement, podcasts can be listed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms and then promoted on social media and your website. Once you build an audience, follow a posting schedule, as this helps to form a community. If you bring on guests, make sure they promote their appearances to gain even more exposure. You can tap into their audiences to gain marketing attention for your own.
2. Blogging & Local SEO
Blogging serves a few purposes when it comes to content marketing. First, it helps with SEO because fresh, consistent, quality content is a ranking factor. Additionally, informative, valuable blog posts help to establish industry authority.
This is doubly true for local SEO, whereby your blog posts focus on local topics that matter to your customers. Blog content can, of course, be posted on your website’s blog, but it can also be shared on social media and sent to email list subscribers.
Don’t be Afraid to Repurpose Content
You can also repurpose content blog content to get more value out of it. We recently wrote about repurposing content to extend its value. The nice thing about repurposing content is that you can provide an all-around view of a topic.
Some customers are visual learners, while others may be more auditory. Some prefer to read text and see infographics, while others want videos for quick consumption. When you repurpose content, you cover all bases on a topic and provide something of value for all different types of customers. At the end of the day, you don’t want to lose a potential sale or contract opportunity because you didn’t make your brand as available as possible.
Engage in Initial & Ongoing Keyword Research
The thing to remember is that keyword research needs to be performed to find the best keywords to target for your industry, location, and customer base. Figuring out what your customers are searching for and how they are searching for it makes a difference.
You can research keywords with a regional focus and search intent for local SEO. Still, it would help to be mindful of resources like Google’s Local Business Profile (LBP). This is a free tool that business owners can use to get found in more places on the web for local searches. As long as you have a local service area or your brand has a physical location, your business probably qualifies for an LBP.
You can also help your LBP work to your advantage by encouraging customers to leave reviews and adding regular updates and pictures. This shows Google that your business is active, but remember that your LBP only affects how Google views your brand. It does not affect other search engines since the LBP service is proprietary to Google.
3. Q&A & FAQ Content
Answering questions before they’re asked is one of the goals of content marketing (or really any type of marketing,) but for times when you can’t do this, the next best thing is to provide answers to questions people ask. You can do this using question-and-answer (Q&A) content and frequently asked question (FAQ) content.
Until recently, this type of content was very beneficial for SEO because Q&A and FAQ content could be displayed as rich results. This is a fancy way of saying that Google highlighted or called out this type of content as long as it was formatted correctly. That has recently changed, but Q&A and FAQ content is still a good idea to engage potential customers and help search engines better understand your site and brand.
4. Lead Magnets (i.e., eBooks & Informational Content)
If you’re looking for other types of visual content, eBooks are often good to offer as lead magnets. These are resources that you offer free of charge in exchange for someone entering their email address on your website to get subscribed to your newsletter or take a similar action.
Because someone is willing to give you their email address, this person can be considered a reasonably warm lead since they’re visiting your site and have taken the time to enter their information. In a way, they are telling you that they want you to sell them your products and services.
As a reminder, you need to practice ethical behavior and always let people know how you plan to use their information in a clear disclaimer before you accept any data.
5. Newsletters
Once you’ve started collecting email addresses, you can produce a weekly or monthly newsletter that provides updates about your brand, tips for using your products and services, fun stories that buyers would find entertaining, and more.
A newsletter is a way to stay top-of-mind with leads while personalizing the experience of working with and staying connected to your business. It also furthers your position as an authority and demonstrates care about clients and the communities your business serves.
6. Work With Local Influencers and Businesses
You can also reach out to local businesses or influential individuals in the communities you represent to create collaborations. These don’t have to involve buying/selling directly or be as on-the-nose as “Company XYZ sponsors a local little league team.”
Think more along the lines of collaborating with companies within the same industry to produce useful, valuable content. Not only does this help to establish and support topical authority, especially on a local or regional level, but it also helps to open new opportunities for partnerships and expanded projects in the future.
The added benefit is that the businesses and influencers you partner with will also promote the content since they are included in its creation. This expands the reach of the content and can improve your brand’s visibility on the web.
7. Video Content
Video content is a wonderful way to tell stories and share ideas on the web. Video has quickly become the go-to content format for mobile as connection speeds have increased and data caps have been all but eliminated for many people. Videos allow your brand to share ideas and stories in ways that text content cannot; you can often communicate complex ideas quickly using video.
Now, the question often arises about how much of a budget you need for video production content. Indeed, video content usually costs more to produce. Depending on your needs, you could be looking at a few thousand dollars for something simple to tens of thousands of dollars or more for something more complex.
You can also get by creating content using a smartphone with a 4K camera and some basic lighting and editing software. As long as the content itself is valuable and serves its purpose, you don’t always have to invest in a big-budget video. The key is to work with what you have and, more importantly, address the points that matter to your customers.
8. Social Media Content
Social media content is definitely important in any content marketing strategy, but there are two components at play: Building social proof, meaning getting likes/followers to show people trust you, and then also getting engagement from people who will convert. The second part is more challenging than the first.
Interact With Other Accounts
We suggest that you interact with other accounts in the communities your business serves or within your industry. Use your social media accounts and your business page(s) to like, comment on, and share other pages’ content. Over time, you build rapport this way. This helps keep you top-of-mind in online communities and demonstrates topical authority.
As far as getting in front of people who will convert, the trick is always looking for opportunities. Use the search function of any social media platform your business uses to look for posts on pages or groups where people talk about subjects relevant to your business. You can again use your keywords to do this or use semantics to look for topics related to your keywords.
You can then contribute to the conversation. You’re offering a free resource to help someone looking for advice, and you may build a connection from that. The added benefit here is that you become known to groups as an authority on the topic, so you may get referrals in the future from people who have seen your replies and answers.
Social Content May Impact Generative Search
An added benefit of doing this on social media and discussion forums is the benefit it may give through generative search. This is a fancy way of saying search aided by artificial intelligence. Today’s search experience looks beyond mere web pages.
Instead, it seeks to find connections between brands and topics through message boards, forums, discussion platforms, Q&A sites, and more. Having your brand’s name associated with answers to questions can help get you found in more search results.
9. Host a Live Stream or Record a Webinar
Live streams can be an excellent way to connect, but if no one tunes in, they can be a massive waste of time. You can read more about live streaming and how it can play a part in your content marketing strategy in a blog post we wrote previously. We usually recommend waiting to start live streaming until you’ve built a decent audience size. In the meantime, consider producing and uploading webinars.
These are video productions where you record a presentation about a topic that provides value to your customers and then put it online to be viewed whenever it’s convenient. Webinars can also function as lead magnets since they can entice leads to provide their email address or other contact information for future outreach.
10. Create Landing Pages for Specific Topics & Groups of Customers
In addition to blogging about different topics, creating landing pages for specific topics your company specializes in is also a good idea. You can think of these as resource pages that customers may find valuable if they’re looking for information that may eventually lead to a transaction.
A Practical Example: Real Estate Agency
For example, if you run a real estate business, create community pages for the areas your company represents. Talk about the features of each community and include facts and figures about each area’s past, present, and future. You can also consider creating landing pages for specific types of buyers/sellers (first-time home buyers, investment buyers, sellers seeking to downsize, etc.)
The goal here is to capture leads through SEO once again since these pages will be found for people searching for specific info. On each page, you again use keyword research to determine what people are searching for to capture this traffic.
For instance, “downsizing my home after kids leave for college” may be a search in a specific city. Google uses the searcher’s location to look for content that matches that query from local results, so this works for both local and worldwide results; however, if you’re a national or international brand, you’re going to need to produce more valuable content that includes the right keywords along with inbound links from high-authority websites to compete.
Use What Works for Your Brand
No matter how you approach your content strategy, only use what works for your industry and customers. Just because another brand is creating podcasts doesn’t mean that this is right for you, and just because your competitors aren’t blogging on a regular basis doesn’t mean this is wrong for you.
Track and measure engagement to see what’s working and what needs improvement. By doing this, you can refine your content strategy and see long-term results.
Contact Charlotte Content Marketing to Learn More Now!
If you’re still feeling overwhelmed with choices, Charlotte Content Marketing is here to help. We can work with your brand to develop a content strategy that targets the needs of your customers. Call us to have a chat today to see how we can help. Call (704) 323-6762, or use our contact form below to schedule a no-obligation consultation online right now!
