It takes time, organization, and creativity to grow a successful content marketing strategy. From building the foundation of your content marketing plan to adding tools to better manage your content, setting up your strategy for the new year won’t be a hassle if you follow the steps and explore the resources here.
1. Blog Posts
If you haven’t noticed yet, you’re currently reading a blog post. Blog posts live on a website or content portal and work best when they are published regularly in order to attract new visitors.
Blog Posts should provide a degree of value in terms of content for your audience, this is what makes them spend time on your blog, take notice of your brand and inclined toward sharing posts on social media and across other websites. We recommend that blog posts be between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length, but you can experiment to see if your audience prefers longer or shorter reads.
2. Videos
Videos are an extremely engaging content medium, they are highly shareable across social media platforms and websites alike. While it is true that Videos require a bigger investment of time and resources than written content, but as visual marketing increases in popularity they are 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.
It is a medium worth experimenting with. Our Research has found that video is the most preferred form of content. Video also captures people’s attention more than any other
3. Podcasts
A podcast will help audiences find your brand if they don’t have time or interest in reading content every day. The number of podcast listeners is growing — India has emerged as the third-largest podcast listening market in the world after China and the US, with 57.6 million monthly listeners.
If you have interesting people to interview or conversations to host, consider podcasting as another content format to experiment with.
4. Ebooks
Ebooks act as downloadable lead-generation tools for your potential customers once they are done submitting a lead form with their contact information. Ebooks will typically be longer, more in-depth, and published less frequently than blog posts, which normally work well to attract visitors to a website.
You can also use ebooks to achieve different objectives depending on your team’s goals. After reading a blog post (such as this one), visitors might want more information. This is where calls-to-action (CTAs) come into play, directing people to a landing page where they can submit their contact information and download an ebook to learn more valuable information for their business.
In turn, the business producing the ebook has a new lead for the sales team to contact.
5. Case Studies
Case studies are an opportunity for you to tell a story of customers who have succeeded in solving a problem by working with you. A case study is one of your most versatile type of content marketing because it can take multiple different forms — some of which are already on this list. Case studies can take the form of a blog post, ebook, podcast, infographics or even a video.
A case study’s primary objective is to show people who are considering your offerings, that there is proof in the pudding. Before you choose a customer for a case study, you need to determine which format you want intend to produce this testimonial in and most importantly the area of your business to which you’re trying to drive value.
6. Templates
Templates are very handy content formats to try, they generate leads for you by being of tremendous importance to your audience.
When you provide your audience with templates you not only help them save them time and help them succeed but also demonstrate why you are the expert at what you do, they’re more likely to keep engaging with your content in and will take notice of your brand the future.
7. Infographics
Infographics organize and help your audiences visualize data in a more compelling way than text alone.
Infographics are great content formats to use if you’re trying to share a lot of data in a way that is clear and easy to understand.
8. Tools & Applications
You could develop free tools and applications that provide an aspect of your offering or offer information that can be of tremendous value to your audience in return for potential audiences contact information, not only will your audiences spend more time engaging with you but also convert into sure shot leads for your business.
9. Social Media
Once you’ve been regularly publishing content on your own site for a while, it might be time to start thinking about distributing your content on other sites.
This could mean repurposing content into new formats and publishing them on your blog, creating original content specifically for external sites or publishing website content on various social networks.
Posting on social media, however, is pivotal to amplifying your brand’s reach and delivering your content to your customers where you know they spend their time. Social networks on which businesses often post include:
- Snapchat
- YouTube
When launching a business account on any of the social networks above, it’s important to post the type of content your followers expect to see. On Instagram, for example, users want photos, videos, and graphics that reflect current events, show off user-generated content, or even go behind the scenes of your organization.
On Facebook, your options for what to post open up a bit: Not only can you share your blog posts and website content, but you can also post native Facebook videos, product promotions, and original memes that resonate with your customers. You can also interact with other businesses that have a similar audience as your own.
While the goal on social media sites like Instagram or Snapchat is to connect more intimately with your audience, your goal on platforms like Facebook and Twitter is to expand that audience, drive traffic toward your website, and start conversations in your industry. Do some basic market research to discover which platforms your buyers are on, and mold your content to their expectations.
