5 Types of Content to Incorporate into Your Content Marketing

Whether you’re brand new to content marketing, or a seasoned vet, it’s always nice to have a little reminder about the types of content you could be incorporating into you content marketing calendar. Sure, you’ve got to be conscious of the resources and skill sets you have at your disposal, but the following five content types are easy to incorporate into your content mix, even when you’re just starting out. For all you content experts out there—it never hurts to check your work! Make sure you’ve got these five types of content in your content marketing mix!

Blogs

Writing topical blogs can be a simple, yet impactful part of your content marketing efforts. What should you write about? Almost anything, really. Write content that supports what you’re selling, shares industry insights, makes announcements, or pretty much anything that can tie into your line of business. A lot of people turn to blogging because almost anyone on their team can help support generating the content for their company blog, whether it be through generating ideas and topics, or through actually serving as blogging contributors. The key is consistency. Consistently generate new, quality, related content. Consistently provide valuable and useful information to your customers. Consistently share links to your blog content via your other marketing channels (website, emails, social, etc.) As you establish your blogging presence, you’ll want to use your blog as a tool in your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, but that’s a much bigger conversation for a different day! Keep that in the back of your mind as you’re writing though—be sure to include related buzzwords (SEO keywords) or phrases that curious potential customers might be searching for.

Emails

This one seems too easy, but email marketing is essential in 2017 and beyond. It’s not a fun gimmicky tool, but rather an expected component of connecting with customers. We all get inundated with marketing emails every day, but it’s practically impossible to have a complete content marketing strategy without email communication to support your efforts. You can have a robust email automation system like Oracle Eloqua in place, or it can be a more simplified tool, but either way, email content is a vital channel for customer communication. Be tactful and responsible in how you communicate via email. Emails aren’t the place for you to spell out your 5000-word user guide. Your communication should be concise, purposeful, inviting and valuable. And it MUST be CAN-SPAM compliant. If you don’t know what that is, read more or reach out to someone at Relationship One to get up to speed. This part isn’t optional—it’s the law and can have serious implications on your business if you don’t follow the rules.

Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, Vine, etc… It can be hard to predict what the next big social media phenomenon might be, or what fun tool with go the way of the dinosaurs, but you can’t just ignore social media because it’s always changing. For most businesses, customers like to choose how they’re communicated to, and how they’re able to respond. It’s why many people choose to communicate with brands via their go-to social media application.

When it comes to social media for your business, in many cases, less is more. Before signing up for every platform under the sun, figure out where your audience lives in the social media world and set up shop there. Just because there’s a social platform out there, doesn’t mean it makes sense for your brand/company to be there. Also, keep in mind that one of the reasons people choose to communicate with brands via social media platforms is the expectation of quicker, less formal communication. If you can’t support managing a Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and commit to answering questions, following up with complaints, etc. on a regular, almost real-time basis, you need to rethink your social media strategy and align it with your team’s bandwidth. Use your social media platforms to support and promote your marketing campaigns and content.

Videos

Video content is still exceptionally relevant in the content world. I’m not saying you should be putting out Super Bowl caliber videos every month (even thought that would be pretty sweet to have that kind of video budget!) Use informal video content to support your marketing efforts and tell your story or sell your product, in a different format. A video could be a product demo with a voice explaining top features. It could be your expert in front of the camera talking through some industry insights. It could be a recorded webinar or presentation. It can be almost anything as long as it’s another way for your customers to consume content.

Ebooks

This one always seems like a scary undertaking to people, but putting together an eBook doesn’t have to be that complicated. An eBook could be 1000-page digital novel, but it can also be 10 pages of content that you’ve already presented in another format. What do I mean by that? Ebooks can be an excellent way for you to re-purpose content that you’ve already crafted. For example, say your team has already written a few blogs about lawn care that should be done before winter because your company sells landscaping and lawn care services. Great, you’ve almost got an eBook. Revisit those blogs and see what ties them together and package them into one content piece. All those blogs are about winterizing your landscaping, so with a mild rewrite to avoid any duplicate content, as well as some added verbiage that ties your individual pieces together, you’ve got some nice and practical Landscape Winterization 101 eBook content to work from. Engage a designer or find a basic template to give your content a nice visual, and you’ve got an impressive resource to start promoting.

This certainly isn’t an exhaustive list of all of the content types you can incorporate into your content marketing strategy, but it is a good place to start. These five content types are all pretty approachable, easy to tackle, and are great ways for you to connect with your customers and potential customers. Get them incorporated into your content strategy mix today!