It is a commonly held belief that content marketing is all about blog posts and articles. But there is much more to it than that. You certainly need a blog and some quality posts to keep your readers interested. But you can go far beyond that – and you should.
Here are a few other types of content that work well to build leads. You don’t have to do all of them – just think about which ones can support your business and try those first. You want to drive traffic to your website and landing pages, and this is what these content types will do. I will go into more details on each of these types of content later, but for now, here is just a quick overview.
Infographics
If you want to create a sharing frenzy (and why wouldn’t you?), then create some compelling infographics. They are extremely popular and shared more than other types of content. They have great viral potential, especially on social media platforms.
You will need to make great infographics. If they have humor in them, then their sharing stock increases. If you don’t have the skills to produce infographics yourself, you can outsource them to a good freelancer.
Memes
Memes are basically funny images that have the potential to go viral. They are easy to make (certainly a lot easier than infographics), and if they are funny or catchy, then people will share them. You don’t need to be an expert with Photoshop to create a good meme. There are plenty of photo editing programs you can download or use freely online to make memes.
You can use memes no matter what niche you are in. It is better to come up with a few great memes that get shared than to make tons of them as this can turn people away from your brand. Have fun with them but just don’t overdo it.
Product Reviews
Writing product reviews can bring you in leads and sales. What you are doing here is sharing your experience of using a particular product or service and letting your audience know if you recommend it or not.
You will need to go into details about what the product or service is and what it does, and then tell your audience what you like and don’t like about it. You will then give a recommendation which leads to a call to action. It’s best to be honest in your reviews, if there are some bad points about the product, mention them, but try to suggest a work-around.
Creating Lists
For some reason we all like lists. It seems to be in our DNA. You have seen these lists before such as “5 reasons why you need to XYZ” or “10 ways to improve your Google rankings”. These numbers really appeal to people, so you need to use them in your content marketing.
You can either think of a number and then create your list or create the list and add the number in the title when you know what it will be. There are no right or wrong numbers to use. Shortlists and long lists both work well.
eBooks as Lead Magnets
This will be a fairly long guide which will add value by explaining to the reader how to do something, for example. You can create your ebook using a word processor like Microsoft Word or Open Office Writer, and then create a PDF document from this.
The best eBooks will provide information that is not easy to find elsewhere. Use them as lead magnets to get people to subscribe to your email list. Have great graphics created so that your eBook looks to be high in quality and high value.
Case Studies
Use case studies often in your content marketing strategy. They are very effective and will often be the “convincer” that turns potential clients into paying clients. Use case studies to demonstrate how your products and services helped other clients to get the results that they were looking for.
When you are writing your case study use a story-based technique. Avoid the use of hype and too much marketing. Use figures and graphs to make your case study more convincing.
Videos
People love videos. Many would much rather watch a video for a few minutes than read a 2000 word blog post. When you create your videos, you need to make them persuasive. You want the viewer to take action after they have watched.
Good videos almost always have good scripts behind them. It is possible to make great videos on a small budget, but the more money that you can spend on your videos will generally increase the quality and the response that you get.
There are some of the other content marketing types that you can use, so don’t limit yourself to blog posts only!