Top 5 Content Formats in Content Marketing
A flood of content floods the social networks and a blog can now be found on apparently every topic under the sun. But this is exactly where the crux lies: Do companies concentrate on the preferred formats of their target group or do they flood potential customers with random content pieces? You can read here what is important in the five most important formats in content marketing.
You can reach your target group with these formats
Unrestricted attention – sounds like a utopian demand for your own target group? This goal is not that unrealistic for marketers if they know about the preferred media formats of their ideal customers and play them off skillfully. Because with content that exactly meets the needs of your target group and is made available in the preferred format, you create the perfect interface between SEO and social media for your online marketing. This in turn enables you to increase your reach, generate more traffic and ultimately collect leads. Because let’s not fool ourselves, with all the entertaining storytelling and knowledge transfer, the ultimate goal of content marketing remains one thing: lead generation and customer acquisition .
For your content marketing, you should therefore analyze which formats are well received by your target group and how they are most likely to consume content. Whether they prefer to read or are more visually oriented, passively use audiovisual media or enjoy interactive content.
With these 5 popular content formats you can offer your potential customers real added value and create trust for your brand.
1. Counselor
Anyone who practices content marketing according to the inbound principle has one goal in mind: to attract potential customers with the right topics and to provide solutions to their problems and answers to their questions with high-quality content. What could be more obvious for content creators than to write advice articles ? After all, these contributions should serve exactly that purpose: to inform and at the same time to express one’s own expertise. In short: your job is to bundle the most important information on a relevant topic in a content piece.
This format is ideally suited to enhance it with additional content pieces: Videos, infographics, images, lists, instructions, etc. make your guide article a fund of added value for your prospects. Provided that you take into account their actual search intention, including relevant keywords along their buyer’s journey . Because even the best advisor won’t bring you any clicks if you don’t give SEO measures enough importance.
2. Video
Instagram influencers and YouTubers show what can also be applied to marketing agencies: draw moving pictures! In online marketing, there is even the prevalent opinion that video is THE medium of our time to play certain content to target groups.
Instead of linking or embedding third-party video content within your blog, it is worth investing in your own video marketing via YouTube or Vimeo and giving your brand a face. Because video production is not rocket science.
Start with snackable content, short “video snacks” that serve your prospects with certain topics in bites. These short videos enrich your blog articles and are ideal for sharing on Instagram and Co. In addition, employee interviews, small agency reports, a company portrait or product descriptions are available to draw potential customers to your message and to encourage them to share your videos.
Once you have got used to this format, you can also set your goal for expert interviews that are specifically geared to the questions and interests of your target group or your personas and increase your traffic.
Note: You don’t need professional equipment for your video marketing. With good storytelling and an appealing setting, smaller formats can also be implemented convincingly with the smartphone. There are also tons of exciting video tools out there like these:
- FlexClip
- Moovly
- Lumens5
- mysimpleshow
- Animoto
- Animaker
- Magisto
FlexClip is a video making and editing service that makes it easy for anyone to create videos online. It’s on the top of our list because of its ease of use and thousands of templates and resources.
3. Podcast
Some call this format the supreme discipline in content marketing. You don’t have to be a radio veteran or entertainer to produce a successful podcast. This audio medium is a grateful tool, especially if you are dealing with a niche topic or want to establish yourself as an expert in your field.
A podcast even offers you some advantages over other formats: With the appropriate audio technology and an editorial plan that really suits your company and your target group, a podcast can be implemented relatively quickly. For example, you could talk to experts on specific topics and ask your target group the most burning questions.
In addition, with a podcast you also have the opportunity to reach potential customers who are less video-savvy and who are less interested in blogs.
4. Infographics
Making compressed information clear and understandable at a glance is what you can do with infographics. What marketing agencies previously had to hire a graphic artist for, can now be done with just a few clicks and the appropriate knowledge, thanks to graphic tools such as DesignCap or Visua.ly!
Infographics can not only loosen up a blog article and show valuable insights, but at the same time also increase your visibility on the Internet by sharing them on social media or pinning them on Pinterest to generate attention for your blog. A certain sense of design, however, is also required by graphic laypeople in order to generate real added value with infographics.
5. Guest articles
Content marketing is, in a sense, a give and take. You want to create valuable content for your users and in return gain their trust in your product or your services. The guest article as a content format is also based on a kind of exchange.
By recruiting a guest author for your company blog, you expand your expertise, deliver added value to your prospects through different perspectives and ideally increase your traffic through well-known names from your industry, especially when you prepare several guest articles as a series.
And what’s in it for the other side? For many, the motivation lies in link building and networking, but a budget for guest authors can also pay off for your company in the long term.
Conclusion
The list of content pieces is of course by no means exhausted with these five formats. Blog articles in particular can be enhanced with many other elements such as lists, quotes, step-by-step instructions, tips, etc. Whether this content ultimately reaches your target group depends on both the quality of your content and the individual media behavior of your ideal customers.
