We are increasingly saturated with content. In order to rise above the white noise of the content out there, you have to produce something different. Your content needs to be valuable to your audience. It needs to provide a unique perspective or fresh, new information. Collectively, we are inundated with content every single day. If you want to be heard, you have to use a different approach.
Here are six powerful content types that will help you rise above the content marketing noise.
Video
Did you know it is predicted that 74% of all internet traffic in 2017 will be video. (source: Syndacast) That means that if you aren’t producing video content, you could potentially miss three-quarters of your audience.
Video has become incredibly easy to produce and use. In the old days, we needed huge expensive cameras, crazy lighting and audio equipment, professional videographers, expensive software, and more. Now, you just need a good story, decent lighting, a small microphone and your mobile phone. In other words, your excuses for not producing video are gone. Maybe you don’t have the time or the expertise to produce great stories in video. Hire an agency to help. You really can’t afford NOT to use video in your marketing mix.
Interactive Content
Interactive Content is a fun new way to experience the web. What is “interactive content?” Have you ever taken a Buzzfeed quiz? Maybe you’ve seen interactive infographics. Perhaps you’ve used online calculators. These are all examples of interactive content. The user interacts with the content in a predetermined way to achieve the outcome. You determine the experience you want the user to have, the goals you want them to achieve, the next steps you want them to take, and then you design the content to interact in such a way that you accomplish the goals.
While video provides a fairly passive interaction, interactive content engages the user and creates a memorable and engaging experience.
Live Streaming
How many of you are using live streaming as an active part of your marketing strategy? <crickets> How many of you even know what live streaming is? Well, it’s just like it sounds. It’s video that streams live as you record it. (Or, maybe you don’t record it and it is just another bit of ephemeral marketing.)
Live streaming apps such as Periscope, Blab, and Meerkat are a great alternative and addition to your video marketing. When you live stream, you create a very human, transparent connection with your audience. Most platforms allow the ability to interact with your audience as you stream. Unlike video, which is a one directional medium, live streaming invites interaction and can be incredibly useful for interacting with your audience.
Apps
Do you have a mobile app for your business? Do you need one? With Google’s commitment to indexing deep links on apps, there are great SEO benefits to developing a quality app for your users. Of course, the key word there is quality. A useless app is just that – useless. Determine how an app could strengthen your users’ experience. What could an app bring better than any other part of your marketing or product?
Sixty-eight percent of all US adults own smartphones and that number just continues to climb. And, over half of those smartphone owners are looking at their phones at least once an hour. It might make a lot of sense for you to invest in a quality app for your audience.
Visual Content
There are all kinds of stats about the engagement rates of visual content. Visual content is exactly what it sounds like. It’s more than just text, it is content that is visually engaging. Social platforms such as Instagram are built entirely around stunning visual content. Every time you produce a new piece of content, evaluate the visual effectiveness of it. Does it capture the attention of your audience? Do you have amazing photos or graphs or animations that bring the content to life? Your content will be more engaging and get shared more if it is visually arresting.
Gamified Content
Gamification doesn’t get talked about a lot in B2B circles, but it is absolu
tely a valid and very useful type of content. Gamification is essentially turning something into a sort of “game” to encourage engagement and participation. Any content is a game. Any time you see something with a “leaderboard” you can be sure it’s been gamified.
LinkedIn has their own form of gamification with the profile strength indicator. Here’s mine:
The LinkedIn Profile Strength is a great type of B2B gamification. We’re all professionals on LinkedIn, but we’re all playing the Profile Strength game.
What’s Next?
Those are just six types of content that you need to be using or at the very least, considering, in your content mix right now. This time next year, there may very well be new content types and channels that haven’t even been conceived or are just in their infancy right now. You need to continually evaluate your marketing content and channels. Stay on top of the trends (your competitors are!) so you don’t get stuck doing old school marketing that doesn’t bring the return you really need in the new media.
Feeling Overwhelmed?
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