Content marketing can be a powerful strategy to use in the digital marketing of your business. Not only does it help to boost your reputation as a leader in your industry, but it can also provide your business with a way to market itself more effectively than your competitors. When planning your content marketing strategy, it’s important to work out what type of content media outlets you should use in order to gain the most leads and engagement from your audience. The following expert guide will show you the top content media outlets you should consider over the normal outlets such as video, blogs, and infographics in your overall marketing strategy.
Content Outlet Types That Should Be Considered For Creating Your Content
#1 – How-To
How-To content is probably one of the most popular types of content media outlets that can be utilized to draw attention to your business. By helping answer questions that are posed by your audience, not only can they be helpful but they also provide you with long-tail search potential due to the researching of ‘How To…’ or ‘How Do I…’. In order to create compelling and informational how-to articles, you must first do your research. A general model of how-to content includes:
- Introducing a problem
- Introducing a solution to that problem
- Discuss each of the steps to make it to the solution
- Summarize the discussion
- Provide a positive conclusion
This layout is the general layout for how-to articles and can be very useful when creating them. Some things to keep in mind when writing your articles include:
- The better your explanation is; the more audience engagement it will gain.
- Make use of pictures, videos, and diagrams to enhance your content and make it credible.
- Make your how-to articles clear and direct to what you’re talking about: Example: “How To Add Borders Around Text In Word”
#2 – Case Study
Case studies are a great way to show authority to your audience and competitors. Case studies explain all the finer details of a target point of interest from how it begins, what was done to change it, and the results that were received. The general model of a case study usually follows this format:
- Write a study summary and an outcome preview.
- Explain all the challenges that had to be addressed and how you were going to overcome them.
- Write out how you solved the problem in a step-by-step way that’s clear and easy to understand.
- Share and discuss the results of the solution and in what ways it was most successful.
- Finish off with a conclusion and a call to action.
Case studies are quite in-depth depending on what is being written about. Some things to keep in mind when writing your case study include:
- Try to avoid sounding as if you’re marketing your services through the case study.
- A case study is really a good and inspiring success story that promotes detailed steps on how you got from point A to point B.
#3 – Lists
Lists are more appealing to readers because they’re easy to scan over and read. In today’s society, lists are one of the top ways marketers market their content. Whether it’s ‘10 Beauty Secrets That Will Make You Young’ or ‘5 Ways To Create A Delicious Pie’, lists are a high contender to generate more leads and conversions in any content marketing strategy. To make a list based article or content piece you will need to:
- Select a topic that you want to write about.
- Work out how many points in the article you want to cover.
The format of the article generally follows this layout:
- Introduction of the topic
- A list of all points you want to cover
- Provide an overall conclusion to your article
While writing your article there are some things to keep in mind which include:
- The more detailed your list is, the better and more engaging it will be.
- Longer lists provide more information so don’t be afraid to write a long list.
- You can write as many or as few points as you need to because all lists work well regardless of the number.
Overall
Content marketing isn’t just about videos, infographics, eBooks, or traditional blogs, etc. There are so many other content media outlets that you can use to help generate authority and trust amongst your audience. By utilizing these options, you have the ability to generate more leads, audience engagement, and reputation. So have you incorporated any of these media outlet types in your content marketing strategy?
This guest blog was contributed by Aaron Gray, co-founder of Studio 56.
