7 Types of Content Marketing Formats (and How To Use Them For Your Small Business)

Today we’re going to talk about content marketing and its benefits for your small business. One of the biggest challenges small businesses face is effectively reaching potential customers. Creating healthy brand awareness is difficult to support without large budgets to fund massive marketing campaigns. This is why building an ever-growing library of valuable content that speaks to both your customers and search engines is key. 

What you should do is think of content marketing as a garden. After a few long days at the beginning of the growing season (planting seeds, adding nutrients, providing enough water and sunlight) your beds reward you with lots of blooms and beauty that last the entire growing season. Of course, you’ll have to water them regularly, but once a garden is fully established, it grows well for some time.

Now, some of you are probably thinking – really? Content marketing and gardening? But I really think they have a lot in common. There’s something incredibly satisfying about taking fruits and vegetables you grew yourself and putting them at the dinner table.

I get a similar feeling when people comment on my content, reply to my emails, or discuss ideas on social media with me. I put something out there that stimulated my audience’s minds. When you see my content online, you know I’m giving you something great. You trust me to give you something great. So thank you. 

Now let’s get into why you’re here.

What Are the Types of Content Marketing Formats?

Content is, arguably, anything you create that doesn’t contain an overt sales message. It is really that simple. But it is also fairly vague, so I broke it down into the most common categories you are likely to encounter in your content marketing journey. Those are:

• Infographics
• eBooks
• Blog posts and articles
• Newsletters
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Social media

Let’s explore each of these and see how to get the best results from them. 

Infographic Content Marketing

There’s a reason why businesses of all kinds have been relying on infographics for years. Our brains are hardwired to prefer visual cues. 

Think back to the last time you read a blog post or article with a lot of complex information. It was probably hard to make sense of it all. Infographics, on the other hand, make statistics easier to digest and remember. They’re also more colorful and easier to share than text.

If you’re not using infographics in content marketing, you’re seriously missing out.

Infographics are a godsend for marketers who want to incorporate meaningful design into their visual content marketing strategy. Anyone can throw a bunch of stock photos into their blog posts, but creating infographics that are well-designed and research-backed can take your content marketing to a whole new level.

Benefits of eBook Content Marketing

If you’ve spent time online, you’ve likely seen it at one time or another – websites that offer a free eBook in exchange for nothing more than your email address.

If you have ever looked into using eBooks for small business marketing, then you have most likely heard that eBooks are a great form of content for business marketing.

For anyone who is looking to build their business online, eBooks offer a wide array of tangible benefits.

• Lead Generation – This is the one you are probably most familiar with, offering a free eBook in exchange for an email address. This allows you to build your email list and potentially generate new leads.
• Thought-Leadership – Obviously, one of the hardest tasks to accomplish is establishing yourself as a leader in your industry. By publishing and sharing an eBook, you can position yourself as an authority in your niche.
• Share Your Business With Customers – One of the biggest problems with growing your business may simply be that your potential customers do not understand what you’re offering. With an eBook that thoroughly explains your products or services, and their benefits, you can help your clientele understand what you offer.
• Build Your Brand – Whether you are selling products, services, your business or yourself, building your personal brand is an essential part of positioning yourself as someone that consumers can trust and look to.
• Offer Expertise – Whatever your area of specialty may be, an eBook can help you share your valuable expertise with your target audience, which further builds trust and establishes you as an authority in your niche.

The Role of Blogging in Content Marketing

Written content is the obvious starting point for your strategy. If your topics are relevant and the content is optimized for search engines, new visitors will come to your site. However, blog posts and articles are only effective in attracting readers if they are useful and well-written.

Every brand has a “why” for existing. Why do you offer the product or service that you do? What do you hope to bring to the market? Why do you care? These values should be a part of your brand, and they should be infused in your website, but your blog gives you an opportunity to take it one step further.

Blogging can help you showcase your passion for the problem you solve.

Read More: 10 Ways To Connect With Your Customers 

Why You Need Email Newsletters

A well-crafted email newsletter is a perfect way to bridge the gap between generated leads and happy clients. The people who you’re speaking to are the ones who willingly gave you their email, who downloaded your eBook or subscribed to your blog, and are basically saying, “Alright, show me what you got.”

Aside from being a great conversion tool, newsletters also provide brands with an opportunity to share stories, offer business insights, connect with an audience and demonstrate that they care. You can use newsletters to curate bite-sized news articles and industry updates, or send out brand stories, customer testimonials, or even thought leadership pieces.

How a Podcast Fits into Your Marketing Strategy

Podcasting is no longer just a fun hobby for creatives and people who love to talk . It’s evolved into one of the most popular content formats around. A wide variety of organizations push out podcasts – everything from large enterprise companies to small, local businesses as well as individuals, radio and television networks. That’s because the format is both extremely versatile and extremely appealing to diverse audiences.

What the podcast does, that other formats can’t, is to get deep in the weeds with influencers, social media managers, and marketers to discuss their respective perspectives and experiences that wouldn’t be possible to convey fully through a written interview on a blog.

That means small businesses like yours should also get onto the podcasting bandwagon. Meanwhile, here you can see the list of best content marketing podcasts to listen to now. 

Video Content Marketing 

Let’s take a quick look at some of the types of videos you can create to market your business. One of the most common is the explainer video, which is a short video explaining your products or services. You’ll often see explainer videos on the home page of a website, or on a product or landing page.

Other types of video content marketing include:

• Vlogs (video blogs)
• Video interviews
• Tutorial videos
• Videos of presentations
• Product demos and reviews
• Video testimonials
• Recordings of live streams
• Video ads

The great thing about video content marketing is that it is becoming easier and easier to do effectively. The number of options marketers have means there really is something for every business, even those without traditional video recording or editing skills.

You may think of video as being expensive and time-consuming to produce. But there is plenty of technology out there that makes it possible to create good video fast and without a large budget.

Social Media as Content Marketing

If marketing were a concert, content would be a Grammy Award-winning artist and social media would be its hype man singing content’s praises everywhere it goes. Social media tells the audience how awesome content is and makes sure every single person around knows it.

In other words, social media is content’s biggest champion. Every content marketing strategy should utilize social media channels to elevate quality content and help it accomplish greater marketing goals.

Very Important Tip: Don’t forget to interact with your audience to extract great content ideas. Your audience is the people consuming your content, so make sure you identify what they like by paying attention to which pieces of content are performing well and which ones people are talking about most. 

Read More: Blacklisted Social Media Strategies You Should Avoid

Key Takeaway 

When you publish content online that helps educate your ideal customers and find you, the content continues working for you long after you wind down for the day. And, as you add to this content, your online presence grows steadily stronger. For small businesses, the fact that content never sleeps and continues working, gathering prospects and leads, even while you sleep, is only one of the many perks.

When you create content for your audience, it gives you the chance to demonstrate your expertise on subjects related to your core business, products, or services. By providing comprehensive and in-depth information within your content topics, it becomes possible to establish the business as a thought leader in its industry. That makes your small business website a destination for anyone looking for reliable knowledge about the things you do best.

That’s it for today. See you next week!