Content marketing is the strategy of creating and sharing relevant media to attract and engage a target audience. This approach promotes brand awareness and brand affinity, and up to this date, content marketing remains to be one of the most successful marketing strategies that create long-term and sustainable results.
To make the most out of your content marketing strategy, it’s best to choose the right content type for your product and align it with the correct customer’s funnel. Learn what the most popular content types are and how to create them using professional, easy-to-edit templates from Venngage.
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Most popular content types for digital marketing
There are many types of content that can provide value to your customers and capture the interest of new prospects. However, knowing which ones will work best for your business is the tricky part. That said, we have rounded up the most popular content examples so you can figure out where you should put your focus on.
Blogs, listicles & how-to guides
Blogs are high-quality written pieces about a given topic. A blog post can be a listicle, checklist, how-to-guide, or any other type of long-form content.
What you’re reading is an example of a blog post, and so is this one:
Read more: Engaging Content: Proven Best Practices You Can Use
Blog posts help your website rank on search engines and have high shareability, but most of all, having a blog that covers industry-specific topics can establish your brand’s expertise and authority in your respective field and help you earn your customers’ trust.
When it comes to blogging, consistency is key. You can post multiple articles per week or just one post per month, but make sure to post consistently and to always have your blog content of the highest quality.
In order to increase traffic to your website through your blog, make sure that every post is optimized for search engines. Use this checklist to help you with that:
Besides applying SEO best practices for your blog, you also need to make sure you include enough visuals in each article. Research points out that we process visuals 60,000 times faster than text—so in addition to breaking up walls of text and making it easier to read, visuals can also add valuable content to your blog post.
In fact, it’s one of the recommended strategies to have a perfect blog post. You can read more about it here or check out the infographic below:
Infographics
An infographic is a collection of imagery, data visualizations like pie charts and bar graphs, and minimal text that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic.
This content type makes lengthy or complex information like statistics, other numerical data, and abstract concepts easily digestible. Infographics are also more efficient at grabbing readers’ attention than a plain written post.
This infographic is a great example of how you can effectively convey information in a way that will be interesting to readers. Notice how the eye-catching graphics, concise copy, and simple color scheme and typography all add up to create a beautiful, cohesive design:
That was an example of a long infographic, but infographics can be short and sweet too:
Remember to apply plenty of white space in your infographic to promote a clean and organized design. Break up content into sections and use clear fonts to maintain readability and use descriptive titles and subheadings to ensure clarity.
It’s all about the right combination of well-structured content and compelling visuals when it comes to creating infographics.
Related:
- The Ultimate Infographic Design Guide: 13 Tricks For Better Designs
- How to Use Data Visualization in Your Infographics
- How to Choose an Infographic Layout (20+ Template Ideas for Beginners)
- Choosing the Right Infographic Fonts for Business Communications
- Bad Infographics: The Worst Infographics of 2020 (+ Lessons for 2021)
Images and graphics
Image and graphic posts are perfect for social media channels such as Instagram or Facebook where using minimal text is not only ideal but also required for posts. Not only are they easy to create but since they are a form of visual content, they can drive engagement better than written content.
Considering that they can only take up a limited amount of space on a mobile or desktop screen, images and graphics are best used for simple topics and content ideas. Make sure to come up with original designs that reflect the essence of your brand and create an emotional connection with your audience.
Here’s an example of a simple Facebook post that makes the most use of images for its content:
Related:
- How To Use a Facebook Post Template to Improve Engagement
- 15+ Best Instagram Post Templates for Businesses in 2021
Videos & webinars
According to Hubspot, videos are actually the most popular content type in 2021, overtaking blogs and infographics. With videos, you can achieve maximum engagement and shareability that will help you gain new audiences.
You can use videos as a standalone content marketing strategy, or use them to help your existing content reach new audiences. One way to do that is to repurpose blog content into videos, like how we did for this blog post about repurposing content:
Webinars, on the other hand, are online events that feature presentations from different speakers, experts, and personalities. They aim to educate and promote at the same time by tackling topics that are important to a certain group of people and provide a way for brands to reach audiences directly.
On the same topic of repurposing content, you can use the content of the video, blog post or ebook and make it into a webinar using this template:
And promote it on social media with this template:
Here’s another example of a webinar presentation template you can customize for your content:
Reports
A report presents and summarizes the facts about a particular event/situation, topic or idea. You can use reports to communicate research findings, analytics, and other quantitative or qualitative data.
Reports are great for both internal and external communication. Make the best out of reports for your content strategy by using them as gated content.
A report can be as short as a one-pager:
Or it can contain multiple pages like this Data Storytelling in Marketing: Benchmark Report 2021:
Related:
- 55+ Annual Report Design Templates, Inspirational Examples & Tips [Updated]
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White papers
A white paper is an authoritative guide (or in other words, an in-depth report) designed to address a business problem and provide possible solutions.
White papers contain technical information written in a persuasive and authoritative manner and are often designed for business-to-business (B2B) marketing purposes.
As white papers are often backed up with lots of data and factual evidence, they can be considered quality, thought-leadership content that can draw in more leads for your business.
You can publish white papers on your website or make them gated content and build a nurturing email series based on that.
Set the right tone by incorporating graphs, charts, and other graphics and images that support your claims. Here is a professional yet creative white paper template that you can use:
For more white paper examples, check out this post: 20+ Page-Turning White Paper Examples [Design Guide + White Paper Templates]
Case studies
In a business context, case studies tell the story of how your product or service helped a person or a company achieve its goals.
Case studies are often an essential part of a content strategy, as they help prove your product’s benefits to potential customers. If written persuasively, case studies can be of great help to both marketing and sales as they nudge the customer closer to making the decision.
As well as being valuable marketing tools, case studies are a good way to evaluate your product as it allows you to objectively examine how others are using it. Additionally, incorporating product tours into your case studies can provide a more immersive experience for potential customers to understand the value and functionality of your product.
A case study can be a blog post like this one that we did with LISG, which has been summarized in an easy-to-follow infographic:
Or it can be a multi-page report, like this one:
Podcasts
A podcast is a type of audio content, often coming in a series of episodes, that features one or more recurring hosts discussing a particular topic or current event.
What’s great about podcasts is they are convenient and easy to consume. They don’t take up too much of your time and attention since you can just download and listen to them on your phone while doing something else.
If you want to launch a podcast, you have to commit to one new episode per week. Use a good podcast recording platform to help you create quality content that will appeal to your audience and make sure to promote your podcast on social media using share-worthy posts. Here is a template you can use to generate buzz around a new episode:
Emails
Emails will always have a place in today’s digital marketing landscape. In 2019 alone, there were over 300 billion emails sent, and that figure has most likely risen today. It’s no wonder that around 90 percent of marketers still use emails in their marketing repertoire.
You can accompany emails with most of the content types above: an email announcing the new blog posts you’ve just published, an email sharing a new webinar or podcast episode, or an email series to nurture your leads after they’ve signed up to receive a white paper or a gated report.
Here’s an example of an email newsletter you can customize for your business:
You can always download this template (or any other email templates, really) in HTML format and upload that file to your email service provider for a clickable email campaign.
Here’s how to do it:
Related:
- 65+ Engaging Email Newsletter Templates and Design Tips
- The Ultimate Email Design Guide for 2021 (Best Practices & Examples)
- 6 Tips to Easily Create Responsive Infographics for Your Email Newsletter
- Top 20 Welcome Email Design Templates & Examples to Boost CTR
Most popular content types for social media platforms
Having a social media presence is important for your brand as it helps establish a relationship with your audience. It gives you the opportunity to connect with fans and followers whose common interests include your brand and allows you to directly engage and interact with consumers. To build a successful social media profile, here are different kinds of posts that you can do:
Articles and other written posts
Providing your audience with helpful and exclusive content such as articles and other written posts not only improves your click-through rate but also helps build your brand’s credibility. Post entertaining and informative content such as guides, tips, company news or industry news, interviews, and guest posts.
Here is a great template you can use for your article post:
Multimedia content
Multimedia such as high-quality photos, graphics, photos and graphics with text, GIFs, and videos are low-effort, high-impact content that can easily engage your audience. These types of posts are more creative and attention-grabbing, which makes them very effective on social media.
Image posts like inspirational quotes, quick tips and advice, product photos, as well as video content like how-to guides, virtual tours, and product reviews all make for great scroll stoppers that can do wonders for both your marketing and sales strategy.
Stories
Instagram and Facebook stories allow you to share status messages and information in the form of short clips. They improve brand awareness and increase interactions with your brand.
Be creative and utilize great fonts, stickers, GIFs, and other elements in your stories. Engage viewers by asking a question or running a poll and always include a call to action. Adding links is also useful for increasing conversions, boosting organic engagement, and helping your followers access your website or store easily.
Live videos
Live-streaming allows you to broadcast a live video feed to your audience, and live videos are a great way to start interactive discussions with viewers about your products. They can generate a big audience in a short amount of time and they make way for real-time engagement. Try setting up live-streaming websites, events, unboxing videos, and other activities that will pique people’s curiosity or interest.
Holiday greetings
Holiday-themed content naturally tugs at people’s heartstrings and fosters a sense of community. Posting holiday greetings on social media can help your audience form a personal and emotional connection with your brand. It also helps you stay top of mind with customers during the holiday season which can lead to future transactions.
Here’s a greeting post template that you can customize to fit your brand personality:
Contests
Online contests are fun and engaging activities that your audience will be inclined to take part in. By incentivizing people to follow your page, you can build a community and a strong social media following while increasing brand awareness at the same time. Using your own products as prizes or giveaways also helps with sales and brand recognition. Check out this post template for example:
Testimonials and reviews
Last but not least, reviews and testimonials are valuable to any business. They let you see your brand’s value and strength through the eyes of your customers. People tend to listen more to other customers’ opinions and experiences of a brand, and posting good feedback about your business can attract more customers and promotes trust in your brand.
Here’s an example of a testimonial from Vera Aroca, a Venngage user. We featured her testimonial in our ChadSan case study:
In conclusion: Choose the right types of content for your brand for an effective digital marketing strategy
And there you have the different content types that can give your brand a competitive edge. Take your marketing strategy to the next level and start creating high-quality content with Venngage’s solutions on graphic design for marketing.