All brands and marketers know that content is king. Valuable, helpful, and relevant content generates new leads, increases brand awareness, keeps customers engaged, makes a lasting impression, and encourages sales. 

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Are you putting all your content marketing initiatives in one basket? Do you dabble in the stock market? Would you put all your money into one stock? What if that stock falls? You will lose all your money.

Smart investors know diversifying funds is the best way to mitigate risks. Content marketing trends are proving that businesses can’t afford to use only one type of content to keep their audiences engaged.

Strategically using different types of content enables businesses to build brand awareness and reach broader audiences.

[Infographic:  https://newhorizons123.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Content-Marketing-Statistics-NH123-2-1-scaled.jpg]

Why Diversify?

Your target market is diverse, uses different marketing channels, and prefers various types of content to consume information and data. 

Some consumers are visual learners, some prefer to read, and others like a combination.

Creating different types of content shared on various distribution channels expands your brand’s reach. 

It also enhances your ability to engage and inspire your target audience where they are online.

Cross-Pollinate Your Marketing Content and Channels for More Power

Audiences are not monolithic. Define and devise your content marketing initiatives to appeal to various user preferences.  

Expand your content formats to include additional types such as webinars, podcasts, videos, white papers, infographics, SlideShare presentations, and memes.

Presenting your content in different configurations appeals to a variety of audiences, keeps your content fresh, and increases engagement.

Don’t limit your brand exposure by using only one type of content creation format on one channel. 

In The Death of Google Search Traffic and What It Means for Marketers, Michael A. Stelzner from Social Media Examiner says: “I think diversification into multimedia content will be essential.”

To meed your target market where they are online, take advantage of different content marketing formats, such as videos, emails, ads, websites, and social media.  

Appeal to Your Target Market’s Preferences

The more places your content appears online, the higher the chances of reaching a broader audience. 

Knowing your potential customers’ needs, behaviors, and interests will enable you to create the most relevant, helpful, and useful customized content.

The consumer today no longer accepts one-sided communication channels. In this regard, they are vastly different from those of the past. 

Engaging in real-time conversations with your brand is what they expect. It’s up to each business to make sure they deliver what their customers want.

Decrease Boredom, Overcome Information Overload, and Diversify with Visuals

Even those who enjoy reading text can quickly become bored when only exposed to the written word. Adding visuals breaks the monotony.

Visual content is highly effective. The statistics below exemplify this:

Include visual content in your marketing strategy to help your brand stay on top of digital marketing trends.

Utilizing different content formats will help brands get noticed by audiences they didn’t previously have. Below are several different types of content that are known to perform well.

Video Content

Videos are visual representations of your business story and have universal appeal.  According to Cisco, by 2021, video content will comprise 82% of all Internet traffic.

Videos provide a more engaging and better visual experience than text alone. The many benefits of using video in your content marketing include:

  • It’s cost-effective with advancing technology making creating videos easier
  • Video hosting platforms such as YouTube provide detailed analytics to make it easier to track views and engagements
  • Google gives preference to video content in search queries
  • Website visitors will stay longer on a site that includes a compelling and engaging video
  • Videos can be laser-targeted to a specific audience to get your message in front of the right people
  • Using online videos to demonstrate a particular procedure (cosmetic dentists) or offer professional advice (attorneys) can establish your business as experts in your niche 

Visitors will stay, on average, two minutes longer on a website or landing page that contains a video.  

Video Marketing is here to stay. The statistics prove it.

[Infographic:  https://my.visme.co/projects/jw63nnj1-video-is-here-to-stay-the-stats-prove-it

Infographics

The more eye-catching the content, the better the chances of it getting viewed. That is one reason infographics are so popular.

The other reason is that custom infographics are an excellent strategy for attracting links to your site.

Infographics are a collection of engaging and striking visuals comprised of charts and other imagery to communicate information clearly and quickly.

When optimized for SEO, infographics can drive massive traffic to your website, earn backlinks, increase brand awareness, and get a lot of engagement.

They usually have minimal text and often include statistics and graphs to display complex data in an easily digestible manner. 

Infographics are one of the top five types of content B2B companies. 65% of B2Bs are using infographics. 

Expressing rich visual content and data in an infographic image format is much easier to read and digest than a large chunk of text. 

Examples of how to use infographics include:

  • Explaining a complex process
  • Displaying a quick visual overview of a topic
  • Raising awareness about a cause or social issue
  • Summarizing reports or complementing long blog posts 
  • Presenting survey data or research findings visually

Any industry can use infographics as part of their content marketing strategy, such as:

  • Educators use infographics to create content that is appealing and memorable to students
  • Marketers create infographics to engage their audience, increase engagement, and build brand awareness
  • Project managers use infographics to visualize timelines
  • Nonprofit organizations raise awareness for their cause and promote events
  • Government agencies share census data and statistics 

SlideShare Presentations

SlideShare is a social media platform and online community where you can upload your own presentations and share them with over 60 million monthly viewers.

Use SlideShare to:

  • Grow your followers
  • Add email subscribers to your list
  • Increase website traffic
  • Boost search engine rankings
  • Build brand awareness

Presentations you create can be embedded on a website or landing page, shared on social media, and used to repurpose blog content in a visually appealing way.

The ability to use embedded hyperlinks in SlideShare presentations is invaluable. Including a clickable call-to-action makes this content format type a powerhouse.

Focus on creating presentations that are valuable and relevant to your target market. Like all social media platforms, growing a community of followers will draw more attention to your business.

When creating your slides for a presentation, be sure to use compelling visuals, evoke emotions, and explain helpful and useful information.

[SlideShare presentation: https://www.slideshare.net/JulieSahudWeishaar/the-power-of-slideshare-and-what-it-can-do-for-your-business]

eBooks

Marketers and brands often use eBooks as part of their customer acquisition program and to build their email list. Generate leads by offering a digital downloadable version of a book on a relevant or helpful topic.

Visitors are typically willing to provide their contact information and become subscribers to gain access. 

Once you receive the email address of a potential customer, be sure to follow-up with emails that continue to provide value. 

Not only should your eBook be professional, valuable, and relevant, so should your follow-up emails. You must keep your audience interested, engaged, and wanting to hear more from you.

When a subscriber knows they can rely on you for good content, they will open your emails. 

The more contact brands have with their audience, the higher the chances of converting them to customers.

Podcasts

Podcasts are a series of spoken and audio episodes. They generally focus on a specific theme or topic such as politics, sports, or real estate.

The popularity of podcasts has seen a surge in recent years with Millennials and Gen Z driving it. 

Adobe Analytics research showed 24-34-year-olds were responsible for a 60% increase in podcast consumption via mobile apps from January 2018 to May 2019.

The same research reported that approximately one-third of millennials listen to at least five podcasts per week.

Podcasts inspire, educate, or entertain listeners when they are performing boring or mundane activities such as exercising or driving.

You don’t need expensive or fancy equipment when creating a podcast. All you need is a microphone, a computer, and a place to host audio files.

This format of content marketing is ideal for marketers and brands who prefer talking than writing. And ideal for audiences who want to listen to a message instead of watching or reading it.

Repurpose Content

To diversify your content marketing formats, it isn’t always necessary to come up with new content. Your own well-performing content is a gift that keeps on giving.

For example, if you have a blog post that has received a massive amount of views and lots of engagement, you can create a video, infographic, SlideShare presentation, e-Book, webinar, or podcast around the same topic.

Don’t forget that you can also repurpose any content to all the other types of content. Get ideas on how from 50 Places to Repurpose Your Web Conferences as Video Content

Another way to work smarter and not harder is to look through your older blog posts. More than likely, some will be outdated as the web and technology are continuously evolving. Update outdated information and statistics and bring it back to life.

Are You Ready for Content Marketing 2020?

You already know that creating valuable content plays a vital role in the success of your business. 

And, take the time to broaden the type of content you provide by diversifying.

However, it’s critical to remain a reliable and knowledgeable content provider for your target audience.

As you do with any marketing initiatives, analyze and measure your results. Spend more time on the channels and formats that bring in more leads and increase sales. 

About the Author: Julie Weishaar works to grow small businesses, increasing their online visibility by leveraging the latest in internet and video technologies. She specializes in creative camera-less animated video production, custom images, content writing, and SlideShare presentations. Julie also manages HubSpot CRM, blog management, email marketing, marketing automation, and social media for her clients. She can be reached on her business website New Horizons 123, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and by Email.