Content Marketing

1. Different types of content and content creation.
2. How can your marketing content stand out from the rest?
• Products and brand content
3. How to involve the consumer in the content creating process?
• How to engage consumers to create content for you?
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1. Different types of content and content creation.

#1: Infographics: An infographic is the presentation of information or data in a visual way.
Its name sums it up — info + graphic.

Infographics are liked 4x more than presentations, and 23x more than documents on SlideShare

Infographics are shared 2x more than presentations, and 3x more than documents on other social networks, such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

e.g.

Source: http://blog.slideshare.net/2013/09/11/infographics-are-more-viral/

#2: Meme

They’re easy to make. They’re viral. They’re hilarious.

Source: http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/04/14/how-these-15-types-of-content-will-drive-you-more-traffic/

#3: Videos

There’s a world of variety within videos. Put the video on YouTube and Vimeo. Both of these video sharing sites are great ways to garner social signals for SEO and improved results for video search itself.

#4: Guides

A guide is a detailed and fairly long piece of content. Think of it as an epic blog post. It goes beyond the length, style, and approach of an ordinary blog post.

#5: Book reviews

Recommend good books, critique not-so-good ones, and share the value that glean from them. Book reviews are great because they help to position you as a thought leader

#6: Opinion post 

This style of post is substantially different from your typical blog post, mostly due to its tone. The rant or opinion, by contrast, may be stronger and more expressive. The more vociferous the position, the more it’s going to get read and shared.

#7: Product reviews

Like the book review, a product review can help establish authority and leadership in a specific industry. Every industry has its unique array of products, software, and services. When engage key developers, manufacturers, or service providers, you gain recognition and respect. All to do is share experience with the product and provide recommendation.

#8: How-to

The how-to is one of the most popular types of content. How-to articles have awesome long tail search potential due to these popular long tail query introductions: “How to…” and “How do I…?”

#9: Lists

Lists have endless appeal. We’re wired to love them. Chance are we’re going to see or read an article today that involves some sort of a list — “5 Security Breaches You Need to Know about,” “17 Ways to Rank Higher in Google in One Month.” 

#10: Link pages

A link page is simply a post that provides links to great resources around the web. The great thing about link posts is that they spread link love to other sites, provide your own site with authoritative SEO signals, and assert your thought leadership within your field.

#11: Ebook

An ebook is long content packaged in a different format, usually as a PDF. Ebooks are often a downloadable product, available for free in exchange for joining a mailing list. Producing an ebook helps to strengthen your authority within a field, and it makes for a powerful method of sharing your knowledge with others.

#12: Case Study

A case study explains what your product or service is and how it helped a client. The case study basically says, “here’s what we do, how we do it, and the results we get.”

#13: Podcast

Podcasts had their phase of popularity, and they’re still a great form of content. Plus, they’re not hard to create. Many people listen to podcasts during their commute or exercise. You have a chance to spread your message farther and better using this format than a lot of other formats.

#14: Interview

When you’re able to interview a leader, you can garner a lot of respect from others in the field, not to mention huge amounts of traffic. Interviews are unique. No one else has this information — only you.

#15: Research and original data

Most of us work in data-intensive fields, where numbers and metrics hold a lot of value. Sharing your findings with others is a powerful way to drive traffic, build trust, and establish your authority. When you do the research, which is hard work, people respect that. What’s more, people share it.

Source: http://www.newsvend.com/blog/7/how-to-build-a-killer-content-marketing-strategy

2. How can your marketing content stand out from the rest?

#1: Focus on consistency, great topics, and growing audience
#2: Publish more quality content than anyone else in your niche
#3: Try under-used content format
#4: Focus time on fewer content format
#5: Plan your blog to save than when you actually write your posts

Source: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/03/16/content-marketing-challenges

Mailchimp stated why newsletters and emails might end up in the spam folder as follows:

• Using phrases like “Click here!” or “Once in a lifetime opportunity!”
• Excessive use of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!
• USING ALL CAPS, WHICH IS LIKE SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS VIA EMAIL (especially in the subject line).
• Using bright red or green colored fonts.
• Using bad content. This one’s broad, but important. Email delivery expert Laura Atkins details content-based filtering in this article.
• Coding sloppy HTML, usually from converting a Microsoft Word file to HTML.
• Creating an HTML email that’s nothing but one big image, with little or no text. Spam filters can’t read images, so they assume you’re a spammer trying to trick them.
• Using the word “test” in the subject line. Agencies can run into this issue when sending drafts to clients for approval.
• Sending a test to multiple recipients within the same company. That company’s email firewall often assumes it’s a spam attack.
• Sending to inactive lists. These are lists which have not engaged in the campaigns through opens and clicks. Because subscriber engagement is a huge part of getting emails into the inbox, when an ISP sees low engagement rates they will often begin to bulk the campaigns to the spam folder. Then they will block the domain and IP addresses used to deliver the campaigns.
• Sending to stale lists. Permission generally goes stale within about 6 months, so if your subscribers haven’t heard from you within that timeframe, you’ll need to reconfirm your list.

3. How to involve the consumer in the content creating process?

Source: http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/113811-7-Ways-to-Get-People-to-Share-Your-Content/

Coca-Cola innovated the music scene and launched a “passion-targeting approach” to generate its brand presence. Since then, it has evolved its strategy to build on consumers’ passion points.
More recently, it partnered with Maroon 5 to stream the band recording their music live in the studio. Fans were encouraged to follow their live feed on-the-go and simultaneously give the musicians live feedback.

By doing so, the brand was able to encourage its consumers to be part of the content creation process.

How to get people to share your content?

#1: Make it easy for people to share your content: no more than 2 to 3 clicks of a button. One simple example of making content easy to share is “tweetables”

#2: Ask them to share it: remind them with a call to action. Pinterest pins with a call to action get 80 percent more shares.

#3: Use images

#4:  Create “round-ups” as blog posts or other content: round-ups are a content format. You ask a bunch of experts one question, then round up all their answers in a blog post. Round-ups can also be SlideShares or audio recordings, but most of the time they’re blog posts.

#5: Write listicles

#6: Write strong headlines: headline largely determines whether or not your article gets shared. 80 percent of people will never read beyond your headline.

#7: Write long-form content

Source: http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/113811-7-Ways-to-Get-People-to-Share-Your-Content/

Source:

Patel, N., 2014. Article15 Types of Content That Will Drive You More Traffic. http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/04/14/how-these-15-types-of-content-will-drive-you-more-traffic/. accessed: 23.11.2015

Dhariwal, A., 2013. SlidesShare Infographics Are More Viral. http://blog.slideshare.net/2013/09/11/infographics-are-more-viral/. accessed: 23.11.2015

Walgrove, A., 2015. Article How to Make Your Content Stand Out. https://contently.com/strategist/2015/10/19/infographic-how-to-make-your-content-stand-out/. accessed: 23.11.2015

Mailchimp. How to Avoid Spam Filters. http://mailchimp.com/resources/guides/how-to-avoid-spam-filters/html/. accessed: 23.11.2015

Ismail, N., 2015. 4 Tips for Effective Content Marketing. http://www.marketing-interactive.com/4-ways-content-creation-success/. accessed: 23.11.2015

Neeli, P., 2014. Article 7 Ways to Get People to Share Your Content. http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/113811-7-Ways-to-Get-People-to-Share-Your-Content/. accessed: 23.11.2015