Content marketing: the main content categories and formats

Content marketing has taken off in a big way over the past three years, especially during Google's latest algorithm updates. Because since the Hummingbird update in 2013, Google is now able to semantically capture entire sentences and put words in causal relationship. This gives users significantly more relevant and higher quality search results. Since then, content marketing has been in high demand and the phrases "content first" or "content is king" have almost become commonplace. However, this marketing technique is not so new: those who have published informative and entertaining texts on their blog that are relevant to their target groups from the start are engaging in content marketing without perhaps knowing exactly how it is defined.

Definition of content marketing

Content marketing is a communication strategy that focuses on creating high-quality information. It is useful for the respective target group. The goal is to improve your brand image and especially to gain new customers. The content created is not intended to directly encourage the purchase of the product or service. And by informative as well as entertaining content, we mean all possible content formats.

The most important content categories

In this article I will detail the different categories and formats of content, because even though text in the form of articles or contributions dominates as content on the Internet, it is possible to create high quality content, not only in the form of text. If you need professional advice on the right content formats for your content strategy, you should contact a good online marketing agency that also offers content marketing. The advantage of text is that it is taken for granted by all users. You search the web for specific information on a topic, and then most results provide text about that topic. If you don't want to read the article on screen because it tires your eyes, you can print the text and consume it "offline". Even though videos and audio content are becoming more popular, text will probably remain the most important content format in content marketing, especially because it can be created very quickly and inexpensively.

Various text formats:

Classic articles, such as blog posts or press reports (Check-)lists, which are usually popular with readers, provide information, explanations or recommendations in a clear and easily understandable form for the reader, as they are used mainly in the B2B sector. A white paper is a document that provides user descriptions, case studies, market research results or other technical documents on a specific topic. These documents are usually available for download on the Web in PDF format Books: E-books are often offered as a gift for subscribing to a newsletter mailing list. Newsletters: Newsletters also belong to the text content category, as the objective is to provide mainly text-based information about current events, interesting offers and product or service information. Product or service innovations of a company.

Audio content

Spoken text is also very popular on the web, as it is very easy and uncomplicated to consume. For example, you can listen to a podcast while working on your computer, jogging or sitting on a plane. To easily capture an audience by proposing in a blog a marketing video based on the company's services. Podcasts: Podcasts are audio contributions that are offered to customers available on the Web. This creation is usually in MP3 format. In general, a podcast can be compared to a radio show that can be listened to regardless of when it was broadcast. In addition to entertaining podcasts, informative podcasts attract a large audience. If you want to be successful with podcasts, you need to regularly create interesting audio content, just like a blogger. This is the only way to get a regular audience over time. Music: even with a catchy tune as a piece of content, you can successfully market your business. Just remember to play catchy music tracks to customers.

Video-Content

Creating a successful video in marketing is, admittedly, very demanding and time-consuming, but it can be worth it, as well-made videos are especially popular in social media, where they are shared and distributed. Quite contrary to articles, which rarely have an impressive viral distribution on Facebook.
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