Understanding The Different Types of Content in Your Marketing Toolbox
In the world of marketing, content is king. What was once a nice-to-have, is now a necessity for the modern brand. In many ways, content serves as a currency of value and a primary way for brands, prospects, and customers to communicate. As a means to increase brand awareness, establish thought leadership, and spark conversations, content can wear many hats. This vehicle for value can take on various shapes and forms depending on the marketing goals at stake. Today we’re breaking down the many ways you can package your content and exactly how it’s done by the marketing gurus at Power Digital Marketing.
SEO Content
SEO (or search engine optimization) content refers to any asset created to drive search engine traffic. This rank-centric content is all about identifying the right keywords and putting those keywords to work.
Purpose: To improve brand awareness, level up your search engine position, drive traffic back to your site, and establish your brand as a household name.
Process: SEO content begins and ends with keywords. First, you need to get your research on. Identify keywords and long-tail phrases with high volume and low competition to sprinkle throughout your content pieces (including headers, metadata, and body copy). The success of your SEO content can be affected by your word count, the navigation of your website, and how well you implement your keywords. When crafting your content, be sure to link the relevant copy to other pages on your site – keeping it in the family will help you spin a positive web of internal links. Here at Power Digital, the SEO masters compose comprehensive clusters of related articles on one topic to establish a network of content that builds authority and creates a comprehensive resource for the target audience.
Engagement–Based Content
Engagement–based marketing is the use of strategic, snackable, and resourceful content to actively engage audiences and start meaningful conversations. In short, engagement-based content is the secret ingredient to breath life into your existing campaigns.
Purpose: Engagement–based content is anything but passive. Engagement content is designed to interact and with your audience, start conversations, and ultimately compliment your existing brand efforts.
Process: Engagement–based content deliverables are typically closely integrated with social advertising strategies and work to support the tone of voice and messaging of other marketing campaigns.
Editorial Content
Editorial content is anything published for the sole purpose to inform, educate or entertain your audience. Bottom line, editorial content is not “sales-y.” Instead, editorial content is created to enhance the reader without thick advertising messaging or an attempt to sell them on something. Editorial reads are likely the reason a prospect visited your site or interacted with your blog in the first place. These reads are a great way to start a connection with a prospect with no sales pressure. As your trust builds in the community, you’ll be top of mind when a member finds themselves in need of a solution like yours.
Purpose: Editorial content provides genuine, informative, and often educational content for your audience, no strings attached. In marketing, editorial content can be used to build trust, create authority, and establish your brand as an industry thought leader.
Process: Whether it is entertaining, informational, or provides your readers with new ways to level up their skills, start your editorial creative process with a topic that brings value to your audience. The Power Digital editorial team works 1:1 with client teams to create premium content each month that touches upon important industry topics, captures brand stories, and includes carefully curated (and dare we say tasteful) promotional plugs throughout. To create this content, Power Digital editorial teams conduct monthly industry research around highly searched topics, develop strategic content calendars, and craft short-form blog posts accordingly.
Trending Content
Trending content is anything that is, in the words of Mugatu, “so hot right now.” It’s content that experiences a surge in popularity, publicity, and buzz on social media (fueled by hashtags and nifty social algorithms).
Purpose: The purpose of trending content is to increase brand awareness, reinforce your brand story, and capture new audiences at peak times of online activity.
Process: Creating and publishing timely content on your website increases your chances of ranking for trending topics. Essentially, hopping on trends as soon as possible and responding with genuine, colloquial, and true-to-your-brand messaging is the best strategy to go viral. Trending content affects so many people because the message is relatable and entertaining. To support these goals, Power Digital teams perform weekly trend topic deep dives and industry research to pinpoint the latest and greatest buzz-worthy topics for content creation. Once a trending topic is chosen for the week, Power Digital gathers key takeaways and talking points right from clients to align creative visions and ultimately produce the most strategic trend-worthy piece.
Big Content — Quizzes
Quizzes are a great way to add an interactive, fun, and engaging element to your social campaigns. Quizzes can act as a strong lead magnet for email campaigns and provide an easy way to capture lead information and segment users based on interests (aka their quiz answers). Quizzes all around are a win-win.
Purpose: Quizzes exist in the marketing world to boost engagement and capture lead data in a quick and entertaining way.
Process: With quizzes, you want to choose a topic that’s relevant and timely. The quiz aficionados at Power Digital, recommend building out interactive quizzes that can be configured for blogs, email, and social channels. Be sure to craft questionnaires with about 8 to 10 questions and use SEO principles to optimize your copy. For in house clients, Power Digital creates promotional graphics to accompany quiz content (that isn’t corny stock imagery).
Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is content that remains relevant and valuable long after it’s published. Hailing its name from the evergreen tree, evergreen content is the gift that keeps on giving. Evergreen pages compound in value as they grow in visitors, prestige, and web traffic over time.
Purpose: To enhance SEO efforts through educational, informative, and forever fresh content that incorporates key sales messages and other conversion easter eggs. Evergreen content can also be used to establish your brand as an industry thought leader.
Process: Evergreen content can take the form of knowledge-based articles, how-to guides, and even FAQ boards. SEO landing pages, however, are arguably the most strategic form of evergreen content as they simultaneously establish industry authority and bolster SEO efforts. Start by identifying your optimal keywords, and integrate them into an encyclopedia-style landing page sprinkled with internal links. Choose a topic that will provide a robust and informative resource for your clients. The longer the content lasts, the more traffic it will contribute.
Lead Magnet Content
A lead magnet is any piece of content that readers can access in exchange for their contact information. To be successful, lead magnet content must be highly valuable, relevant, and actionable.
Purpose: To woo readers into providing their contact information, engage prospects, and provide exclusive value.
Process: High performing lead magnet content is typically packaged in the form of a whitepaper. What separates a good white paper from a great white paper is exclusivity. A top performing lead magnet should provide answers to readers that they can’t find anywhere else. Think about in-house research you’ve conducted and evaluate whether you can leverage this data in a whitepaper. It’s a surefire way to provide information that no one else has.
That’s a content wrap.
At its core, great content should always be valuable, relevant, and digestible. In a world of seemingly endless content possibilities, each marketing tool can provide a different purpose and help you achieve different goals. Understandably, it’s a bit overwhelming to master each type, luckily the folks at Power Digital Marketing already have.
