Learn about 13 content formats that you can use in your blog to attract more traffic and generate more results for your company.
Blog content is any text developed on a particular topic and published on the website. It tends to be updated frequently and displayed in chronological order (from the most to the least recent).
The blog is one of the starting points for implementing your Content Marketing strategy. With the posts published in this channel, you will attract visitors, generate traffic, and create Leads that will later become customers if you execute the actions correctly.
However, this first step can be a real pain for companies starting to invest or are already investing in Content Marketing: What type of post should I produce for my blog? What are the most suitable formats depending on the subject I am addressing or my objective with the content? When and how to use images, audio, and video in my blog?
So, to get out of the commonplace in Content Marketing and progressively increase your production without making it repetitive, in this post. You will find 13 types of content that you can use in your blog to engage your audience more efficiently, helping to generate the results that your company wants and needs. You can find out the relevant topics for your site yourself or buy a research paper that will allow you to learn about your customers’ interests.
In addition to understanding what the main content formats arwee, how to structure them, and when to use them, you will also see examples of each of the content types to learn how they work in practice.
1. Educational posts
The primary mission of this type of post is to educate the audience about the market in which the product/service is inserted.
To make it more practical, here is an example of DR. In the post How to do Email Marketing, we give some tips on good practices for marketers to create quality campaigns, regardless of whether or not they use the RD Station.
Here the concern is, above all, to educate – not to sell. It may be that the marketer already uses the product and sees in these tips some insights to improve his campaigns. Maybe he uses another tool, but by learning with RD, he will change in the future. Or perhaps he is just starting to study Email Marketing and has not yet decided which tool to use.
Another example is the post published on the RD blog: The Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small and Medium Businesses.
We started talking about the SMB market and how Digital Marketing is the best option for those companies that need to grow and stand out.
Adapt that to your company’s context and create content that solves your audience’s pains instead of institutional or aggressively sales content.
Examples
– Why your company should have a blog as a Digital Marketing Tool
– Lead generation and management: the best way to increase sales in your company.
2. Tutorials or step-by-step
If you have to teach your audience how to perform a specific action practically, a tutorial or step-by-step post is a good idea.
The idea here is to make the reader repeat precisely what you are doing. It can be a culinary recipe, a drink, an action in Photoshop.
When you write a tutorial, remember that the reader is reading the post and doing what you are explaining at the same time.
So, abuse screenshots, explanatory images and think very well in a logical order to pass the content in the best possible way to your audience.
Sample posts:
– How to create a blog: The complete step by step
– How to make an infographic in 5 simple steps
3. News
News about your market is also exciting content ideas that you can produce for your company’s blog.
In this case, take advantage of the moment to publish as quickly as possible. News has an immediate character, so if you take too long to give quick information, your competitors may have already done it before, and when you show it to your audience, there is a risk that it will be too late.
How do you know when it’s too late? It depends a lot on your niche and the importance of the news itself. Try to be agile without being negligent.
Remember that news, unlike evergreen content, tends to have expiration dates. Still, they are a great way to engage with your audience and show them that you are updating and always looking for news about the market.
Example posts:
– Instagram for Business: get to know the new Instagram tool for Business;
– Spotify Ad Studio: learn about Spotify’s recently launched ad platform.
4. Reviews
When we look for content about our market, whether online or offline, it is common and familiar that we find many quality things that somehow serve us both to learn and teach others.
Therefore, your company’s blog can be an excellent place to write reviews related to your market.
One of the ways to do this is to think about the products that your audience is interested in and that your audience consumes and analyzes them.
For example, if you have read a book about your market, you can use the knowledge gained to write a review and thus pass on that knowledge. Sometimes even in a more didactic and simplified way than in the original content. The same goes for a movie, a documentary, a game, an app, an event, a fair, etc.
An example is the reviews and posts written about the RD Summit, our Marketing, and Sales event.
Example:
– RD Summit 2016 Retrospective
5. Videos
Video content production is no longer just a trend for the future. It is a consolidated reality with proven results.
A good video strategy can increase by 74% the public’s understanding of what you have to offer.
In addition, with this format, your company also manages to please consumers who prefer video to text.
But if I’ve already recorded a video, why write text content?
Let’s get straight to the point: While there are people who prefer video content, there are also people who like text content or other formats.
So the best idea here is to diversify. Record a video, upload it to a channel (Youtube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, among others), and publish it on your blog, but don’t just publish the video. Transcribe that video or create a text-based on the audiovisual content. It will significantly increase the value of your post.
6. Interviews
There are many people outside your company who may have good insights to share with your audience. So, why not invite those professionals for an interview?
Invite influencers and personalities to talk about an issue related to your market. By interviewing people who are a reference in your market, you will be creating high-quality content for your blog, besides being a valuable learning experience for the interviewer.
Significant: Value the interviewee. Make them feel important in the publication. Create a great post about the interview for him (her) to share with his (her) followers and drive a new audience to your site.
7. Lists
Human beings like to make lists: shopping list, list of household chores, list of activities you need to do every day at work, list of New Year’s resolutions. They are a great way to help you get organized, gain productivity, and have a better view of what needs to be done – and in what stages.
As you may have noticed, this post, for example, is a list, which aims to easily present various formats of content that you can use in your blog. We could expose that content in a text in a row, for example, but it would not be easy for the readers’ comprehension and absorption.
Generally, lists are easy to make: stop for a few minutes and think about dividing the topic you have chosen into items. Those subtopics, so to speak, can be divided in several ways: from the most to the least (and vice versa), from the first to the last (and vice versa), from the best to the worst (or from the worst to the best), or in chronological and sequential order (in the case of tutorials or step-by-step, for example).
In addition, posts with lists usually have excellent results, both in organic traffic and social traffic, because they are generally easier to read (it is possible to scan them more efficiently), ignite curiosity, and simplify complicated things, among many other advantages.
Examples:
– 56 free and paid image banks
8. Case studies
One way to prove the value of your product/service is to create case studies.
A significant advantage of case studies, or simply cases, is that these contents demonstrate, in a didactic and practical way, how a particular company overcame challenges and achieved actual results using quality solutions. In other words, they provide essential information for any company’s Business.
Who wouldn’t like to know an efficient “recipe” to accelerate the entry of new customers, increase profits, spend less to produce more and other facilities? Such a perspective makes the customer, who is faced with the same problems, see how to use the same solution efficiently.
Another positive aspect of the case studies is that they are focused on the customer’s perspective. It is not your company that says your service is good, but those who use it. That guarantees immense credibility to the message you want to pass on. In addition to making a simple statement, the studies tell a story and reveal how your products can be used to achieve specific goals. In other words, they are valid proof of success.
Interview with a great success story of yours and post it on your blog. That’s the middle/bottom of the funnel content and should help a lot in decision making.
9. Guest Posts
Does your company’s blog already receive guest posts? Guest posts are excellent content that you can use to publish on your blog.
Beyond being other content, it is a valuable way for your company to maintain a relationship with partners. Guest posts are excellent strategies for your partners because of these contents. They can reach a new audience and build link building for SEO strategies.
The advantage of this is that you don’t need to produce the content because someone else will do it.
However, don’t make the mistake of not aligning the topic and language of the guest post before your ally starts writing. The position needs to be by your blog’s standards. By doing so, you won’t have to work twice as hard on extensive edits, and you won’t have to go through the trouble of asking your partner for a new version.
On the RD blog, we publish monthly guest posts. We have gone the other way around as well, publishing some guest posts on allied blogs.
Examples:
– Checklist for producing written content- from Rock Content.
– What you need to know to create an online store- from HostGator
10. Quotes
Quotes are helpful to attract the audience’s attention, simply conveying a message and are based on the experience of a specialist. Indicating phrases from great authorities and experts brings credibility to the subject matter and works well in posts and speeches.
You can use quotes as the basis of your posts or make a compilation with the best quotes about the area in which your Business acts, like the post below that we did about Digital Marketing books:
Example:
– Top 10 Must-read Digital Marketing Books this 2017.
11. Surveys
Statistics and data about your market are excellent for use in your content. In addition, the numbers prove in a more accurate way how the market is, which segments are working or not, and give powerful insights into new trends.
You don’t need to conduct the survey yourself. If your team cannot do it, you can use surveys from a partner company or a survey institute.
12. Infographics
Infographics is a content format that usually generates excellent results.
It is because it is a way to simplify long ideas in a few words and with a visual appeal that almost always works.
You can use infographics both for lead generation, promoting them in Landing Pages and posts to generate interest and backlinks.
To make it easy for other blogs to share your infographic, put an embed code at the end of your post.
We created a practical explanation of how you can make infographics without much difficulty in the post How to make an infographic in 6 steps.
To flesh out the post, create a supporting text for the infographic. Put other information not in the infographic, or create a context for the reader to understand what it is about and why they consume it.
13. Experiences/Learnings
Have you thought about turning what you do every day into content for your readers?
That’s a relatively simple way to produce content since all you need to do is organize your expertise on a specific project or topic and start writing.
When we talk about sharing learnings, many companies still resist because they think publishing that kind of content is wrong for the Business itself.
That argument is not supported by Inbound Marketing because if your company is good and delivers good services, publishing high-quality content and “delivering” your know-how provides much more profit than loss. We already talked about why revealing your secrets and producing quality content won’t kill your Business.
Examples:
– Growth Machine: RD Station’s methodology to guarantee success for your clients.
– What other types of content do you know or are you publishing? Let us know in the comments.
