There are lots of types of content that are in the form of written, video, audio, and images.  Within each one of these types of content, there are lots of different sub-types of content and where the content lives. Ultimately you want the content to live on your website as the hub of all marketing.

We often see types of content in which it gets described as perhaps the subject of the content.  What you write about and the format are different.  You might see an ebook vs a blog post these are both written types of content and the subject of that content is changing. If you are trying to come up with the subjects of your content marketing we have written about this before!

The fact of the matter is that everyone likes to absorb content in different ways so while one type of content might be very popular at the moment it shouldn’t be your only type of content.  The types of content we are going to describe are nothing new, creating content in written, video, audio, and images are as old as time.  So you can bet that you are producing content for the long haul. Creating the same content in multiple formats and providing those all on one page is a great way to ensure that you have made content for all types of audiences.  We are going to go through different types of content.

What Are the Best Types of Content Marketing Formats?

The best types of content marketing educate by getting detailed, accurate information across to those looking for that knowledge. They can also entertain and be presented in all kinds of marketing copy formats. Understanding your buyer’s persona will help define the copy format that you use in your marketing. 

People like to consume content in many different formats. Some prefer to watch videos and others like to read, for example. There are folks who are more visual learners and better understand the content that includes pictures and images. Others may learn better through oral or audio content. While some industries might tend to use certain content format types more than others it negates the fact that everyone has different learning styles and that can’t be separated by industry.  

Starting with the types of content that fits the most comfortably into your marketing budget and resources and are available and work out from there.

Written content can come in many forms and can most notably be useful when trying to show up in search engines.  But if you just write content for search engines in old terms then you are failing the users.  Written content online can be “structure” pages of your website that usually detail the “what” of services that you offer.  From there you can write blogs that start to answer the funnel questions of your intended users. Below is a list of different types of written content.

• Structure pages

• Blogs

• White Papers

• News articles

• Ebooks

• Infographics

• Email Newsletters

• Case studies

• Product/Service Reviews

• How To’s

This is by far one of the most popular types of content marketing.

• Video specific platforms

• • YouTube videos

  • Vimeo/Wistia

  • Website hosted

The video-specific platforms below are nothing more than how the video is stored on the internet or website it does not involve the topics that you do in those formats.  Usually, the game being played is where can I get the most reach for content. A unique aspect of YouTube videos is that I can take those videos and use them on my own website, the property that I own.

The same can be said of Vimeo and Wistia.  The difference between the two is that Youtube videos are part of the search engine and therefore you can get reach.  Whereas Vimeos and Wistia are not typically places where people go to find new content, they do not have a feed to review.

Where they make up for the ability to not have ads or perhaps lead to competitor videos, you close off the content and show it on your website.  You still need to promote though through other sources.  Just having a video on your website will not attract traffic to your website from potential clients.  It will keep them on your website longer though and hence that shows search engines that you have valuable content.

The last one web hosting is highly advised against because it can affect site speed and how fast your website loads.  There have been some advancements but other methods are superior to hosting it on your own website.

• Social media videos

  • Lives

  • Uploaded videos

Social media videos live on social media but should perhaps be moved over to your website.  There are great tools such as Restream and StreamYard that allow you to now only go live in multiple places but most importantly on Youtube.  Currently, YouTube is the only place you can take videos and embed them on your website.

It should be embedded on a page that will ultimately have written, audio, images, and video content (both short and long form).  Uploading a video directly to a social media platform can help in the sense of making organic posts in that social media channels will favor this content over sharing youtube links.  This means extra work for your marketing agency but it’s better and more organic reach.

• Short form videos

  • TikTok

  • Reels (Facebook and Instagram)

  • YouTube shorts

Short-form videos have seemingly come out of nowhere as our attention spans have decreased is our best guess.  We are obsessed with consuming content and as much as possible is short videos that are less than a minute often.

Out of the types of short-form videos, the only one you can truly own and add to your own website is YouTube shorts by embedding the videos you make. While this might be a good long-term strategy currently due to how social media algorithms work creating the content first for reels and Tiktok allows your content to reach more people.

The reason for more reach with this type of content is it showed not to those who necessarily follow you but to people who have looked at similar content by way of the algorithm and hashtags.  This is incredibly important right now since data was shut off between apps and websites for the most part.  This now means that what you like and don’t like is all contained with the apps but you need to reuse their content. What these platforms don’t want though is for you to leave this platform. They will reward more content.

• Webinars

The last subtype of video content listed is webinars.  These are almost live videos but with live videos, the social media platforms promote that you are live.  With webinars, you can take content offline and provide a more intimate session. You can also gather emails for future email marketing by having them sign up for the content.  Live videos just give a user what they want with no exchange. Webinars though allow users to feel more comfortable in asking questions they might have asked in a complete public format. Since those questions will always stay with the post made.

• Podcast

Podcasts are very popular because of their ability to listen to topics and learn while also performing other duties such as exercising and doing work! While this doesn’t work for everyone, doing multiple tasks but many love it.  Again the subjects done in the podcast shouldn’t be different from the subjects you are doing for written, video, or images.

Rather the way you talk about a subject can be different than how you would write about it.  For instance, you can bring guests, experts, and teammates to have more of a discussion and get varying opinions.  With writing it’s mostly the writer’s opinion on the matter.

Creating a podcast is relatively simple in that you just have to talk to get started! The next steps of editing the podcast can be done at varying levels.  We like the format of keeping it pretty overly simplistic with little editing.  For us, this showcases our knowledge of the subjects.

When podcasts are published they are published on places like Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeart, Podcast Addict, and more.  You need to pull podcast content over to your website.  You can create a sub-category of audio content sometimes called an audio blog.  But you can also double down by adding that audio content to the written content that now your content is written, video, short-form video, and podcast!

• Audio rooms

  • Clubhouse

  • Linkedin audio events

  • Twitter spaces

Audio rooms have been popping up on social media channels with good reason! This all started with clubhouse and the audio-only rooms, now bigger social media channels such as LinkedIn audio events and Twitter spaces have been adopted. You go to social media to be entertaining and creating an audio room is a way to be live and engage with audio only.

They have gone about it in different ways though where Linkedin audio events are by invite only so only the ones they want in getting in and on Twitter spaces and clubhouse anyone can get in and do audio.

The content though lives only in the live environment when someone actually hears you speak.  Also, you have to make sure you can actually get someone to the room at the time you have found convenient.  There isn’t at the moment anyways to muti use that content at least with software for podcasts. You could be recording with audio with another device though. using these new features on these platforms is going to get what you are saying extra reach than you normally would.

• Audiograms

We feel like audio grams are in a sense what short-form videos are.  They are creative that take a smaller portion of an audio maybe a line or two and create creatives that can be posted on social media to visually see the words displayed or give the appearance that you are watching audio.  The great part about it is you can format those audiograms into reel and TikTok sizes and post audiograms as such! Just another way to use content in multiple formats for the same subject

• Voice search

This type of content appears like it has died off but perhaps it hasn’t. This is creating content for devices like Google Home and Alexa when someone is asking a question or seeking information.  Search engines have to adapt to understanding language in their natural spoken language but it’s not 100% there.

So you have to write content in a way that is for how you would say it in a voice search.  You are not going to get credit though for giving that information when google home and/or Alexa give the information.

So there is less of a reason for creating content for this other than to help the big guys amass zero-click search results.  That’s a whole other subject! The conversational tone needed for voice content though can make your written text that much more valuable for the copy you write as you put someone next to you instead of across from you.

• Radio/Streaming radio

This time of content naturally lives in commercials on the radio and tends to be more punchy content.  You could add the audio to your website though when calls come into your place of business or perhaps in an audio gram above to be used in social media posts.

• Graphics

• Photography

• Product Images

We might not think of images as the actual content, but they are and they take creativity and time to produce.  Especially if you create image content that is of your own product services, teams, or brand other content. We use branded images that start with the fun and silly images of ourselves and created a branded image to add them to by combining the text of tups.  The end results in an image but it’s a compilation of several sub-parts.

As you can see there are many types of content that can be produced.  There are several ways in which content marketing can go wrong.

First not producing content marketing at all and assuming everyone knows what, how, and the why of what you do.  The second is not being consistent with your content marketing.  If you are just jumping on the latest trend of content marketing and not building layers of content it will fail.  Third, you are not connecting the marketing content and placing it on your hub of online marketing, your website.  Fourth you are not promoting the content in a variety of different ways online.  Lastly, you are not creating content through the marketing funnel of understanding what you do and tying it to the next logical step.  All of this takes developing a strong digital marketing strategy and evaluating it every three to six months to see where you need to go next.

Rather Listen?

Listen to “Ep #54 – What are the Types of Content Marketing” on Spreaker.