Introduction

Content marketing is all about creating high quality, relevant content that your prospects will respond to, but don’t be fooled; there are more ways to build successful campaigns than just with article or blog content.

When just starting out in content marketing, you’ll likely hear that your focus should be on creating content that will drive the most traffic to your website, maximizing your exposure, but if you want to build truly successful campaigns, you must make sure that your campaigns convert that traffic into either return customer’s, leads, or sales.

If you are basing your content marketing on articles alone, you should consider switching gears, and start focusing on additional content formats that will generate a positive response from those who visit your site. Providing prospects with different content types will satisfy all visitors, rather than those who only wish to read text-based content.  

So, what do you need to do?

You need to jack your campaigns up so that you are tapping into all of the most powerful content formats and really drill down into what your niche market really wants from you.

Makes sense, right?

The purpose of creating highly-informative, engaging and interactive content that will compel visitors into clicking on your purchase links, signing up for your newsletter or successfully completing another action that will likely result in a sale is all that really matters. That’s where your focus needs to lie, and the easiest way to achieve that is to expand your outreach by providing the types of content your readers want most.

The great news is that content marketing is one of the easiest ways to connect with your prospects, especially if you have a pulse on your market and know exactly what visitor is most interested in.  

So, why do so many content marketers struggle to generate traffic and sales from their content marketing campaigns?

Out of the dozens of content marketing strategies that we’ve evaluated over the years, one thing stood out to me time and time again: so many marketers were focusing on just one type of content!  And for the most part, that was the written word.

This included articles, reports and newsletters that offer regular content to those who subscribe. 

Now don’t get me wrong – this type of content can be exceptionally valuable, and every content marketing campaign should provide at least one option involving this form of content. However, content marketing should reach far beyond just articles themselves. If you truly want to maximize your revenue and build a recognized brand in your industry, you should harness the power of alternative content marketing strategies. 

For many, these alternative formats will accelerate their campaigns and boost traffic and revenue almost instantly.

So, what kind of content should you create that will yield the best results?  

This special report will reveal a few different types of content that visitor’s will absolutely love, leaving you with return customers while providing them with a memorable on-site experience. 

Let’s begin!

Creating A Content Pillar

Before we dive into the different content formats that you should be tapping into, let’s take a quick look at the importance of creating and understanding a content pillar, and how you can utilize this strategy to cover all your bases.

A content pillar is simply a structure that includes 3 key types of content:

• Content designed to educate – typically the cornerstone of every campaign.
• Content based on news, current events and data-driven material. This is where you tap into what is currently popular and use it to drive traffic to your website.
• Content designed to entertain and encourage social distribution and sharing. This is the kind of content that most often goes viral.

Content that is designed to educate will consist of your most informative, useful content. Depending on your market, this could include straightforward, utility content that your market will find educational and informative. 

It also works towards portraying you as an expert on the topic, and an authority figure in your market, which is critical.

Content that is based on news, current events, or popular topics help drive in ongoing traffic, and while it can be time-sensitive material that can’t be used on a long-term basis, this type of content used to easily drive in massive traffic based on current hot topics that your audience are actively looking for.

And finally, content that is designed to encourage sharing via social media, email, or word-of-mouth, is always an important part of content marketing campaigns because this is the stuff that can go viral.  

This content should be interesting, fun and entertaining and is more often light-hearted and sometimes not particularly relevant to your product or service, but used to get more eyes on your videos and encourage click-through traffic.

Consider using all three content types when creating your campaigns to form a rock-solid content marketing strategy.

Video Killed The Radio Star

Do your content marketing campaigns include video content? If not, you are missing out on a huge segment of the market! 

Video can be highly engaging, interesting, and can capture attention faster and easier than almost any other content marketing vehicle.

With video, you can provoke emotion, encourage response and connect with your prospect in a far more meaningful way than nearly any other type of content available to you.  

If you aren’t using video content in your marketing campaigns you are leaving a ton of potential prospects out of your reach, and these prospects are going to go to your competition – the guys with video content.

Think about it:  Not everyone enjoys reading, and not everyone has the time to read lengthy articles.  But everyone watches video. 

Video content can be as short or as lengthy as you like, and if you aren’t experienced in video creation, there are several online tools that will help you create compelling videos in a matter of minutes.  (I’ll provide a few resources at the end of this report to make it easier on you).  

With video content, your focus needs to be on delivering a compelling message to your prospects. 

Your video campaigns should always include:

• Content that creates brand recognition. 
• Entertains your viewer.
• Content that is unique, compelling and fresh.
• Content that takes your prospect on a visual journey.
• Content that involves emotion. You want to make them remember you!
• Content that reminds your visitors of the benefits of using your product/service.
• Content that builds trust.
• Content that reinforces your brand.

Using video to create viral campaigns that people will thoroughly enjoy will skyrocket traffic AND sales. 

Plus, with video, people can easily share with their friends, family and colleagues so without any extra effort on your part, you could end up with a viral campaign that is being distributed to millions of people, all around the world!

In my list above, I mentioned “reinforcing your brand” and “creating brand recognition”.  These are two very different things, but you’ll want to make sure to include both elements in every video campaign.

Reinforcing your brand simply means that you want to leave your visitors in a positive mindset in regards to your business. You want them to walk away (or click away) from your video feeling better about themselves in some way. If you can connect your brand with personal feelings of empowerment, your campaigns will skyrocket.

And when I mentioned creating brand recognition, here’s what I mean. You don’t just want to offer your visitor with one video. The more people see multiple videos from you, the more likely it will be that they will remember your business, and your brand.  

So, consider creating a series of videos that are all connected in some way – whether it’s by topic or genre.   

Visual Winners

Infographics took the Internet by storm years ago and continue to be amongst the most popular forms of content online.  

With infographics, you are providing a clear and concise visual guide for those who visit your website, capturing their attention quickly ensuring that your material doesn’t get lost in the information-jungle.

Infographics are an innovative way to draw attention to your material, while giving your visitor’s something new and interesting. And because it’s basically text transformed into an image, it’s also very easy to create.

And best of all, infographics can make your content go viral, especially as it will enable you to tap into an extended network of visitor’s by featuring your graphics on websites like Pinterest and Instagram. Infographics go far beyond just telling people what your brand is about – instead, you can show them.  This is a far more effective method!

Here are a ton of examples of popular infographics:

It won’t take you long before you realize just why these graphic-based promo tools are so popular. They lay everything out in one quick snapshot, engaging visitors and making it really easy to read through a ton of information in a short amount of time.

The power of visual content can be witnessed just by looking through your Facebook newsfeed as well.  Look at how many people are sharing pictures (and infographics), liking the content and spreading the word amongst their followers and friends!

And infographics are just plain easy to use. You can embed them into your website easily, and you can also provide that embed code to others so that people can easily integrate your infographic into their own blogs or websites!

And finally, infographics can simply make your content easier to understand. People tend to respond to visual aids far easier than they do to text-based ones, so by incorporating infographics into your content marketing strategies you are giving your prospects bits and pieces of relevant content in bite-size chunks that are easy to understand, and act on.

I’ll include a couple of resources at the end of this report that will help you create stunning infographics quickly, and easily. 

Slideshare Presentations

Video and infographics are just two easy ways to increase exposure and maximize the effectiveness of your content marketing campaigns.

Here is another way to build a successful campaign: Slideshare Presentations!

Do you really want to capture their attention? Consider creating a video presentation in the form of a slideshare for your website visitors! 

Slideshare is owned by Linkedin. It’s basically a community for slideshow presentations where you can upload your presentation (also called “Decks” by people in the industry), and drive in traffic!

Slideshare also allows you to add videos and infographics as well, so you can build different types of campaigns using this one powerful resource. 

By creating SlideShare presentations, you are combining two of the most popular content types: visuals and written content. By combining these two formats you can build highly engaging presentations, all within one easy-to-use platform.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating your Slideshare presentations:

• The first thing you should do is create a storyline (also called a storyboard) that outlines your SlideShare from start to finish.  Keep it simple and very clear so that your viewers can quickly grasp your core message.  Break content down into bite-size chunks.

• Outline your goals for each SlideShare presentation. What do you want to achieve? What to hope for viewers to do after watching your presentation? Are you creating these to entertain, get email subscribers, build authority in your market? Knowing your objectives early on will help you build laser-targeted presentations that will yield the type of response you are looking for.

• Come up with a catchy title for your presentation. This is a very important step because you really want to get noticed and ensure your SlideShare stands out, and speaks to your audience.

• Use bold fonts, headlines and sub-headlines to capture attention and keep viewers engaged in your content, and use bullet-points to highlight important notes that you want them to pay extra attention to.

• Make sure your presentation is meaty, provides value and then add a call to action to the end of your presentation in order to encourage responses. 

That’s all there is to it!  Are you ready to get started? Visit:

http://www.SlideShare.net to sign up and build your first SlideShare presentation. 

Content Will Always Be King

Regardless of the different content types that you incorporate into your content marketing campaigns, high-quality, informative and relevant content that your audience is desperate for will always be King.

Consider other ways of transforming static article content into highlyengaging content magnets. 

For example:

Could you create a how-to guide for your market that provides useful information on a certain topic?  

You could present this in a series of blog posts, articles, a website or a downloadable guide (encouraging opt-in’s and building your list). Or, you could deliver the entire thing as an email series! 

Take advantage of every opportunity you can to demonstrate to your audience that you are an authority in your market and that you are here to help them make informed decisions, learn something new, or stay abreast on important topics and information in your industry. 

Double-up with a combination of visual and text-based content campaigns. 

Example:  Create a highly informative blog post and embed an engaging video into the content. Or, create an illustration that will provide extra dimension to your content, or perhaps create a graph or data chart that highlights the material that you have just touched on. 

Take it a step further by providing access to additional components or resources that tie into your main content, such as spreadsheets, data charts and graphs that support your information and make it easier to understand.  

Doing this will have an incredible impact on your audience and amplify your marketing message (while keeping your user’s attention).

Provide case studies that showcase your offer and the success of those who have followed your system or used your product or service successfully. 

Nothing speaks to a potential prospect than by seeing live examples of those who have achieved success!

And don’t forget the power of memes!  Memes are shared all over the Internet, especially on social sites like Facebook and twitter. Consider creating a series of memes that are funny and entertaining (and likely to be shared).

Conclusion

If you expand your content marketing campaigns to include various formats that give your website visitor more options, you’ll quickly see your campaigns soar, and response rates will skyrocket. 

Try to incorporate at least 2-3 content options into your current marketing funnel, and keep a lookout for what your competitors are doing successfully, and what people are responding to so you are always on top, with a strong pulse on your market.

Content marketing is a powerful way to connect with prospects, get to know your market, and deliver exceptional value that will put you in your customer’s line of sight, while building a recognized brand as a leader in informative and useful content, while providing potential customers with many reasons to return to your website again, and again.

I wish you the very best with your content marketing endeavors! 

Resources

Here are a few resources to help you build the best content marketing campaigns possible: 

>> Create interactive videos, easily!  Go: https://animoto.com/  

>> Capture emails easily and turn your content into PDF files with a few clicks!  Get it: https://postgopher.com/  

>> Create infographics easily using:

https://www.canva.com/create/infographics/ and https://piktochart.com/  

>> Create Slideshare presentations in minutes even if you’ve never done it before!  Go: http://www.SlideShare.net