Types of Content Marketing

What Are The Different Types Of Content Marketing?

There are many different types of content marketing, including:

Blogging

Video

Podcasting

Infographics

Email

Visual content

Ebooks

Lead magnets

Whitepapers

Slideshare presentations

Quizzes/tools

Checklists

Courses

Webinars

Slide decks

Free apps

Social media posts

And more.

Even in-person product demos, seminars, physical leaflets, and phone books can be considered types of content marketing.

The key is that the content provides information or entertainment, usually for free, in support of a business goal.

(Even if that goal isn’t obvious at first glance)

For example, here are four things that many businesses want to get out of their content marketing efforts:

Driving traffic to key landing pages

Spreading brand awareness

Building relationships

Bringing in revenue

Generating social shares and backlinks

In fact, what you’re reading right now is content marketing.

I use this blog (and my YouTube channel) to build my audience with free content.

Backlinko – Blog post and YouTube video

Then, offer premium training courses to my followers.

And every influencer on Instagram is doing (or attempting to do) content marketing denver in order to build an audience they can later monetize in some way.

Instagram influencers

Why Use Different Types of Content Marketing?

When most people think about content marketing, they think of one word:

Blogging.

Blogging is great. It’s how I built Backlinko. But there’s no denying that other forms of content are growing super quickly.

Just over the past year, the podcasting world grew from 18.5 million episodes to 29 million.

Podcast growth over the past year

And YouTube now gets billions of views every day.

YouTube – One billion hours daily

So when you publish content in multiple formats, you can tap into those growing audiences.

Plus, publishing different types of content lets you be “everywhere” your audience spends time online.

For example, someone may not see your latest article when you share it on social media.

But maybe they’ll hear your podcast episode on their way home from work.

Plus, some things are just better suited to certain formats.

How would you prefer to learn to dance:

From a video or from a written article?

Best Practices

Decide On Your Primary Content Type

Your first step is to figure out what type of content marketing you want to focus on.

“Focus on” doesn’t mean that you need to ONLY create content using that one format. It’s just that this will be the content format that you put the most time, energy and money behind.

Here’s how to choose the best type of content marketing for you.

Choose a Format Ideal For Your Niche

Think about what format works best for the topics you want to cover.

For example, if you’re teaching karate, a podcast doesn’t really make much sense. But videos are PERFECT.

On the other hand, if you’re teaching people how to bake, you probably want to go with written recipes in the form of articles.

(Even though videos can work there too).

That said:

Outside of obvious examples (like karate), there isn’t one “perfect” format for each niche topic. So I wouldn’t get bogged down on this step.

Just make sure that the format you choose fits with the topics you’re going to cover.

Use Formats That Your Audience Already Consumes

Does your audience spend all day and night on YouTube?

Grab a camera and start shooting videos.

In B2B? Text-based LinkedIn posts make more sense than Facebook Live.

Fortunately, you don’t need to guess what types of content your audience likes.

Check Reddit, Facebook Groups, or other places your audience hangs out online to see what they’re talking about.