Marketing is an essential aspect of establishing your business’ name in your chosen industry. It’s how you promote your products or services to the public and hope that your efforts pay off in the form of revenue. But the business practice is much more complicated than that.
There was a time when marketing was as simple as placing ads in the newspaper and buying time slots on the radio so that people will hear your business’ jingle music. From then on, marketing strategies have only become far more complex because it’s growing prominent in the digital sphere.
With the people across the globe connected online, the challenge of marketing now lies in how you can grab their attention and hold it long enough to generate sales. This is possible through the various forms of content marketing and using them optimally to achieve results.
Blogs
The art of blogging is a tried-and-tested method of digital marketing that can be really great for business. Blogs are mediums of communication that can be likened to the act of directly speaking with your audience, even though it’s not happening in real-time.
Any topic can be turned into an article that you can post on your company’s website and linked through your social media accounts. However, for blogs to be an effective medium, they should provide new angles and substantial information and be relevant to your audience.
This can be achieved by writing about topics related to your products or services, but not about them directly. The reason for this is that there are thousands upon thousands of articles online, which is why it’s vital to ensure that what you are saying has not been said by others before.
Videos
There can be instances where text-heavy articles are too much, but images are insufficient to appropriately capture what you want to say. In such situations, videos can be the perfect medium to create an impact on your audience. Your message can be delivered through an animated or live-action video that is disseminated online.
Unlike blog posts or infographics, creating well-produced videos will take more skill that may come at an expensive cost. So if you really believe that making a video is the right medium to carry your message, you should place your money in the right hands.
Fortunately, this industry is still hot, so finding a video production company that can bring your ideas to life won’t be too difficult. Videos are perfect methods to inspire a call to action. For instance, if your company is promoting sustainable alternatives for common commodities, then your video can be about the effects of single-use plastic on the environment and the surrounding wildlife.
Infographics
Pictures are indeed worth a thousand words, but that shouldn’t be taken too literally. Infographics are great tools to deliver the information that your audience should know about your business. It can be filled with statistics, short descriptions, graphs, and other information that should be disseminated to the public.
But infographics shouldn’t be overcrowded with information because doing so can be discouraging to read, and in turn, become counterproductive. This form of content must be simple, direct, and meaningful to your audience. It needs to create an impact through the power of imagery and carefully crafted words.
You can use it to share information through your social media platforms or as supporting evidence to strengthen your blog posts. Infographics can also act as standalone content, provided that they are punctuated by compelling points when you publish them.
Social Media
Unlike the three types of content discussed above, social media marketing focuses more on the aspect of engaging your audience. Mediums such as articles, videos, or infographics are what you use to deliver your message, but social media marketing is how you can see the public’s reception towards your message.
This can include the number of comments that your posts get as soon as they are published, the people who are seeing your posts, and the shares that your posts get. Analytics play a big role in gauging whether your social media marketing strategies are effective, which is indicative of when you should change strategies.
Beyond getting wide audience engagement and public response, the main purpose of creating content and disseminating it through social media is to generate leads. This means that all the attention you’re getting is useless if it doesn’t lead to profitable outcomes for your business.
No business can survive on one medium of content alone. Effective content marketing manifests in the knowledgeable use of all these mediums to find the right kind that your audience responds to. These types can be used simultaneously or combined in one post to create texture in your content. Knowing these key differences will allow you to analyze which ones to use to deliver your message efficiently.
