How To Embrace Newer Content Formats

Marketing, with it’s many content formats, is an important component of conducting business in this digital age. The various forms of content marketing can do everything from promoting your new product to bringing in fresh social media followers. Additionally, it has exceptional creative potential — but it can be difficult to get right.

It isn’t just a matter of the production process being challenging or costly: it’s also a matter of knowing which options to take. You don’t have unlimited time, so you can’t produce every possible type of content. You need to prioritize somehow.

Now that we’re in the era of digital marketing, think about what to include in your content marketing mix. Well, if you’re willing to leave your comfort zone, and provided you understand the importance of keeping things simple, you should focus on embracing the newer content formats — so here are some tips for managing it:

Experiment With Social Media Stories

Social media is vital for content marketing — and in recent years, various social media platforms have come to support the story format. What does it involve? Quite simply, it allows you (the user) to arrange content sequentially. This content can consist of images, videos, audio, text, and even interactive elements such as polls. And because stories don’t last long (usually 24 hours), they push followers to pay attention.

You can do some very interesting things with this format. One possibility is to chart the course of an event. Another option is to allow your followers to make key decisions about your daily activity. You can even tell a fictional story in an inventive way using different formats in the process. Here are some neat examples of Instagram Stories to inspire you.

Choose Some Suitable Video Styles

It makes sense to start by addressing video because it’s such a rich area for content marketing. The benefits are obvious — it’s eye-catching, versatile, and crosses platforms with ease — and there’s so much room for creativity. If you’re going to use video, pick out the styles that best match the nature of your business.

For instance, you could create video tutorials if you provide something (product or service) that’s particularly complicated, or if you want to demonstrate expertise. If you really want to immerse people (maybe you run events), then you could create 360-degree videos. No matter what you pick, though, you should be able to keep costs low: a decent smartphone can record great 2D video, 360-degree cameras are getting cheaper all the time, and low-cost video editing apps abound (most 3D footage is monoscopic, stored in 2D imagery, so you don’t need special tools).

Come Up With A Podcast Idea

Podcasts are doing big business, dominating the listening habits of people throughout the globe. They’re also extremely accessible. All you need is a decent microphone and you can start recording — if you write a script ahead of time and keep things succinct, you might not even need to do any editing afterward.

To come up with an idea, think about what your industry audience cares about, and what it wants to listen to. Which podcasts are proving successful, and why? If there’s something different you can offer, give it a try. If it doesn’t work, then you won’t have wasted that much time — and if it does, it could be a huge addition to your content marketing strategy.

Get to Grips With Infographics

The infographic format is a reliable performer because it cuts to the point and puts a lot of emphasis on aesthetics, making it great for social media in particular. The challenge with infographics isn’t one of production, as it’s easy to find free infographic makers that use templates: the challenge pertains to the concepts and data.

It can take time to come up with an idea for an infographic. And of course, researching all the necessary data can take quite a lot of time as well. Due to this, don’t expect to start producing them in great numbers. Instead, aim to make just one that really works. With time, you’ll learn how you should approach an infographic and whether the format really suits you.

Summary On Using Various Content Formats

Newer content formats aren’t necessarily better by default, so it isn’t a matter of throwing away everything that’s ever worked for you. Instead, it’s about bringing new options into the mix, giving you a more creative scope and letting you try new approaches.

This is good for the efficacy of your content marketing, because you’ll reach new people in fresh and impactful ways. It’s also good for your morale. This is because you’ll get away from the grind of writing the same basic social media posts again and again. Make this a priority for your marketing plan — you won’t regret it.

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Author Bio

Rodney Laws is an ecommerce expert with over a decade of experience in building online businesses. Check out his reviews on EcommercePlatforms.io and you’ll find practical tips that you can use to build the best online store for your business. Connect with him on Twitter @EcomPlatformsio.