A key challenge in content marketing is delivering a regular flow of content that is both engaging and sustainable. InDepth's preferred approach is a pattern that builds up to peak activity and value, followed by troughs that allow time for planning and research. For example, you may have four quarters of activity throughout a calendar year, each culminating in the launch of your highest-value content.
At the lowest tier of content value, it is good to have a range of relatively easy-to-produce content types that you can publish at least once a week to help keep you "top of mind." These will be topics "of interest" to your prospects and customers, including staff profiles, comments on industry news, etc. These kinds of articles can be published regularly, typically every week.
The next tier of content should be of "practical use" to your audience and be still in your comfort zone by covering topics you know well. These are typically best practices and technical help articles. There may be several such articles in each cycle of your content calendar, typically fortnightly or monthly.
The highest tier of content is thought leadership and other high production-value content items, such as downloadable e-books, videos or animations, designed to set you apart from your competition. Such content needs to impress and is generally a lot more work. Aim to release these items at the end of your publishing cycle, typically once a quarter or biannually. They should be associated with some fanfare, including social media promotion, newsletters or even launch events.
Below, we explore six common content types that can be seamlessly integrated into your regular content marketing campaigns, starting with the easiest through to those that require higher investment:
Social media commenting
As social media plays a critical role in marketing, commenting on other people's or companies' content is an easy but fraught way to engage your audience. Don't be a "lazy liker" where you fade into the background among dozens of other reactions. Instead, if something is worth sharing with your audience, take a few minutes to make a thoughtful comment, as it will be far more noticeable and appreciated by the post's author. When commenting, start with "why" you are commenting. Avoid superficial "congratulations" type comments and get to the heart of why you are commenting, e.g. "I congratulate you because…." See the example of a comment I made above. In the remaining items in this list, I do not include social media posts as a separate content type as they should ideally just summarise and link to a blog post on one of the following content types below, driving traffic to your website.
Profiles
Profiles can be of people or organisations. The easy win is profiling team members within your organisation, which helps put a human face on your business and opens up the scope for more emotional rather than logically driven content. These profiles can be
a form of Q&A that is fast and easy to generate. Profiling people outside your
organisation, such as leaders in your industry, customers, and others, opens the scope
for more powerfully persuasive content. Interview these people with questions that benefit your audience and showcase why these people are admirable. The aim is to applaud what they do and bask in the reflected glow of their success. The same process can apply to profiling non-competitive organisations, such as research organisations, not-for-profits, industry associations and government departments. Organisational profiles aim to show how their services can benefit your audience.
Industry news
Commenting on what is happening in your industry is another easy way of generating good-quality content. Industry news can include recently released government reports, new standards, the opening of grant opportunities etc. You can't comment on everything; you are not a media company, so the aim is to select news items with an associated authoritative report or some other information source of substance. The more authoritative the industry news source, the more substantive your post will be. The key here is to move quickly so your audience hears it first from you. It is also essential not just to provide a notice and link. Take time to read the materials, identify items of interest and highlight or summarise them so your audience does not have to read the full report. Adding insight to your posts takes more effort, but your audience will appreciate the effort and more strongly associate your company with the industry news, keeping you top-of-mind.
Case Studies
Case studies are the best way to showcase your organisation's products and services. They are also "ever-green", meaning their value can last for a long time, so it is worth investing more time and money into them than other content types. For example, I recently worked with a company to generate several animations that showed how their product worked, reducing the number of words in the case studies and making them much more visual. Engaging images are essential to illustrate your case study, so plan to obtain these during any project. Case studies should start with the customer or end-user benefit, highlighting any emotional touch points as much as possible. Show how the product or service transforms lives, saves the planet, impacts the bottom line, etc. In the example below, the first line focuses on the millions of cancer patients that could benefit from this technology and how more accurate radiation dose measurement could prevent horrific burns. Only after you have established the benefits (and gained attention) should you focus on how your company helped deliver those benefits.
Best practices
Best practices are primarily educational items that are useful to your audience. Topics can include core business processes from marketing and design through to manufacturing and distribution, as well as a vast range of incidental topics such as standards compliance, tips for doing things well, traps to avoid, technical deep-dives to showcase your expertise, etc. Take the time to dissect the range of best practices and develop a well-structured plan to cover all the topics applicable to your audience, then prioritise them and systematically schedule them throughout your publishing calendar. A key objective of this kind of content item is to stand out from the crowd as much as possible. It is easy to use AI tools to generate these kinds of articles in seconds. However, to be noticed and considered in purchasing decisions, aim to incorporate your expert commentary and insider tips, integrating illustrative case study material as much as possible. So, to be effective, more time and effort are needed to deliver best-practice content.
Thought Leadership
Thought leadership content goes beyond providing opinions or insightful comments to taking an innovative "position" on topics of importance to your audience. The aim is to capture your audience's attention, engage with interested prospects, learn from them and transform feedback into updated thought leadership materials that build on your original leadership position (see illustrative diagram below). Thought leadership is the most costly form of content marketing, requiring extensive thinking and planning. However, it is more effective than any other form of content in cutting through information overload and building awareness of your brand purpose, which underpins truly effective marketing. In the example shown right, this article was the fifth and last item in an "Australian made" campaign that built on comments and reactions from customers and industry players. While many people were calling for greater supply chain resilience in the post-covid era, this campaign raised the profile of this electronics manufacturer resulting in invitations to speak at multiple events and articles in mainstream media.
The next level again is to tie all the above content types together in a strategic campaign that supports specific marketing campaigns. However, for companies new to content marketing, it is OK to walk before you run and simply aim for a regular flow of content. A good start is to assign a content marketing budget, allocate adequate time for planning, and then focus on delivering a regular flow of content with various content types that keep you top of mind while building value to a peak that sets you apart from the competition.
InDepth Communication will work with you to determine your desired frequency and range of content types, then deliver a costed schedule and adjust it for your budget.