Content Types: Essential Formats for Audience Engagement

Everyone wants the most engagement, brand awareness, and links online.

As you know, getting high levels of engagement and brand awareness is not easy. Hundreds of companies are trying to rank for the same content you are ranking for. Thousands of businesses are selling the same product or service you're selling, and millions of content marketers are creating content each day.

To put things into perspective, take a look at the following statistics taken from Hubspot:

• 56% of marketers say blog content creation is effective
• 82% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing
• Content marketing gets three times more leads than paid search advertising.
• 54% of decision-makers spend at least an hour per week reading thought leadership content
• 80% of marketers that use video marketing report that video has resulted in more sales

That last statistic gives me the chills! This means that content is a key ingredient influencing a person's buying decisions.

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You can convince your audience to purchase through whatever content you put out there. People are looking at the content surrounding any product or service that captures their interest. And they can either run away from you and go to your competitor or feel so related to your brand that they would want to buy from you.

This is where the importance of creating high-quality and highly targeted content comes in. You can't just produce content left and right without a strategy. You must create the right content for your specific audience and deliver it to them promptly.

Content means power. We've all heard of the famous "Content is King" phrase. However, I like to think of content not just as a king but as a never-ending source of power in your hands.

We, who dedicate our day-to-day to content marketing, know that for a piece of content to be successful, you must differentiate the content and pick the right type of content to resonate with your audience.

Buyers are becoming increasingly selective with not just the products and brands they buy but the content they consume.

Nowadays, people tune out content that doesn't resonate with them. For this, you must understand your ideal buyer and ask yourself the following questions:

1. Where does your ideal buyer look for information?
2. What channels does your ideal buyer use to look for information?
3. What does your ideal buyer like?
4. What don't they like?
5. What are your ideal buyers searching for on Google?

Most importantly, what type of content do they consume most often? And what type of content do they engage with the most?

How Content Marketing Benefits Your Business

Before I dive into what are the most effective content types to engage with your audience, I want to highlight a few of the benefits that content marketing will bring to your business:

• It helps you target your audience throughout every stage in their buyer's journey.

Every person goes through several stages before finally deciding to purchase from you. It's only logical that you want to be present in each stage.

How do you do that?

Through helpful and educational content.

Content is one of the best ways to not only attract your audience, but it helps to engage with them and, later on, delight them.

When buyers go through the awareness stage, they realize they have a problem. You can provide content addressing that specific challenge.

In the consideration stage, a buyer is aware of their problem and has several options to help them solve it. You can provide content addressing all those possible solutions.

Furthermore, when a buyer is going through the decision stage, they've already made a decision. In this case, you can provide content regarding their specific solution and keep delighting them. Delighting your customers ultimately leads to them turning into advocates of your brand.

• It boosts your ROI.

Your ROI can be positively influenced by content. So pay attention to the type of content you produce versus the content your audience interacts with the most.