Upgrade content marketing: 16 working ways. Part 2
We continue to pump content marketing. In this part we will talk about cases, lifestyle posts, content generated by users themselves, expert posts and much more. Join now!
Missed the first part of the article ? No problem. Here is the link. I advise you to start with her. Then you will have a holistic view of the most popular and effective types of content.
And if you have already read the first part , then take the second portion of useful content.
')
Everyone loves cases. Because it is through the cases you can find out what you really are worth. If you provide any services and maintain a corporate blog, be sure to tell about your cases not only on the landing page, but also in articles.
This kind of content is generated very simply, if somewhere you collect all the information about your customers, the services provided, the results of cooperation, etc. With such structured information, the case description will take quite a bit of time. And it is the cases that tell about your expertise better than you.
In addition, case studies as content are very easy to read. As a rule, there is no theory in them, but only numbers, images and conclusions / tips.
For example, the service for A / B testing sites VWO has a whole section with cases:
This section performs two functions at once:
Great view of the content. By the way, before you publish the cases of your clients, get their consent. Otherwise, an unpleasant situation can happen if a client accidentally stumbles upon this article. As practice shows, most companies refuse to publish their cases. Although this can be influenced by offering some bonuses in the form of discounts, premium rates and the like.
Article in topic - 10 successful cases A / B testing
The best content is the one that is generated by itself. Costs are minimal. Content marketing optimization, so to speak. But to achieve this is difficult.
Thinking about this kind of content, the GoPro company immediately comes to my mind, whose fans generate hundreds of videos every day. At the same time, GoPro itself promotes the best videos and helps to make them popular. The result - everyone is happy. The company receives content and PR. Clients - PR and pleasure.
Wouldn't it be nice to be in the tops of Youtube with your own video shot on a new GoPro camera. Of course it's cool! Anyone will like it.
At the same time, shooting videos on GoPro and uploading them to the Internet, each user is actually promoting the company. It is the users who generate the most content for GoPro. Although the company itself shoots very cool commercials and acts as a partner of significant events. But it already flies a pretty penny. What is it worth the jump of Felix Baumgartner from the stratosphere, shot on GoPro?
Now you do not know how to force users to generate content for you?
Some examples of other companies:
There is another interesting way to generate content at no cost. This is Quora.com - a site where some people ask questions and others answer them. Every day there are hundreds of questions - and very stupid, and very serious.
For example, when I wrote an article about Growth Hacking and I needed some cool examples of hacks, I took them from there. Before me, not one person was interested in this question, but competent people answered it and even attached links to detailed material. That's all. No long searches. No mental expenses. I just went to this site, through the search I found my question and received the necessary content generated by other users.
This method is used in Russia units. I do not even know why. Perhaps the problem is not knowing English. If you do not have such a problem, then dare.
Article in the topic - Do you know what Growth Hacking is? [11 cases inside]
Sometimes it is very useful to dilute serious and useful posts with a lifestyle style. These can be images, videos or articles about the team or how you work on projects, how you develop your product.
Why is this kind of content worth using?
Because potential clients like it when real, ordinary, funny and pleasant people are behind the site, service, and legal entity. Live people!
Everyone is tired of reading these standard texts about the company. It feels as if the company is controlled by robots, and the texts are also written by robots. But after each project real people are hiding - interesting and pleasant. So why not show yourself in all its glory? Stay close to your target audience. And she will reach for you.
Here is an example of the “About Us” page for Rent the Runway:
Agree that it is nice to see radiant photos of people from this company. So what prevents you from doing such posts every few months, writing about the company's achievements, about what inspires you? This is definitely awesome.
By the way, now such a concept as 'transparency' (open, transparency) is fashionable abroad, when companies share almost all information about a company, post it in open access, on corporate blogs. As practice shows, these posts differ widely on the Internet. Firstly, it is interesting to many how the company develops, how it achieves its goals, what mistakes it makes. Secondly, it improves the credibility of the company. If she doesn’t hide anything and is so open to everyone, then she can be trusted. And it works.
Inspired by this topic, I launched my “Development Boosta.ru” column (coming soon to the site), where at the beginning of each month I will talk about my achievements, failures and development goals. But the goal is big - to make a very cool internet marketing portal. A lot of ideas and in the near future they will all be translated into reality.
Article in the topic - How to increase the number of content reposts
A very cool view of content in terms of distribution and audience reach.
To create expert posts you have to work hard. In a simplified form, this process consists of the following steps:
I took this sequence of actions from a recent article on Texterra - How to conduct an expert survey: a step-by-step guide with examples from our practice.
If you decide to create an expert post, I strongly advise you to read this article. It will save you a lot of time and help create high-quality material.
By the way, at the beginning of this paragraph I said that such posts ensure maximum distribution and coverage of the audience, but did not explain why.
First, each expert who will take part in the article is likely to share a post on social networks. And, as a rule, such experts have many friends and acquaintances who will pick up this post (someone will do it because of the quality of the post, and someone as a sign of respect).
Secondly, the expert post looks much more serious (more substantial or something) than the post written by your content marketer. Still, it is attended by reputable people, on which many are equal. This will help to attract more audience to it and, possibly, also increase the number of shareings in social networks.
In general, this type of content is not very popular with us. Although in the Western market such articles are the basis of content marketing strategies in any advanced company. Most likely, this is due to the large number of responsive and competent opinion leaders abroad. But if you really want to look at live examples, they definitely are on Vc.ru, Rusbase.vc, TheVillage.
Personally, I really want to check out this kind of content in action. And in the content plan such an idea hangs for a long time, even questions are spelled out, but I still can’t get to it. It is very interesting to find out how responsive our experts will be if they are asked to express their opinion on a specific issue.
Quizzes are an incredibly viral thing that can provide "tons" of traffic to your site.
From our examples, Netology immediately comes to mind with their quiz "Find out if your marketing intuition works." This quiz was launched about 1-5 years ago and very quickly sold around the Runet. Now it is unavailable, since the service through which it was created is already closed. So I would drop the link here.
The essence of the quiz was very simple. It was necessary to choose which version of the page conversion is higher. In fact, it was A / B testing your intuition. After passing the quiz, each participant saw the result in the form of some funny name and funny image. And, most often, share his result in social networks. Thanks to this, the quiz was incredibly viral and brought a lot of traffic to the site (more than 30,000 people).
In order for a quiz to be successful, it must be relevant to the target audience, it is desirable to have beautiful images, not be too protracted, simple and fun at the end - when the result is announced to each past. In many ways, sharing the results depends on how well you present them. The results should be such that they want to share (the main thing is not to be ashamed). So the imagination does not hurt here.
In general, this topic can devote an entire article. And someday I will do it. Since the idea with the quiz is already hanging in the plan. And collected all possible services for this. By the way, there are no Russian-language tools for creating. So you have to use foreign services. One of the most popular is Qzzr . A small quiz in it can be made for free, although the functionality will be limited.
Article in the topic - Startup Plotguru raised the landing page conversion from 9% to 52%. Are you weak?
An interesting kind of content, especially if you can do an interview with popular people in your field. And it should not be just stories about yourself. Ideally, the protagonist of the interview should share useful information, insiders. It should also be dynamic and not too long.
If this is a video interview, then no more than 10-20 minutes. It is unlikely that a longer video will be watched to the end.
If the text format, then you should not write very huge articles. Less is better, but more interesting and more useful. I have often seen huge interviews that are really difficult to read. To finish reading them to the end, you need to be very interested in a particular person.
I really liked how the guys from Perezvoni.com used this kind of content in their promotion strategy. Somehow they managed to negotiate an interview with Igor Mann. Everything turned out very interesting and dynamic.
By the way, the interview can be with the employees of the company. The guys from Texterra are interviewing their own employees who talk about subjects that they are well versed in. Examples here.
So far, few people use content marketing interviews, so you still have the opportunity to get into the train of those who will be the first to move the topic . And those who move the first, have a better chance of success, while the interview has not yet become boring to everyone, as it once happened to banners.
This kind of content is now gaining popularity very quickly. This is due to the fact that it is very convenient to "consume" infographics.
Texts are probably the most inconvenient type of content in terms of user friendliness. Most lazy to read. For example, on Buste, an average of 23-25% of all users read up to the end. Most leaves the page 20-30% of the text. Of course, this may be related to the quality of the content. But if you dive into the research on this topic, you will find that it is also sad for others (and maybe this is normal!)
And with infographics, everything is different. This is visual content in which designers combine beautiful graphic elements (icons) with numbers and text. Moreover, the text in infographics is very small, as a result of which you do not burden the reader .
See how Sacred Source uses infographics in its content strategy:
Looks simple and cool. What do you think?
The same information could be provided in plain text. But I am 100% sure that she wouldn’t look so funny and attractive.
Infographics is, of course, cool, but not everything is as sweet as you think. Infographics has one drawback. And it lies in the fact that it is difficult to do. At a minimum, you will need a good designer who can make an infographic based on your text. Because it needs to be done either well or not at all taken for it.
But still, if you decide to try it yourself, then here are a few services for this - Visual.ly, Infogr.am and Piktochart.com (my favorite).
Article in the topic - How to increase website conversion using images - 6 tips based on successful cases
If you create a lot of content (at least 1 material per week), then in six months / year you will have a lot of cool information. Some of these materials will go to the audience, some - not. Some of these materials will be shared hundreds of times on social networks, and the other part - a couple of dozen times. Somewhere there will be tens of thousands of views, and somewhere 1-2 thousand.
Therefore, I suggest that you analyze all your content, select the one that “went” to the audience and make a selection of the best materials of your blog for a certain period - for example, half a year.
This content really will go and most likely will go well on social networks. And even a large number of current readers will be grateful for such a selection, as many could get acquainted with your site after these articles were published. And in such a post you will give them a second chance to read and “consume” useful information.
And the creation of this type of content does not require any effort. You can manually go through all published posts (this will take more time) or do it in Google Analytics or Yandex.Metrica. In GA, this is done very simply: Go to your dashboards> Behavior> Site Content> All pages> Sort by the number of visits.
Choose the top 10 articles, take a heading and a short description from each article, supplement it with your comment (for example, why this article is worth reading) and publish it on your blog. That's all. A new kind of content is ready. Every six months / year you can remember him. And if you post articles almost every day, you can do it once a month.
I would be very grateful for the repost of this article. I am sure that your friends and colleagues will like it. Buttons for repost to the left and bottom.
Prepared by the blog Boosta.ru and the project Changeagain.me
Read also our other popular articles:
1. They will help you find all the “killers” of the conversion - 10 reports in Google Analytics (5000+ views)
2. The biggest mistake in A / B testing (2,000+ views)
3. 100 ideas for A / B testing. Part One (2000+ views)
4. 100 ideas for A / B testing: Part Two (1000+ views)
5. How to find an idea for an A / B test: heat maps and polls (1000+ views)
Missed the first part of the article ? No problem. Here is the link. I advise you to start with her. Then you will have a holistic view of the most popular and effective types of content.
And if you have already read the first part , then take the second portion of useful content.
')
Cases
Everyone loves cases. Because it is through the cases you can find out what you really are worth. If you provide any services and maintain a corporate blog, be sure to tell about your cases not only on the landing page, but also in articles.
This kind of content is generated very simply, if somewhere you collect all the information about your customers, the services provided, the results of cooperation, etc. With such structured information, the case description will take quite a bit of time. And it is the cases that tell about your expertise better than you.
In addition, case studies as content are very easy to read. As a rule, there is no theory in them, but only numbers, images and conclusions / tips.
For example, the service for A / B testing sites VWO has a whole section with cases:
This section performs two functions at once:
- Convincing potential customers that the service works and benefits other companies.
- It gives useful information to current customers who are not very pumped up in A / B testing and want to see how other companies are conducting successful experiments.
Great view of the content. By the way, before you publish the cases of your clients, get their consent. Otherwise, an unpleasant situation can happen if a client accidentally stumbles upon this article. As practice shows, most companies refuse to publish their cases. Although this can be influenced by offering some bonuses in the form of discounts, premium rates and the like.
Article in topic - 10 successful cases A / B testing
User Generated Content
The best content is the one that is generated by itself. Costs are minimal. Content marketing optimization, so to speak. But to achieve this is difficult.
Thinking about this kind of content, the GoPro company immediately comes to my mind, whose fans generate hundreds of videos every day. At the same time, GoPro itself promotes the best videos and helps to make them popular. The result - everyone is happy. The company receives content and PR. Clients - PR and pleasure.
Wouldn't it be nice to be in the tops of Youtube with your own video shot on a new GoPro camera. Of course it's cool! Anyone will like it.
At the same time, shooting videos on GoPro and uploading them to the Internet, each user is actually promoting the company. It is the users who generate the most content for GoPro. Although the company itself shoots very cool commercials and acts as a partner of significant events. But it already flies a pretty penny. What is it worth the jump of Felix Baumgartner from the stratosphere, shot on GoPro?
Now you do not know how to force users to generate content for you?
Some examples of other companies:
- Burberry is a British company producing cool clothes. In 2009, they launched a marketing campaign in which any buyer could upload photos in Burberry clothing, and others - to comment and rate these photos. It was a cool action, thanks to which a huge number of images were uploaded to the site, the site involvement increased and sales increased as a result.
- Starbucks in 2014 launched a campaign in which clients were invited to make a drawing for a corporate glass. The best option went into production. This action lasted 3 weeks, 4,000 people took part in it. 4,000 customers made drawings, took pictures of them and uploaded them to the site, while others voted for the coolest option. By the way, it was not only a way to engage customers and generate content, but also a way to get a huge amount of fresh ideas for the design of glasses. Crowdsourcing ideas, so to speak.
- The Guardian is a British newspaper (4 million unique visitors per day). Launched the company "master of the weekend." The company offered its readers to do something cool on the weekend and simply post a tweet with a photo of this action and the hashtag #owntheweekend. Of course, not just like that, but for the opportunity to win the iPad Mini. Hundreds of people participated in the action, a huge number of tweets and funny images were generated.
There is another interesting way to generate content at no cost. This is Quora.com - a site where some people ask questions and others answer them. Every day there are hundreds of questions - and very stupid, and very serious.
For example, when I wrote an article about Growth Hacking and I needed some cool examples of hacks, I took them from there. Before me, not one person was interested in this question, but competent people answered it and even attached links to detailed material. That's all. No long searches. No mental expenses. I just went to this site, through the search I found my question and received the necessary content generated by other users.
This method is used in Russia units. I do not even know why. Perhaps the problem is not knowing English. If you do not have such a problem, then dare.
Article in the topic - Do you know what Growth Hacking is? [11 cases inside]
Lifestyle
Sometimes it is very useful to dilute serious and useful posts with a lifestyle style. These can be images, videos or articles about the team or how you work on projects, how you develop your product.
Why is this kind of content worth using?
Because potential clients like it when real, ordinary, funny and pleasant people are behind the site, service, and legal entity. Live people!
Everyone is tired of reading these standard texts about the company. It feels as if the company is controlled by robots, and the texts are also written by robots. But after each project real people are hiding - interesting and pleasant. So why not show yourself in all its glory? Stay close to your target audience. And she will reach for you.
Here is an example of the “About Us” page for Rent the Runway:
Agree that it is nice to see radiant photos of people from this company. So what prevents you from doing such posts every few months, writing about the company's achievements, about what inspires you? This is definitely awesome.
By the way, now such a concept as 'transparency' (open, transparency) is fashionable abroad, when companies share almost all information about a company, post it in open access, on corporate blogs. As practice shows, these posts differ widely on the Internet. Firstly, it is interesting to many how the company develops, how it achieves its goals, what mistakes it makes. Secondly, it improves the credibility of the company. If she doesn’t hide anything and is so open to everyone, then she can be trusted. And it works.
Inspired by this topic, I launched my “Development Boosta.ru” column (coming soon to the site), where at the beginning of each month I will talk about my achievements, failures and development goals. But the goal is big - to make a very cool internet marketing portal. A lot of ideas and in the near future they will all be translated into reality.
Article in the topic - How to increase the number of content reposts
Expert posts
A very cool view of content in terms of distribution and audience reach.
To create expert posts you have to work hard. In a simplified form, this process consists of the following steps:
- Prepare for organization
- Formulate a question
- Pick up experts
- Find ways to connect with experts
- Attract the attention of experts
- Ask experts to take part in the survey
- Remind survey of those who did not send answers
- Compile all answers into quality material.
- Promote a completed survey (one of the most important stages)
I took this sequence of actions from a recent article on Texterra - How to conduct an expert survey: a step-by-step guide with examples from our practice.
If you decide to create an expert post, I strongly advise you to read this article. It will save you a lot of time and help create high-quality material.
By the way, at the beginning of this paragraph I said that such posts ensure maximum distribution and coverage of the audience, but did not explain why.
First, each expert who will take part in the article is likely to share a post on social networks. And, as a rule, such experts have many friends and acquaintances who will pick up this post (someone will do it because of the quality of the post, and someone as a sign of respect).
Secondly, the expert post looks much more serious (more substantial or something) than the post written by your content marketer. Still, it is attended by reputable people, on which many are equal. This will help to attract more audience to it and, possibly, also increase the number of shareings in social networks.
In general, this type of content is not very popular with us. Although in the Western market such articles are the basis of content marketing strategies in any advanced company. Most likely, this is due to the large number of responsive and competent opinion leaders abroad. But if you really want to look at live examples, they definitely are on Vc.ru, Rusbase.vc, TheVillage.
Personally, I really want to check out this kind of content in action. And in the content plan such an idea hangs for a long time, even questions are spelled out, but I still can’t get to it. It is very interesting to find out how responsive our experts will be if they are asked to express their opinion on a specific issue.
Quizzes (quizzes, polls)
Quizzes are an incredibly viral thing that can provide "tons" of traffic to your site.
From our examples, Netology immediately comes to mind with their quiz "Find out if your marketing intuition works." This quiz was launched about 1-5 years ago and very quickly sold around the Runet. Now it is unavailable, since the service through which it was created is already closed. So I would drop the link here.
The essence of the quiz was very simple. It was necessary to choose which version of the page conversion is higher. In fact, it was A / B testing your intuition. After passing the quiz, each participant saw the result in the form of some funny name and funny image. And, most often, share his result in social networks. Thanks to this, the quiz was incredibly viral and brought a lot of traffic to the site (more than 30,000 people).
In order for a quiz to be successful, it must be relevant to the target audience, it is desirable to have beautiful images, not be too protracted, simple and fun at the end - when the result is announced to each past. In many ways, sharing the results depends on how well you present them. The results should be such that they want to share (the main thing is not to be ashamed). So the imagination does not hurt here.
In general, this topic can devote an entire article. And someday I will do it. Since the idea with the quiz is already hanging in the plan. And collected all possible services for this. By the way, there are no Russian-language tools for creating. So you have to use foreign services. One of the most popular is Qzzr . A small quiz in it can be made for free, although the functionality will be limited.
Article in the topic - Startup Plotguru raised the landing page conversion from 9% to 52%. Are you weak?
Interview
An interesting kind of content, especially if you can do an interview with popular people in your field. And it should not be just stories about yourself. Ideally, the protagonist of the interview should share useful information, insiders. It should also be dynamic and not too long.
If this is a video interview, then no more than 10-20 minutes. It is unlikely that a longer video will be watched to the end.
If the text format, then you should not write very huge articles. Less is better, but more interesting and more useful. I have often seen huge interviews that are really difficult to read. To finish reading them to the end, you need to be very interested in a particular person.
I really liked how the guys from Perezvoni.com used this kind of content in their promotion strategy. Somehow they managed to negotiate an interview with Igor Mann. Everything turned out very interesting and dynamic.
By the way, the interview can be with the employees of the company. The guys from Texterra are interviewing their own employees who talk about subjects that they are well versed in. Examples here.
So far, few people use content marketing interviews, so you still have the opportunity to get into the train of those who will be the first to move the topic . And those who move the first, have a better chance of success, while the interview has not yet become boring to everyone, as it once happened to banners.
Infographics
This kind of content is now gaining popularity very quickly. This is due to the fact that it is very convenient to "consume" infographics.
Texts are probably the most inconvenient type of content in terms of user friendliness. Most lazy to read. For example, on Buste, an average of 23-25% of all users read up to the end. Most leaves the page 20-30% of the text. Of course, this may be related to the quality of the content. But if you dive into the research on this topic, you will find that it is also sad for others (and maybe this is normal!)
And with infographics, everything is different. This is visual content in which designers combine beautiful graphic elements (icons) with numbers and text. Moreover, the text in infographics is very small, as a result of which you do not burden the reader .
See how Sacred Source uses infographics in its content strategy:
Looks simple and cool. What do you think?
The same information could be provided in plain text. But I am 100% sure that she wouldn’t look so funny and attractive.
Infographics is, of course, cool, but not everything is as sweet as you think. Infographics has one drawback. And it lies in the fact that it is difficult to do. At a minimum, you will need a good designer who can make an infographic based on your text. Because it needs to be done either well or not at all taken for it.
But still, if you decide to try it yourself, then here are a few services for this - Visual.ly, Infogr.am and Piktochart.com (my favorite).
Article in the topic - How to increase website conversion using images - 6 tips based on successful cases
Selection of the best materials for six months / year
If you create a lot of content (at least 1 material per week), then in six months / year you will have a lot of cool information. Some of these materials will go to the audience, some - not. Some of these materials will be shared hundreds of times on social networks, and the other part - a couple of dozen times. Somewhere there will be tens of thousands of views, and somewhere 1-2 thousand.
Therefore, I suggest that you analyze all your content, select the one that “went” to the audience and make a selection of the best materials of your blog for a certain period - for example, half a year.
This content really will go and most likely will go well on social networks. And even a large number of current readers will be grateful for such a selection, as many could get acquainted with your site after these articles were published. And in such a post you will give them a second chance to read and “consume” useful information.
And the creation of this type of content does not require any effort. You can manually go through all published posts (this will take more time) or do it in Google Analytics or Yandex.Metrica. In GA, this is done very simply: Go to your dashboards> Behavior> Site Content> All pages> Sort by the number of visits.
Choose the top 10 articles, take a heading and a short description from each article, supplement it with your comment (for example, why this article is worth reading) and publish it on your blog. That's all. A new kind of content is ready. Every six months / year you can remember him. And if you post articles almost every day, you can do it once a month.
I would be very grateful for the repost of this article. I am sure that your friends and colleagues will like it. Buttons for repost to the left and bottom.
Prepared by the blog Boosta.ru and the project Changeagain.me
Read also our other popular articles:
1. They will help you find all the “killers” of the conversion - 10 reports in Google Analytics (5000+ views)
2. The biggest mistake in A / B testing (2,000+ views)
3. 100 ideas for A / B testing. Part One (2000+ views)
4. 100 ideas for A / B testing: Part Two (1000+ views)
5. How to find an idea for an A / B test: heat maps and polls (1000+ views)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/296364/
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