Content Marketing For Newbies: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide

3. iINDEX I N D E X 1 Content marketing for newbies: an overview 1 What is Content Marketing & why does your brand need it more than ever before? 5 11 2 What is content style guide? How to create it? (Complete Process) 18 3 How far has content marketing come from its existence? 25 4 What is content with a purpose and why it is important for achieving business goals? 32 5 11 Types of Content that can change your marketing game 40 6 What is content with a purpose and why it is important for achieving business goals? 47 7 Content Marketing Tools for Content Research 54 8 Digital Spaces that are worthwhile to share your content 61 9 Best practices to implement content marketing for SEO 70 10 5 Steps to Build an Editorial Calendar for content marketing Page0

4. Content marketing for newbies: An Overview There are a number of digital marketing methodologies used by businesses of various industries and of varying sizes. But one thing that is a catalyst in boosting your marketing efforts is – the content. Content marketing allows you to attract more leads, get more sales, and also grow your business. It helps you in boosting your SEO, create an online community over time with regular social media postings, and gives you a churn rate over time by regularly updating and educating the masses about your products or services. But you still need to master the skills to gain maximum benefits from it. For each piece of the content, and piece after piece, every content has to be well-aligned with your business goals. And that is only the beginning of strategizing, there are multiple things you need to take into account before entering the market with a result-oriented content marketing plan for creating distributing, and Page1 promoting your content. It never happens in marketing that one size fits all. Best practices have to be implemented for taking into account the uniqueness of your

5. Content marketing for newbies: An Overview business, your target audience, and the market you are looking forward to penetrating. Also, what your competitors are doing? Inspiring your potential audience to buy from you and stay with you throughout your business lifecycle is a tough task. But if you know how to create and promote good and engaging content, you will be able to educate about the usefulness, uniqueness, and competitive edge of your products to build a trustful bond between enterprise and you. Unfortunately, many people struggle to get their content marketing strategy set right. So, here we are with an ultimate beginner’s guide to tell you what works and how to cover the essential that you need to know when you are implementing your winning marketing campaigns. So, here we go! Content Marketing Beginners Guide End-to-end content marketing guide with best practices to boost your content marketing efforts and help you create a brand out of your business while ensuring high return on investments. Here is what it includes: •Importance of Content Marketing: Learn what is content marketing? why you need to start creating engaging content for your brand and how it can help you boost your business. •Content guidelines on content style: Create a brand identity and cut through the noise by implementing synonymity in your content across different Page2 channels. It includes an in-depth answer to help you decide the right tone,

6. Content marketing for newbies: An Overview right color, right elements for textual, and visual content (videos, images, infographics, and more) •Evolution of content marketing overtime: Discover the fundamentals of content marketing while staying super-specific and relevant to your industry. This chapter of content marketing includes best practices and how you can customize them for the best benefits. •Purposefulness of Content: Learn how to create content with a purpose and achieve your every business goal easily. This guide helps you strategize your content creation as per your goals. •Different Types of Content: Get acquainted with different types of content that you can use to boost your content marketing and capture maximum engagement across audience around different content sharing platforms. •What made yesteryear businesses today’s brand: The brands have become brand because they understood the power of content marketing. Learn what different brands did, how they created content, executed it, and promoted their content to become industry leaders today. •Toolset that you will need for content marketing: Learn what tools are highly recommended by experts for best practices of content strategizing, content creation, content distribution, and Content promotion. It includes tools for content research, collaboration, SEO, and analytics. •Where to share and promote your content for free: Best free content sharing platforms allowing you to improve your content outreach by ten folds. •Implementing best content marketing practices for SEO: Learn to boost your SEO through content marketing and enjoy organic lead generation. Page3

7. Content marketing for newbies: An Overview •Manage your content marketing efforts at one place: Learn about the importance of editorial calendar, how to build it, maintain it, and collaborate with different content creators for the best output. Page4

8. What is Content Marketing & why does your Brand need it more than ever before? iINDEX People say content is the king. But no, content is the queen that has the power to change the course of your marketing game. It can go on multiple platforms, help you interact with a million people, sharable easily and so much more. What we mean to say is: Content is very dynamic. But (yes, there is always a but), the content should appeal to your audience to engage with your brand and turn into your loyal consumers/users. This is what makes it very difficult. Every day your competitors are pushing content on their websites, social media, and other content-sharing platforms. And the competition is not just local, or national. This is a global war. Cut through the noise, and your audience listens things crystal clear. So, is it next to impossible? Allow us to introduce you to content marketing. Page5

9. What is Content Marketing & why does your Brand need it more than ever before? 1. What is content marketing? Content marketing is a target-oriented marketing method that uses storytelling/info telling to draw the attention of the audience while conveying them relevant information. 2. How do you do content marketing? Create a great content. Try taking a different turn on things and see how it works like magic. The best part is your audience is seeking good content out there and they are not finding it. This is your window. Make an impact. Cut through the noise. 3. What are the examples of content marketing? a. Content marketing requires more than just blogging Nobody is denying that blogging is a big part of content marketing, but can you just lay your hopes on blogging alone? Let’s see, while you are blogging you are limiting yourself to just your regular readers. Again, no denying they are necessary. But there are millions of other people too that love to learn things over a video, or they only have time to hear a podcast while having their morning coffee. You need to catapult your content over all types of platforms. b. What is content in content marketing? Anything that is textual, visual, or audible and can be used as a means of communication is known as content in content marketing. c. What are the examples of content? •Here are different types of content tools you can use for better content outreach: •Social Media Posts Page6 •Podcasts

10. What is Content Marketing & why does your Brand need it more than ever before? •Videos •Webinars •Email Campaigns •Influencer Updates •eBooks •Tedtalks 4. Who uses content marketing? Any business owner can use content marketing services to spread their wings over the internet. Whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, you can use content marketing to make your brand get better visibility online. Content marketing services can help you get effective online visibility and enhanced ROI. You need to know that content marketing is a long-term strategy that helps you build stronger relationships with your customers and prospective clients. 5. The special mix to add in your content marketing to make it livelier: a. Be honest with your audience One of the most cherished things by businesses is the trust of their consumers and users. No brand can reach to its essence if they don’t have the trust of their audience. Make sure your content is well-researched and accurate. Truth hits hard. Add citations to your blogs, provide more information, dive deep and most of all, be genuine. b. People love personalized content We all love how magically Google comes with exactly what we are looking for? But it is putting a lot of effort to learn from your search pattern and track down Page7

11. What is Content Marketing & why does your Brand need it more than ever before? your interests. The point is creating content that is relevant to your users’ interest will pay you off better. c. Come clean to your users No brand is right now a giant because they are all-knowing. They learned from their mistakes and they shared their evolution stories with their users/ consumers who helped them evolve. The Internet is a community and netizens that are engaging with your brand, become a part of your brand storytelling. Give them their share of credit for telling you where you are good or where you are going wrong. Transparency drives not just trust but engagement too, period. 6. 3 Reasons why creating powerful content marketing is a must: a. The Internet has made communication viable; content marketing makes it meaningful It all boils down to the fundamental feature of content – communication. Content helps you connect with your consumer base over the internet. You can be sending a thousand promotional letters to your user base over a year, and it all goes in the dustbin. Zero engagement! Eager result. But one mail in their inbox and they want to read it. And that is the power of technology. The Internet has bestowed people the convenience to know things from the comfort of their home, buy things whilst sitting on their sofa, share their views while they are lying in their bed. An average American adult is spending 11 hours over different content platforms on the internet daily. Simply put, the internet is your best chance to communicate with your potential user base. Reach where your audience is (mostly) available – the Page8 internet.

12. What is Content Marketing & why does your Brand need it more than ever before? b. Content marketing gives 6 times more conversions as compared to other marketing strategies. Yes! 6 times more conversions, that is 2.9% content marketing versus 0.5% traditional marketing. Imagine the return on investment (ROI) you get with that. But how is content marketing making B2B and B2C conversions possible? What is the secret? The answer lies not in the quantity. But it is in the quality that is attracting the audience. Content has the power to cut through the noise and grab your audience with the information that adds more value to them. Find your content differentiation factor, and you are all set to welcome new users/consumers into your brand. c. Content marketing cost 62% less and is 3 times more effective The ultimate goal of any business is to spend less and earn more. No matter what is the size of the business, everyone is looking for a way to bring down their expenses (especially in marketing) while driving more engagement activities. Content has the power to allow two-way communication. Drop a conversation starter, and you have a string of commentators ready to communicate. All you need to do is throw something interesting and you have user-generated data that sells itself. Also, opt-in advertising makes your lead generation very cheap. Subscription- based advertising allows you to advertise your products and services to the pre-purchase followers over time and you are the first one that pops in their head when they are looking for your services or products. Page9

13. What is Content Marketing & why does your Brand need it more than ever before? 7. Time for some FAQs a. What is a content marketing strategy? Content marketing strategy is a part of content marketing that focuses on an end-to-end process of effective content creation, distribution, and management. It includes planning, creating, delivery, and management of the content, which not just includes textual content but also multimedia such as images, videos, podcasts, infographic, and more. b. What are the content skills? Content skills are the technical content creation skill sets required in a workforce to drive more engagement through result-oriented content planning, creation, distribution, and management. Content skills are used to generate more engagement of users/ consumers by aligning content with your business goals and triggering communication with your end-users (B2B or B2C). c. How long does content marketing take to work? Nobody can predict how much time it takes to help you get the right results out of your content marketing strategy. The time taken by content marketers to create a huge impact on your business depends on the type of business, competition, and your targeted audience. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the above question. You need to contact leading content marketing agencies and get an idea about the timeline for content marketing results. 8. Conclusion In hopes, we have helped you take your first step towards learning what is content marketing and why content marketing is important, we would love to continue this amazing journey by sharing with you some more marketing tips. Page10 Also, don’t forget to tell us how the above-mentioned tips are working out for your content outreach.

14. What is a content style guide? And how to create it? (Complete Process) Maintaining consistency in your content is very difficult. After all, we are talking about a wide array of content marketing tools here. How to sound similar in your blogs, images, and also your podcasts? – Especially when every avenue of your content is being handled by a different person (sometimes also by freelancers, where you have no control). Also, the non-consistency in the content gives you a feel of incompleteness and dissatisfaction. Any content would look amazing individually, but when you start posting them to bring users to your websites or platforms, you’ll feel somewhere the engagement is at loss. This delays your content distribution and can take an absurd amount of time to resolve. You can cut down all this inconvenience and extra work by simply creating a content style guide. It can also help you increase your revenue generation by 33%. Page11

15. What is a content style guide? And how to create it? (Complete Process) 1. So, what is a Content Style Guide & why is it important? A content style guide is a document containing do’s and don’ts of developing different types of content for your brand. It is highly centralized to your content marketing strategy and aligns what types of content you will be creating and when. It guides your content creators, including content writers, copywriters, graphic designers, motion graphic designers, whitepaper writers, and others on how your branding content should look like, sound like and have a great impact on your business. Another aspect of the content style guide is to use it as an overall branding guide. Depending on how many commonalities you can find between your marketing content and branding content, you must make the decision best for you. 2. Why your brand needs a style guide? It is simple – a company needs consistency in their overall brand communication. It helps you make your own identity in the market and guides you step-by-step in content building procedure to result as homogeneity in your overall internet presence. This reason alone makes it very important for companies to have a content style guide for their organization’s end-to-end content operations. 3. Some other benefits of using a content style guide are: •It helps you to maintain consistency in your message, tone, and voice. •Guide your in-house and off-shore team on how to create content for different audiences and different platforms. •Brand recognition becomes easy. Page12 •Helps you scale up your content creation.

16. What is a content style guide? And how to create it? (Complete Process) 4. How to Write a Content Style Guide? a. You can ala’ carte the available style guides There is style and there is information. A style is used to gain consistency, recognition, and impactful delivery of content; whereas, the information is always going to be unique. Thus, there is no barrier as such that you can’t use the already available content style guide. You can make changes to it as per your convenience, industry, and company needs. Or you can also create one yourself. b. Know your content marketing motives Define your content development goals by aligning them well with your overall business goals. Jotting down your content goals will help you stay at bay and eliminate the risk of going wrong at any time. This keeps you honest and makes your content style guide more dynamic and result-oriented. c. What tone and voice should your content have? Nobody said content style guide development would be easy. How do you want your audience to perceive your content? Is your text suiting the image that you’re wishing to use? Is your tone right? The goal is to find the voice and tone that coincides with your brand image. 5. What is included in a brand style guide? Something as small as a comma and bullets is also considered a crucial part of your content style guide. Talk about these things with the team and find out what works best for you. Keep consistency in your overall work, think about all the avenues. Page13

17. What is a content style guide? And how to create it? (Complete Process) a. Address specific types of content Not everything will be in your control. With some experience, we can say, a lot of times you have to let some rules slide. There are different types of content development opportunities and you might just have to go with the flow for better outreach and have to switch between your tone and voice. Still, we suggest you outline best practices for different types of content that you create for keeping some amount of consistency. Small document include simple things like word count, type of images to be used, should there be short paragraphs or long ones, and what will be the tone of different pieces of content. b. Document your rules for graphics To create amazing content for the brand, it can be difficult to control your design team when they want to spur creativity in everything. But there are still Page14 some design elements in which consistency is highly recommended. Like logo placement, choice of images, and visual design elements, your content style

18. What is a content style guide? And how to create it? (Complete Process) guideline should draw some control over all these factors to maintain consistency and also save the design team a lot of time. Similarly, draft guidelines for images and visual content that is going on your blogs too. This will help you avoid certain types of images. 6. How do you write a content style guide? (With examples) Now that we are sure you have a good idea about how your content guide should be like, there are some brands you can look for content style guides. It will expose you to different intents of content and how it should be. Hopefully, this will answer the 1000 questions that are going on in your mind right now. a. Mozilla’s Guide for Firefox •Easy to understand vocabulary •Parenthetical explanations •Subjective tone b. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Page15 •Easy questions making it easy for people to start communicating. •Simple language and very clear with the brand content mission.

19. What is a content style guide? And how to create it? (Complete Process) c. Mailchimp •Avoids major language-related offensive faux-pas. •Well defined guidelines to make content development easy for their creators. d. Spotify •Gives just the right amount of flexibility and scope for content creators to show their creativity. •Well-aligned with their content marketing strategy. e. Atlassian Easy to navigate content guide that makes it extremely easy to understand the dos and don’ts of content creation. 7. Final words Now that you know what a content style guide is and what a good content style guide looks like, we are sure you can create one for your brand and start building consistency in all content avenues. Some of the things that will help you greatly in content style guide creation are: •It should be very easily available to your content creators. It can be a doc, PDF, or a web page or shared folder. You just have to make sure it is not anywhere hidden •Use the content style guide as a reference while giving feedback to your content creators. A tabular content guide is thus very much recommended as it makes cross-checking easy. Page16

20. What is a content style guide? And how to create it? (Complete Process) •Make it very simple. The language or the words used in your content style guide should be very simple and comprehensive to all the content creators. Break down the rules into important information to save their and your own time. Note: Stick to the guide. It works. You have to be very honest while following it to see the impact and result. A content style guide is a simple yet effective way to ensure a huge impact on your audience and get a lasting effect. Also, it helps you in gaining brand recognition across all channels. Page17

21. How far has content marketing come from its existence? Everything has an expiration date; and the evolution of content marketing should not come as a surprise. Content marketing has been in this world for ages. We are talking about cavemen making cave paintings that are still fascinating to us. The first advertisement in the newspaper. Or when the advertisements made their way into the wide world of the internet. Or when social media becomes a world within the world, the content has this everlasting effect on us, and yet, we can’t stop ourselves from ignoring how different these mediums are from each other. Content marketing and communication practices change as the preferences and adoption of technology change. Change is inevitable, be it content or technology. There isn’t an end to it. And like it or not, to stay in the game, you gotta play by the rules. Page18

22. How far has content marketing come from its existence? 1. Is content marketing worth? Sometimes we turn blind to the things that are happening in front of our eyes. Content marketing is no exception. We have witnessed it over a 100 year, evolving, changing, triggering us but yet, unnoticeable. Not until now, has content marketing been given its due credit. The talk of the market has helped then start-ups today’s biggest brands. Don’t trust us to look for yourself. 2. What are the content marketing examples? a. John Deere Infiltrating the market with its big green tractors, John Deere is the world’s biggest example of content marketing, bringing it into practice in the year 1895. Fascinating! The brand is known for starting a lifestyle magazine for farmers called “The Furrow”. The amazing thing is it didn’t sell their products rather introduced farmers to better practices in agriculture. Now can we beat that? Adding value to your customers VS direct selling. It gave them global brand loyalty and increased revenue. b. Jell- O Another exemplary brand known for its early adoption of content marketing started their recipe book for users to create concoctions using Jell-O. This was back in 1904. You can call it placement but, did it work? Hell Ya! The idea made history by solving the company’s biggest problem “their customers didn’t know what to do with the jelly-like substance they were selling”. Once they did, the rest is history. Of course, with time they changed their practices but the point is content Page19 marketing works! How do you do it for your business? Just remember these points.

23. How far has content marketing come from its existence? 3. What is a content strategy framework? The fundamentals of content marketing have not changed. They have stayed the same always and will stay the same as ever. While creating a content strategy for your business just remember these three things: •Who is your audience? •What are the business goals you want to achieve with content? •How do you want to promote your content? 4. So, what has changed and what does a content strategy look like? (The modern version) Let’s take Coca Cola as an example. We choose to take Coca-Cola because the brand has been practicing content marketing since 1895 and to date, they have aced it. They have evolved from their image 100+ years old image of a medicine and become people’s favorite beverage. Are you surprised to know that coca-cola was confused as medicine? Then you will be more surprised to know that it was used as a cure for morphine addiction, and an alternative to impotence. How did they come this far? Was Page20 there some magic? Believe it or not, they injected the right message to their consumers through content and there was no looking back.

24. How far has content marketing come from its existence? Some of the highlights of the Coca-Cola content marketing journey are their 2012 campaign where they created a digital platform for the users to connect on topics and discuss social issues and news. The platform became their way to provide information to people about the company and learn consumer trends. Then the unforgettable #ShareACokeCampaign where they encouraged people to share the drink with their friends. With this came changes in their brand image which has played powerfully in their favor with millions of shares on social media. 5. How do you develop marketing content? Incited with inspiration as you are, we are sure you are itching to try out the magic spell called content marketing. But clueless as you are, we will help you reach there. a. Get to know the good old AIDA way AIDA has been in practice since 1898 and was developed by E. St. Elmo Lewis. The acronym stands for Attention: Grab your audience attention Interest: Make them interested to know more Desire: Pike up their desire to engage with you Action: Finally, allow them to make a move Page21

25. How far has content marketing come from its existence? AIDA worked, AIDA works, and AIDA will work for you because it is well- curated and covers every important aspect of brand communication. b. Sell them a problem to bank upon with PAS PAS or Problem-Agitate-Solve is not that old but is a good method to sell upon. It is very simple, all you have to do is introduce a problem out there in the market, boil it until people start agreeing with you, and then present a solution. 6. Which companies use content marketing? Every big brand you can name is using content marketing today to reach their ultimate goal. We are talking about the internet here, communicating with people has become so much easier and better with analytics, different types of communication tools that you use for content outreach and so much more. You can track down your potential user sitting in the other part of the world and present your products or services. Page22

26. How far has content marketing come from its existence? Make them curious enough to cause them to take action. Allow your consumers to provide their feedback. Generate content that causes two-way communication. Gauge your progress and improve with content marketing tools. 7. What are content marketing tools? The worst part of content marketing back in the early days was there was no way to measure the impact of your ad campaigns or content. But not now. There are content marketing tools available on the market that allows you to find your audience, create content on interesting topics, manage your content across different platforms, and finally provide you an end-to-end performance report. This comes as a big help if you are using different types of content types to market your brand. 8. Why the original content is important? Ending our discussion from where we started, we want you to understand, originality of content is very important because people are feeding on millions of bytes of data every day. People are staying online 12 hours a day and if they don’t find you unique, they are not going to persuade you. You need to seduce your audience to follow your lead to an extent of evoking the desired action. Be original, be genuine, and stay ahead of the curve. Wrapping up Content marketing has survived 100+ years and there is no looking back. Use the modern content marketing hack, use different tools to help you make informed decisions, stick to fundamentals to create great content and you are all set to go. Page23

27. How far has content marketing come from its existence? Also, keep experimenting with the content that will allow you to understand what is liked by your audience and perfect it over time. Learn from your audience's behaviour. And one last advice, don’t stop evolving as the world evolves. Page24

28. What is content with a purpose and why it is important for achieving business goals? We all have been fooled by the worldwide agreed notion of publishing a 500- word blog daily for boosting your presence on SERPs. More than 2/3rd of marketers produce one content on a daily basis. And why not, Google loves fresh content on websites and for years it has even helped businesses to boost their visibility. But not anymore. Google is very smart and has evolved massively to improve the search results for their users. The algorithm is now more focused on providing relevant solutions to people’s queries. 1. Why good content is important? The need for pushing quality content has become more prominent now as your age-old content marketing practices are soon about to go obsolete. Here is where content marketing comes into place. You have to strategies your content and invest enough time to provide value to your users. But just Page25

29. What is content with a purpose and why it is important for achieving business goals? providing good reads is not the ultimate goal of your business right. You require conversions and loyalty. With so much on your plate, anybody can likely make a major mistake while creating good content. To contemplate it, try finding the purpose of marketing and align your content accordingly. 2. Find the purpose of creating content Identify your marketing goals before you start creating content. Work your way towards aligning your content with your one or more marketing goals. This simple method will help you in deciding what type of content you should be posting what type of infographics/ media you will create for better content outreach and more. a. What are the three content purposes? Generally, for any type of content you create 3 purposes that remain the same. But in reality, there are 4. •Earning backlinks •Increasing visibility on search engines •Educate your audience •(3+1) Create a social media presence Additionally, understand the purpose behind choosing different content types and what will be required to accentuate engagement. Here are a few questions you should always ask: •How can a particular content help in wider marketing goals? •Would that be enough to benefit your brand? Page26 •Would it require a fixed format to do so? •Here’s a deeper look at these four content purposes.

30. What is content with a purpose and why it is important for achieving business goals? 3. How to find the content purpose for different business goals? a. To earn backlinks Using content marketing for link building purposes is very often seen and practiced by the brands. You produce content and then published on high domain authority sites by top-tier publications to provide your website a backlink. This includes: •Infographics •Interactive Tools •Surveys •Guest Posts •Expert Comment Contributions. Anything that can be linked back to your brand is good to go for backlink content purposes. b. Top rank on the SERPs SEO is an organic marketing tactic that is widely followed across the globe to earn leads by ranking better on search engines. If you want to earn traffic from organic search, rank on top positions. A lot of companies used to post bad quality content with keywords to rank better. But with Google Panda Update made sure, companies are working hard on producing better content that is relevant for their audience. c. To educate audience Content helps you reach out to your consumers. But it should always help you Page27 to educate your audience and move potential clients and customers through the sales funnel.

31. What is content with a purpose and why it is important for achieving business goals? For many content producers, it is difficult to meet the two of the ultimate goals of content marketing – to educate and to pump up their sales. For example, a lot of businesses do not understand the importance of a white paper or eBook in marketing, but when it comes to educating people, nothing can beat it. Ponder on what is your audience most clueless about. when you have the question, give them the answer, and engage your users. Also, in this whole process, a content gap analysis can help your business massively. Here are some tips for creating content to educate: •Start by educating your customers through blogs, videos, podcasts, and more and offer them a solution to their problems. •Once your users come to your site, provide them an in-depth solution that will help your lead turnout. So, particularly, your objective of educating people will ultimately fulfill your sales goal. It is not important that each of your goals needs to be individually achieved. d. To drive social engagement Do you know, why is content important in social media? It allows you to drive awareness and engagement using small bits of communication. When creating content for social media you have to be super-focused on your audience. People on social media are not (usually) looking for long conversations, the attention span of people on social media is less and thus, you have to capture the essence of your content in very few words. But most importantly, your content should be highly aligned with your Page28 business goals. You need people to start recognizing you and communicate with you about your services and products. And there are a variety of solutions

32. What is content with a purpose and why it is important for achieving business goals? out there, where you can use images, quizzes, and other fun and interactive formats. Anything that creates a buzz and is shared across different platforms allows you to create a wide network of loyal netizens that love to visit and interact with your audiences. Sugar-coat your marketing goals in the finest possible content, make it relatable, and see how the content is performed. 4. Check out FAQs related to the content: Still not convinced about the importance of content for making your business grow online? Keep reading on to understand why using content for improving your online visibility and gaining higher traffic is important. a. Why is content important in blogging? Meanwhile blogging for any website improves its SERP ranking, it also allows people to find new information happening in your industry. It is used for educational purposes and thus helps you tell them “how futuristic is my company, buy from me.” But to gain a backlink from a high domain authority Page29 site is equally difficult. Your content needs to be very amazing for link building.

33. What is content with a purpose and why it is important for achieving business goals? Put out great ideas and understand your goals both ideation and production should be in silo to deliver content for link building purpose. b. Why is content important in a website? Websites are the first point of contact between you and your potential consumers. It is necessary that the content of your website adds value to your website visitors and encourages them to connect with you. c. Why is content important for SEO? Again, you cannot blame Google for being brutal but imagine companies that were not worth it were gaining all the attention on the internet. If you don’t want to get counted in those companies, align your content to your marketing purposes and goals. Also, understand the searcher's intent to find interesting topics related to your industry to talk about. What makes a piece of content worthy? It is not just about keywords anymore; it is about analyzing various terms to move into production. 5. In a Nutshell Not always multiple goals can be achieved through a single piece of content. But don’t get disheartened if it doesn’t happen. You can always just try and drive strong engagement on your blogs, social media, and other platforms with quality content and by educating your audience. Have a strategy in place by keeping in mind what are the benefits of content marketing? Invest your time towards understanding the platform, how different types of content work, and how people interact with them. Use them as per your content marketing strategy and learn from your mistakes. Learn from your mistakes, and make informed decisions, and don’t hesitate to make Page30 profiting sacrifices. Create small goals, and KPIs relating to the main purpose. And if you achieve it greatly, and if you don’t keep on trying. Have a wider

34. What is content with a purpose and why it is important for achieving business goals? spectrum concerning content and work on ensuring that your entire team of content creators is on the same page. Page31

35. 11 Types of Content that can change your marketing game Having too many options for anything can be a dream come true, but when you talk about content marketing having a lot is just a confusion. Contradicting, our statement, it is great that something with that huge effect offers you the freedom to choose from, but how do you create unique content? You can ruin your content marketing game by focusing on the wrong channels and to avoid that, here is a detailed guide for marketers to utilize content at its full potential. Furthermore, how you can use a single content for a variety of purposes and in different combinations to reduce your work while increasing your content outreach. So, let's begin. 1. About us Your company’s “about us” page is also a part of content marketing. A well- written about us, allows you to easily communicate your services and vision to your users and help you convert them into your potential users. Page32 A lot of big companies for example are nowadays replacing the traditional textual about us pages into media-rich content. This simple yet effective tactic

36. 11 Types of Content that can change your marketing game places you in the top lines of your market vertical to earn trust and build human connections. Also, don’t get overboard with creativity. Keep intact some of the basics such as: •Your history •Business Mission •Business Vision extra •Services Some of our favorites are Atone & Irene, Toy Fight, and Band. 2. Audiobooks Seriously, when it comes to content, it is very likely to scratch your head and say: how many types of content are there? App content, website content, social media content and so much more. But just simply because something is out there, that doesn’t mean something is for you. For example, if you are just selling a book online or selling e-books you want people to take out their time to come to your platform and read it, but just by simply adding an audio-book, you are tapping the huge crowd that stays with you during their daily commute, while they are working in the kitchen or even at the workplace. This simple trick helped Ryan Holiday authored Growth Hacker Marketing to become the best-seller. 3. Blog Think of your blog as a hub to find a wide variety of content related to your services. Use your expertise to create engaging blog posts for your audiences Page33 to learn new happenings in your industry vertical, tips and tricks, how-to blogs, and much more.

37. 11 Types of Content that can change your marketing game Blogs have been in practice for quite some time now. And people love them because they provide extreme SEO benefits. But you are only going to reap these benefits if the blog quality is at par. A lot of people follow the quantity rule rather than aiming for quality. It is one of the most heated topics in the digital marketing world. Conclusively, work on maintaining the frequency of the blog and quality. And to answer: what makes good content? Our suggestion is to dive deep understand your services and industry well. And which type of blog is most popular? Once you align the needs of your audience and create content around it, content creation for blogs become easy. Furthermore, keep evolving in your blogging practices, learn what’s blogging and types?What is a list post? And why it is that popular? What tone and language would go with your brand identity? What type of images and videos would increase your blog visibility and more? 4. Case studies If you are a service-based company, marketing for your business becomes more difficult as the content has to be aligned around your diverse service set. Not many companies only expertise in one service. You have to balance your content creation between popular services, new services/ new advancements, and also promoting offers and deals. So as per your business model, what is the best content? If you ask us Case Studies. True, they sound boring and a lot of work – but they pay off so well in long run. A platform such as Hubspot is famous for its visually engaging, and informative case studies. There are statistics, images, testimonials, info graphics, and much more. Page34

38. 11 Types of Content that can change your marketing game 5. Co-branded Partnering with a brand can help your business gain more visibility in the market. Look for a business that deals with sub-services or sub-products that enhance your user experience. One of the best examples of co-branding is PayPal and Honey, where honey collaborated with PayPal to offer lucrative discounts to their buyers purchasing with PayPal. This proved beneficial for PayPal and Honey both. Discuss how do you create meaningful content for both brands? 6. Content library / Resource centre Allowing people from your industry to use content from your site is a good way to bring people onto your websites and promote your brand. Many companies provide credits to the brands from where they take up crucial information such as facts, infographics, surveys, updates, and more. This can be so effective in getting the eyeballs your brand on other people sites and that too without a single effort. But what are the different types of posts that you can attract other content creators to use? This alone is a huge task. 7. Comparison When you are planning to create a comparative study then there are some things you need to involve in the content. Here are they: •Pros and cons •Your product Vs Another •Feature comparison •Price comparison •Customer reviews Page35

39. 11 Types of Content that can change your marketing game Another thing that you can include in a comparative study is a customer’s journey to conversion. The best tip we can give you is to be extremely honest with your customers. Here is a good example from Growth Marketing Pro. 8. Images Creating image type content for your brand is a great way to allow people to store important information on their smartphones. Especially, it allows you to reduce word talk and let the visuals do all the talking to improve the retention rate of your audience. Stock photos and images add a professional appeal to any content. You can submit your content to photo submitting sites like Pinterest and Pexel allowing people to download high-quality, vertical oriented content. Also, maintain quality, professional, and originality in the content, nothing appeals more than some fresh harvest to the content-hungry millennial population. Page36

40. 11 Types of Content that can change your marketing game 9. Infographics What is an example of content? That is informative and engaging – Infographics. They are the best when it comes to catapulting well-minced, digestible, and sharable data to people. Check out some great templates you can use for making engaging infographic from Venngage. 10. Landing pages and microsites Landing pages work great to help you increase your organic marketing. It allows you to help people looking for your services and products to directly land on those pages and make a purchase or engage with you. Make sure you make your landing pages highly engaging, informative, and to the point too big landing pages are too bad. Also, learn what are the 5 types of writing styles? You can use for a landing page. Microsites are different than full-blown websites. They are compact, simple, and to the point – but very fun. If you just want a business website, with no functionality needed, invest your time in customizing your microsites with fun infographics and fall in love with all the attention you can get. Page37

41. 11 Types of Content that can change your marketing game 11. Video Videos are the first thing millennials look for any type of information. We are talking about generation 'Z’ that is hungry for good content. Also, videos have so much of repurpose value and serve as a talking blog for you with all the engaging stuff in it. And how many types of content are there that you can use to create video content for your brand? •Live – unedited content, raw and very real (Allows your users to know the real you) •Video: 360 – best for good video quality, and perfect for travel bloggers. •Video: Playlists – it makes it very easy for your users to browse through an entire series of blogs and learn about a particular subject. •Video: Recorded – they are well-polished, have good production, and reusable. Page38

42. 11 Types of Content that can change your marketing game 12. Wrapping Up Above stated are some examples of content that you can use for generating a content outreach. But in reality how many content types are there? More than 100. So, you know, how amazing the world of content marketing would be! Try some of these content types and let us know how it helped you with your marketing goals. Page39

43. 4 Case Studies that will make you believe in the power of content marketing When we speak about content marketing and make great promises, a few things might sound dubious to you. There is nothing to be not outspoken about your doubts. It gives us chance to introduce you to the six amazing brands around the world that leveled up their content marketing campaigns and the rest is history. Part of being a content marketer is about keeping an eye on what other content marketers are doing? What is the use of content marketing? And, what is the predictions of the future? If you are a curious fellow you will find the brand journeys interesting and the learnings from their digital campaigns precious to guide you for your campaigns. Inspirations can be found everywhere and through any medium. Do we suggest use different ideas to understand what the objectives of marketing are? And how content marketing changes with different objectives. Page40

44. 4 Case Studies that will make you believe in the power of content marketing 4 Brands with best content marketing strategies 1. Google Google! Phew! Anything related to Google can’t be simple. But we can’t ignore the awesomeness of their content. Seriously, who can explain to us better but Google when it finding the what are the best ways to do content marketing? Google's web content is one of the best examples of good content, and why not? They are the ones that made people realize how content can change their online business life. And also, the simplicity of the content. Personally, Google’s online content is all about minimalism, and it is difficult because if you offer something it has to be there on our website. You can’t just hide them away. They have to be given their respective position somewhere where it is visible to your visitors. a. Breakdown of Google’s Website However minimalistic – it is so sophisticated. It is a very clean and elegant way – of course, well-executed and strong conceptualization. Everything on their website will clear your doubts if any why content strategy is important. Just look at the infographics, every image, and interactive headings they used. The less but impactful text feels like it is talking to you. They have made sure that the content gets all the attention. “Google you got a fan here.” b. Learnings Page41 Everything on Google’s website tells us why content is important in a website. Animated graphics, typography, and content delivery everything is flawless.

45. 4 Case Studies that will make you believe in the power of content marketing And always remember content marketing is all about engaging users and build a relationship. So, did Google achieved the paramount niche? Yes! 2. New York Times There is no end to the brilliance of the New York Times and their romance with content. Where do we even start? Undoubtedly, they are one of the largest producers of content in Newspapers. But if you have won your audience on a digital platform, we are sure there is a brilliant digital team sitting there. a. Breakdown of the New York Times Story Content They have embraced the digital world well and everything in their online campaigns such as A game of sharks and minnows , Snow Fall, and Camp X-Ray are one of the best ones to get started to evaluate their brilliance. So, is content marketing effective? Yes, they have so effectively implied the basics of content marketing into modern and elegant stories that their Page42 counterparts followed. Contrary to our understanding, these award-winning

46. 4 Case Studies that will make you believe in the power of content marketing stories by the New York Times are also the most debated ones. Not a lot of content marketers loved them, but still, they congratulate NYT for its success. Apart from these long-form content they have also proved their brilliance in data visualization and tools, like here One Race, Every Medallist Ever, HowY’all, Youse and You Guys Talk, and Is It Better to Rent or Buy? b. Learnings NYT is one of the biggest examples of why is content marketing successful? They have turned their brilliant news pieces into a visually stunning phenomenon that hits the spot right when it comes to engaging their users on the stories they love, or not. Everyone would halt to appreciate the elegance and beauty of the visual elements they used. 3. HSBC In the history of best content marketing instances, HSBC has already booked its position with its 2019 campaign ‘We are not an Island’. These types of campaigns put us thinking what are the limits of content marketing? A year after introducing the ‘Together We Thrive’ campaign and also ‘Global Citizen’ HSBC UK continuously has demonstrated its view on the Brexit trade deal by sharing its internationalist vision. Page43

47. 4 Case Studies that will make you believe in the power of content marketing a. Breakdown of HSBC 2019 Campaign They propagated their message using billboards all around the cities and people were stunned with its brilliant concept. And that is not very often seen happening. They specifically targeted cities like Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester to use their local pride and involve them in their cause. A good and effective way to connect with people. Not many people go out of the box when it comes to content marketing. People so well related to this content that they shared it across different platforms and the most wonderful part is HSBC even localized the ad campaign to match their ethics and culture. b. Learnings Most of the people think content marketing is all about writing a few blogs and posting. But where is the creativity and originality, your message is getting lost amongst the thousand others doing the same thing over and over again? What is the use of content marketing if not helping you connect with your audience? Just by simply super-localizing your ad campaigns how much engagement can you capture? Offer tailor-made content to people in different regions by understanding their sentiments towards your products and services and you Page44 might just have the biggest victory till now in winning the audience.

48. 4 Case Studies that will make you believe in the power of content marketing 4. Studio 188 Studio 188 are spoof type small-budget films and TV series producers. Just with the mention of spoof, you can imagine how much fun they must have been having there. Their created spoof-style contents are so popular that they have millions of followers the “The Matrix” low-cost version on YouTube version alone has 1.2 million views. The idea of creating this type of content is very fresh and unique. a. Breakdown of Studio188’s success Studio188 is intuitively turning great movie content into short films and video type contents. These movies are famous and popular amongst people that almost every scene they use is still stamped in viewers' memories. Taking a humorous take on these movies is a good way to gain engagement for their brand. Page45

49. 4 Case Studies that will make you believe in the power of content marketing b. Learnings Studio188 is not at all serious, they are humorous and unique and playful and so much more. A lot of brands like Poo-Pourri and Old Spice have disrupted the market with humour in their content market. But some companies have failed miserably. That is the thing with humour you can too right with it to great amazing engagement or too bad to completely ruin your business. But content marketing is always about taking informed risks. And also know your audience. Creativity pays off great when you implement it at its finest. c. Key Takeaways These were 4 out of many brands that have changed the meaning of what is content marketing and its importance. They have suitably used the power of content marketing and different ways of increasing content outreach to establish their brand presence and audience to take them seriously. Also, the use of visual content to gain more engagement on informative articles and blogs can increase your chances of gaining more attention of your audience. Creating concept-based content can work out well and require fewer resources and nobody wants you to perfectly imitate things. Also, the most important lesson learned today is you can customize your content as per different regions and bond with them emotionally by creating content as per their preferences. Page46

50. Content Marketing Tools for Content Research Have you ever wondered if some magic tools can make content marketing less painful and more resultful? And if yes, what are the best tools to use for content marketing? Well, to your surprise there are some awesome tools available that make research, development, and distribution of content very- very easy. We all need tools that make the development and polishing of the content so much easier. But still, you require mastery over the tools of the trade just to appropriately use them for maximum engagement and outreach. In this post, we will give share some of the proven tools and how you can use them to up your content game and widen your spectrum of content development with impactful research, smart edition, and informed decision making. Page47