Content marketing is a powerful strategy for businesses of all sizes, but it can be difficult to know where to start or how to stand out in a crowded market. While many businesses focus on the usual tools like blog posts, social media and email marketing, there are a number of less-obvious tools that can help you succeed in content marketing.
Currently, there are hundreds of content marketing tools, both free and paid. Each one aims for different outcomes, from content creation to production, promotion, optimization and more. In our article, we will consider the most non-obvious solutions for content marketing gurus that can quickly solve problems with your business and provide tremendous assistance in promoting your product.
Podcasts
Podcasts are a great way to reach a specific audience and establish yourself as an authority in your industry. They allow you to share in-depth information and have conversations with experts in your field. Podcasts also provide an opportunity to build a relationship with your audience, as listeners tend to feel a personal connection with the hosts of their favorite shows.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing involves partnering with people who have a large following on social media. These influencers can help you reach new audiences and increase your credibility. Be sure to choose influencers that fit with your brand and message and work with them to create content that resonates with their followers.
At the same time, it is worth noting that the latest changes that have occurred in the blogosphere are a decrease in the level of trust and user involvement. This did not form a trend, but rather a need to deliver advertising organically and natively. Niche influencers with a small number of followers are more credible.
In this state of affairs, try to use more humor and creativity in integrations, this will definitely not cause rejection among the audience, and most importantly, do not be afraid to implement crazy ideas.
Interactive Content
Interactive content, such as quizzes, polls and calculators, can help you engage your audience and generate valuable data about your customers. This type of content is also highly shareable, which can help you reach a wider audience.
Video
Video is a powerful content marketing tool that can help you stand out from the competition. Whether you’re creating product demos, how-to videos, or behind-the-scenes footage, video can help you connect with your audience in a way that text and images cannot. And, with the increasing prevalence of video platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram TV, it’s easier than ever to reach a large audience with video content.
What has changed and what needs to be worked on:
• The depth of viewing videos has decreased. The optimal duration, if averaged, remains formats 1-2 minutes long. The viewing depth is constantly falling when looking at the trend of stories.
• In pursuit of the audience, brands began to focus on the emotional component, reducing information about the brand to a minimum and presenting it natively.
• The 360 video format, gravitating towards immersive technologies, is not a novelty for a long time but is still not accepted by the majority of the audience.
Virtual Telephony
Here you must be thinking about how virtual phone service can help, right? In fact, everything is quite simple. You will need to register a business phone number in two versions.
The scheme is as follows: You get two virtual numbers and conduct a split test on the page of your site, where you change the content by indicating different numbers. Thus, you will understand which content works better, which number will receive more calls. So it goes.
Personalization
Personalization is a set of analytical or research measures carried out by a brand in order to meet the expectations and needs of the audience. That is, this is all that will help establish a connection between the brand and the client based on the experience of interaction with them.
Personalization helps engage your audience and drive sales. There is no and will not be cool advice here, you must know and feel your audience. But, as an option, you can combine a personalized approach with video content.
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is often seen as a separate strategy from content marketing, but it’s actually a crucial component of any content marketing plan. By optimizing your website and content for search engines, you can increase the visibility of your brand and attract more traffic to your site.
Be sure to do keyword research, optimize your meta tags and create high-quality, informative content that provides value to your audience.
Regarding keywords specifically, in no case does not use keywords in all parts of the text. This is another sin in the name of search engine attention – keyword overabundance, when the title, every paragraph and every sentence is overflowing with spam words. Use unique, valuable and user-focused content.
High-Quality and Non-Bulky Content
The web is saturated with content for the sake of content. In the pursuit of ranking in search engines, a ton of content is churned out for robots, not for users, the main component is missed – the usefulness of the content for the audience. Formula: “quantity” does not equal “quality”. It’s easy to test yourself here: Would you share your content?
Chatbots
At one time they became hyped in the market, but over time, the hype subsided. However, they can still be useful for businesses. Chatbots do not create content, but indirectly influence the alignment with the values of your audience. They can conduct surveys and collect user data, which will obviously help come up with working insights.
Voice Assistants
With the advent of voice assistants, some of the search queries were redistributed to audio. According to some reports, today more than half of all requests are voice. Already, many companies have moved to the level of online audio advertising with real actions, where you can enter into a dialogue with the brand message, go to the pages with the offer or simply listen to the advertising message.
For example, IKEA, together with a voice assistant, recorded a series of lullabies for their customers, creating an interesting service “Sleep Better,” where you can listen to an original individual lullaby that includes product names.
Augmented Reality (AR)
AR is a superposition of virtual objects in a real environment with which you can interact.
Augmented reality was accepted by the audience with a good level of trust. Only the lazy didn’t talk about Netflix’s Black Mirror. Now AR masks are used, immersion screens are the same story that famous brands are actively using.
For example, the Gucci brand has developed its application in conjunction with iOS, where users can try on products using interactive masks and share these photos on social networks. This an excellent case study on how to increase engagement and build communication with a brand without a single USP.
Q&A Services
A free and fairly effective way to distribute content is to publish party posts on popular Reddit and Quora sites. On these platforms, users ask questions on a variety of topics, and those who consider themselves experts in this field answer them. For example, you can share a link to your article and ask some relevant questions or, conversely, illustrate with this article the answer to someone else’s question or post.
More specifically, Reddit is a social news site and discussion forum where users can submit and discuss content. It has a large and active user base and is a great place to find and interact with potential customers. Be sure to participate in relevant subreddits, share valuable content and connect with other users.
Speaking of Quora, in addition to its direct purpose, the service is convenient to use for finding fresh ideas for content. You can subscribe to topics of interest (the so-called Spaces) – say, Lean Startups or Technology – and track the questions and answers published in them.
Funnel Sequence
The influence of content on the purchase decision is always a controversial thesis. Marketers are always fighting for the expansion of the upper funnel – the increase in traffic-generating tools, including content filling and promotion.
This is absolutely logical – the more audience we collect “from the top” of the funnel, the more large-scale conversions we will get. The key is that the content should initially lead the user to the next step.
Promotion and distribution of content
The topic is understandable and obvious to many, but not everyone uses all the tools available today optimally. Let’s note methods and services that are not often mentioned on this topic.
• Distribution of press releases. Here you can help GlobeNewswire, a platform for corporate press releases in 35 languages and 92 countries. There are nearly a thousand different information feeds to choose from, which you can filter by region, industry and site format. For companies, detailed analytics is available, with which you can evaluate the effectiveness of your PR campaigns.
• Service of journalistic inquiries. This is where Help a Reporter Out comes on the scene – the American analog of the Pressfeed service, in which journalists look for texture for their materials. Business experts, in turn, can use this platform as an opportunity to speak out on topics close to them, and at the same time to promote themselves. In the basic free plan, you get three journalistic requests per day by email, and for $19 a month, you can search for applications online.
Think Outside the Box
Content marketing is essential for any business that wants to establish a strong online presence and attract more customers. By using less obvious tools you can create a comprehensive content marketing strategy that will help you succeed in today’s digital landscape.
We have shared a selection of useful and not-so-obvious tools for generating, visualizing and publishing your content abroad. We hope that something from our selection will be useful to you in your work.