10 Types of Content to Fill Your Content Calendar

Bonus Material: Free Social Content Calendar

Want more ideas for your content marketing? These types of content can help your brainstorming content for your social media channels.

As more and more brands are investing in creating content, it is getting harder and harder to catch a web user’s attention.

Today’s consumers are constantly moving through online social media feeds. They are hard to surprise or impress.

You need to constantly experiment with new types of content and formats, which would allow you to market through more social media channels and discover more tactics that work.

Now that your target customer is likely switching two or three social media networks daily, your content needs to be everywhere. So, content diversification is a must.

Let’s take a look at each type of content.

1. How-to Articles

Web users are turning to the Internet to answer all sorts of questions, but how-to search queries are the ones that provide the most important marketing opportunities for content providers.

While we search for all kinds of questions online, the how-to article is the most engaging one.

Imagine yourself searching “What is SEO?” vs “How to do SEO?” In which of these cases are you prepared to dive deep into a document once you start reading?

How-to questions are the most popular types of questions people ask online:

Besides, the problem-solution nature of how-to content provides lots of conversion opportunities. This is where you can “soft-sell” your (clients’) products or services without ruining or interrupting your site users’ reading or browsing journeys.

2. Video Tutorials

The top four content categories watched by YouTube users are comedy, music, entertainment/pop culture, and “how-to” according to Google.

I am sure these stats are going to be even more skewed towards how-to video content demand now with lots of people at home deciding to use that time to learn a new thing or two.

There are lots of types of video tutorials you can easily include in your content marketing calendar.

Every time you or your team is working on a new how-to article, make sure to put together one of these video tutorials:

• Product walk-throughs
• Whiteboard videos
• Step-by-step video slideshows
• Annotated screencasts
• Animated video tutorials

3. Flowcharts and Checklists

As instruction-based content is getting even more popular, it is smart to create even more content types addressing all kinds of problems and visualizing solutions.

Visualizations will not only make your instruction-driven content more useful (and easy to follow), it will also let your content do better on sites like Reddit and Pinterest.

Luckily there are lots of powerful visual creation and marketing tools that let users create professional infographics on a doable budget.

4. Product / Software / Service Comparisons

Across all industries there’s one clear trend: Buying journeys have become much more complicated due to the fact that customers spend more time researching their choices online.

Your content creation strategy can help you become part of those increasingly complex buying journeys. You need to know your competitors and clearly state why your solution is better (or how it fits a more specific need).

An easy place to start: Type your brand name in Google’s search box and add “vs” for Google to instantly suggest competitors that often appear next to your name in Google. Now create content to target those search queries:

Example: PayKickstart shows an effective strategy of targeting comparison-based search queries to better control the sentiment.

Here’s its comparison-driven content: ClickFunnels vs PayKickstart:

5. Video Reviews / Testimonials

Likewise, as we are dealing with the “curious consumer” who tends to research just about any buying decision, creating video reviews (as well as testimonials) to clearly show the selling points of your solution is a must.

Apart from creating alternative content for your most curious consumer, this strategy will also help you dominate more of your brand-driven search queries as Google loves using video carousels to feature related video content:

6. Listicles

Many marketers would advise against creating listicles (i.e., “best of” type of content) because this strategy has long been overused. (Well, I wouldn’t argue with the second part of that statement.) There are two many listicles all over the web.

But they still work, so why stop creating them?

Listicles provide a highly entertaining, easy-to-digest, and very engaging reading experience, so they remain one of the most popular types of digital content.

Not all of your content needs to be a heavily researched study! Sometimes, content is created to be an enjoyable distraction, and it’s perfectly fine!

7. Seasonal Content

Seasonality is a powerful way to create content that converts well.

Create content to target seasonal search queries right at the peak of that seasonality-driven interest. That will most certainly result in lots of clicks and engagement.

Seasonality is the most effective force behind viral content, so make sure to make the most of those yearly opportunities.

8. Case Studies / Use Cases

Some customers may come to you in search of a solution to their current problem.

However many of your target customers may not even know they need your product or service. They may be totally unaware of any existing problem that can or should be fixed.

This is where content that explains how your product can be used will come in handy. Explain the concept from various angles based on different needs. Clearly show how different features apply to different scenarios.

9. Ebooks, Whitepapers & Other Downloadables

Downloadable content means that your readers will take part in your brand home and (if you did a particularly good job) that they may send it around to their friends.

The power of downloadable content is that it creates new channels and new brand visibility channels you couldn’t even imagine. And yes, it is also a great lead magnet. (Readers would be more willing to subscribe to your email if they get a free download in return.)

Creating free downloads is also easier than you may think.

You may be able to easily repurpose your existing content into an eBook or a whitepaper.

Here’s also an easy way to add ebook downloadables to your WordPress site.

Bonus Material: Free Social Content Calendar

10. Collaborative Content

Finally, even though this comes at #10, I think this is by far the most important type of content you should be creating. Collaborative content is any content that involves other brands, niche experts, or social media influencers.

Having other people contribute to your content increases your reach to those micro-communities of users who follow and engage with those niche experts on their sites or social media channels.

There are many forms of collaborative content you may play with.

These include:

• “Top experts talk on…” listicles. This one works particularly well for newsworthy or trending topics.
• Webinars where niche experts are invited to discuss a particular topic
• One-to-one interviews with a well-known public figure in your industry.

Whichever format you decide to start with, don’t forget the two most important things here:

• You need to really develop your relationships with those experts who agreed to work with you on a content asset.
• You need to do good research to come up with interesting questions that may also bring in some extra search engine visibility.

Text Optimizer makes this latter task easier by suggesting the most popular (and searchable) questions on any topic:

Here are also a few great tips on how to be a good interviewer.

Conclusion

Content diversification is one of those marketing trends I love watching. It is exciting to see more tools being developed allowing more content creation opportunities on a budget. I hope this article will inspire some new content tactics for you and your team!

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