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Content marketing is all about delivering entertaining and educational content to as many of your audience members as possible. There are so many ways to get engaging content out there that small businesses will never stop needing new content. A small business can get endlessly creative with different media and distribution methods, but it all comes down to one thing: written content. We can even argue that every type of content marketing media requires written content in some way. Pictures are worth a thousand words, sure, but they usually have captions.
Benefits of Written Content
Some might argue that in our highly digitized world, reading is going out of style. However, quite the opposite is true – we’re reading more than ever. You might not see anyone pick up a newspaper or magazine that often, but that’s because we do all our reading online, whenever and wherever we want, and as much as we want. The internet is full of written content. We spend our days reading online, even if it’s just article headlines or comments on a YouTube video. At the rate people consume online content, you need to constantly refresh it to keep audiences happy.
Written content offers unique benefits to marketers and consumers alike, including:
- Easy to produce, therefore always fresh
- Draws audiences through SEO, making it easier for consumers to find what they need
- Easy to access and skim, so audiences can quickly find what they’re looking for
- Non-intrusive, i.e., a blog will never start loudly playing in the middle of a quiet office
#1: Blogs
The top medium for written content is blogs. And no, those aren’t going out of style either. In fact, HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2018 survey found that 55% of marketers consider blog content their top priority, more than any other medium. They also found in previous years that companies that publish over 16 blog posts a month increased their traffic 3.5 times over companies that published blogs 0-4 times a month. Blogs are pure written content, and their frequency is directly proportional to their ROI. If you’re trying to get creative with written content distribution, as this blog is recommending, first make sure your blogging strategy is solid and that you’re making the power of blogging work for you.
#2: Social Media
Social media platforms are a great way to distribute written content. While Facebook is an obvious choice, even image-based platforms like Instagram are in need of written content. As mentioned before, pictures need captions, and Instagram captions are short blurbs explaining products, services, or just the company’s link to whatever the image is highlighting. Many images in company stories are just pictures of words, like inspirational quotes. Twitter is another great outlet for written content; despite its word count limitations, a great content marketing strategy is writing up around 20 blurbs to post over the course of a month.
Some not so obvious options for getting content in front of new audiences are Medium and LinkedIn. Medium is a platform where readers can subscribe to different content producers and comment on their articles, essentially having all their favorite bloggers in one place. It features everything from interviews with celebrities to your everyday how-to articles. Medium might be a great place to begin a presence for your company.
LinkedIn is a more professional environment, but also offers great avenues for displaying high-quality written content. LinkedIn has a homepage feed where people can see what their connections like and share, as well as a blog feature. Maintaining an active LinkedIn page for your company and updating it regularly with trends in the professional world and musings on the state of your industry can gain your company a lot of traffic.
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#3: Infographics
Another visual mode of content marketing, businesses might pass up infographics in their written content orders. But there’s no such thing as infographics with only pictures! Captions, statistics, headings, and facts are all written content that make infographics stand out. Audiences that don’t care for long-form written content might search for an infographic to more easily digest the tidbits you’re trying to explain.
#4 & #5: Videos and Podcasts
The reason we’re lumping these two together is because of how they benefit from written content. Obviously, the final product is not text. However, videos and podcasts don’t appear out of thin air! They need scripts, talking points, and thorough research. Even videos that only have background music as audio likely have frames with written information in them. If you’re planning on increasing your custom video marketing, like 64% of B2B marketers did last year, invest in some quality content writing to prepare your video. Likewise, prepare speakers in a company podcast with a script to start with and bounce ideas off before actually getting behind the mike.
# 6: Guest Posts
Publishing written content on another site might seem counterproductive, but it’s actually a great way to distribute your content. Not only are you introducing yourself to a new audience, but you’re also expanding the umbrella of your thought-leadership by branching out into a slightly different, but still related, territory. Guest posts are usually blogs, but they serve a whole other purpose than a blog on your own site.
#7: Courses
Courses are a fun way to bring even more value to your customers. If your company is the best at something, why not teach others about it? If your products are kitchen tools, you could offer a multi-part course about how to use the tools for creating incredible new dishes. If your company is a rehabilitation center, you could offer courses on meditation or building healthy habits. A course shouldn’t give away your selling point for free, but instead build upon it and offer a related benefit that simply helps your audience maximize their involvement with what you’re selling. Courses could require original reading material or even quizzes – all just another way to reach customers with written content.
#8: Interviews
You can spice up your typical written content by featuring interviews. Interviews help potential customers feel as though they know your company better. You can publish interviews with customers, not only focusing on how they feel about your products and services but also on general, fun information about themselves. This will help future customers identify better with your brand. You can also interview employees so your audience can feel a genuine connection with your company. Interviews add a level of authenticity and that “real people” feel that brands spend their entire existence trying to develop.
By this point, you’re probably ready to start developing your content plan ASAP, just to fit in all these neat mediums for written content. Written content is more valuable than ever in the age of SEO and inbound marketing. Make sure you stay on top of it and stay fresh with consistent, quality written content.