Good content is at the core of every marketing strategy. Content marketing can be quite complicated at first glance. 

By developing the right marketing strategy, you’ll be able to reach your prospects with a great piece of content at the right time so you can engage with them and develop a relationship. 

Your marketing efforts will result in generating more leads and building trust with not only existing clients but also new ones.

However, creating consistent content isn’t enough. You need to think about what your content’s purpose is. If you’re consistently creating and publishing content with no established purpose, it will get lost and your competitors will shine through. 

The three core purposes of content are to either entertain, educate or inform. So, what does each one of them mean?

1. Content that entertains 

When creating content with the aim to entertain, you are writing to engage, humour and connect with people. 

This type of content heavily relies on you triggering an emotional reaction, which will then develop a deeper connection between the consumer and your brand. 

Using visually stimulating content 

One of the best ways to entertain your audience is with video content. Think of all the ads that to this day you remember. For example, a recent video ad campaign of Coca Cola such as the one where they produced 2 million individualised bottle designs. 

What makes their ad campaigns so successful is that they don’t sell you the product, but they sell you the experience and lifestyle that comes with consuming it.

Is there a video in the same industry as your business that you can remember? If you’ve found that video, think of the elements that engaged with you the most and left you feeling entertained. 

Once you have them figured out, you can proceed to customise and utilise them within your content marketing.

Telling stories

Everyone loves a good story. It doesn’t matter if it makes you cry or laugh. All it has to do is make you feel something. So, what makes a great story?

An entertaining story would be short and straight to the point since if you don’t catch your reader’s attention within the first few seconds of them landing on it, you’ve lost them. 

Now that you’ve captured their attention, you need to make sure they don’t regret wasting their time reading if the ending isn’t satisfying enough. 

As much as you would like to talk about the story of your business, if you constantly talk about yourself, your readers will lose interest.

Instead, you can tell stories about past or current clients. It can be something funny they said or an emotional plot twist. 

One thing to remember is that any story you tell needs to be relatable. 

Encourage your audience to participate

Yet another great way to entertain is to have your readers directly participate with your brand. Create polls asking silly questions or ask them something personal. 

You need to build a more personal relationship, in which they feel valued because you appreciate their feedback. If the poll encourages a lot of engagement, create a follow-up poll to continue the discussion and share results.

Also, you need to decide on the platform you will publish your poll on. Posting polls on social media has gained the most popularity in recent years and your business can benefit greatly from them.

2. Content that educates

The allure of educational content is that it can combine education with inspiration, entertainment and information. This type of content shouldn’t solely be about dry educational content such as manuals and textbooks. 

To achieve the best results, here are a few examples of educational content:

Tutorials

Tutorials are usually in video format. They aim to connect with your prospects by providing them with easy-to-follow content that teaches them something they don’t already know. 

There are a few elements of a good tutorial video you need to consider: clarity, flow, pacing, appeal and tone. To best apply these elements, answer these questions:

• Are the instructions easy to follow and implement?
• Does each idea transition to the next smoothly?
• Are the instructions delivered at a comfortable pace?
• Does the tutorial speak to a broad audience?
• Does the content have a friendly and inviting tone?

Answer these questions and your next tutorial video promises to be a success.

How-to guides

How-to guides are the written form of tutorial videos. You can use how-to guides for your blog section on your website.

By creating a how-to guide, you will educate your audience, but most importantly, you’ll provide proof that you’re an expert in your field just like the tutorial videos.

To write an educational and engaging how-to guide, you should answer the same questions stated above for tutorial videos. One thing that is crucial when creating this type of content is its formatting. 

The information should be broken up in appropriate headlined sections. Each headline should follow the same principles as when writing the title of the guide.

Product / Service Reviews

Product or service reviews can achieve so much more than creating an enticing image of your product/service. They can boost your product’s / service’s reputation and make it the go-to product/service.

Customers are heavily dependent on reviews. The more reviews a product or service receives, the more likely it is for someone to invest in it. 

So, how do you create an educational and enticing product/service review?

First of all, prospects will be inclined to trust a review that is created by a third party, who isn’t directly related to your business. What makes a powerful product/service review is when it addresses clearly who this product/service is for. 

You need to make sure you are 100% transparent and be completely honest about the benefits and even drawbacks of your product/service.

3. Content that informs

The aim of creating content that informs is to transfer knowledge, solve problems and increase awareness. 

Whilst creating this type of content, you need to make sure you anticipate questions, invite comments and, most importantly, you don’t overwhelm your readers.

There are two types of informational content: evergreen and time-limited. 

An example of a time-limited piece of content would be an opinion piece or a piece of writing that relates to industry news and events. As for evergreen content, it usually focuses on how-to content, which can remain relevant for years to come. 

If you’re struggling to come up with ideas for either type of content, Google trends and discussions is a great place to start researching what kind of information your audience is looking for. 

With Google trends, you can research into what topics are currently trending in your industry. You can then utilise the research into creating time-limited content, which is known to be more effective at gaining links and attention.

If you want to create evergreen content, it’s best to use Google discussion, which can be found in the ‘More’ drop-down menu after you’ve looked up a specific keyword. 

The resulting page will show you a list of related queries and discussions people are having about that specific keyword. Evergreen content is famous for its high ranking on search engines for specific keywords.

Hope this blog post helps you create amazing content people love. Is there anything you’d add to my list. Let me know! I love to hear your feedback.