If you ever find yourself in a content creation rut, you’re not alone. Content marketing is a hungry beast, and it can be challenging to keep it satisfied with tasty little tidbits. What is perhaps even more challenging is the minimal time many marketers have for content creation, because, let’s be real, creating awesome content is just one of many things on the to-do list for the day. So, here are 10 content ideas to help you keep that marketing monster from getting hangry.

Webinar

A digital take on the classic seminar, webinars are a cheap and easy way to get your content out to a large audience. In most cases, webinars should be educational, rather than a hard sales pitch – people generally want to discover for themselves why they need what you’re offering rather than being told why. One of the really great things about webinars is that they can help you with both immediate and long-term lead generation by giving you a live, interactive broadcast now, and providing an on-demand recording for later viewing.

eCourse

When you have a complicated topic you’re trying to educate people on, or if you’ve got a couple of recorded webinars and other educational content pieces under your belt, you can create an eCourse. There are several ways to create and run an eCourse, but one of the easiest (especially if you are not accepting payment for your course) is by using workflows in a marketing automation system. Workflows allow you to trigger automatic emails at a set interval based on a form submission, so people can “sign up” for your eCourse by simply filling out a form and then have the content of that course sent right to their inbox without you having to manually send each component. If you’re looking for a more formal course structure, or would like to charge for your course content, you could also use one of the many eLearning platforms available currently.

Checklist

Everyone loves a good checklist. Why? Because it provides instant gratification. Whether it’s instructional in nature (i.e. a “to-do” list) or more of a diagnostic tool (i.e. a “how well are you doing this” list), your checklists should point people in the direction of your offerings in a subtle, yet clear way.

Infographic

The goal of an infographic is to quickly and easily communicate high level information. To do this well, you should use minimal text, easy to understand graphics (such as icons), and keep the overall design simple by not trying to tackle too much information all at once. For complicated topics, this can sometimes be challenging, but you can always consider doing a series of infographics when that is the case.

eBook

When we say eBook, we’re not talking about a robust piece of literature that you’d purchase for your Kindle. We’re talking about a short, downloadable, and usually free PDF that addresses a single topic. These are typically designed in a format similar to a magazine and should always be in-brand. These are also a great way to repurpose some content you may already have. So, if you have a few pieces of content that are all about a similar topic, you can use an eBook to repackage them into a nice, shiny new lead magnet.

Guide

A guide is a specific type of eBook (or sometimes infographic) that focuses on giving people actionable insights. While a basic eBook can be used to introduce a topic, a guide should be used to give people more direction on that topic.

Guides come in many forms, but 2 popular options are “how-to” and “buyers” guides. How-to guides give people instructions on how to accomplish a discreet task, while buyer’s guides give people helpful information on making a smart purchasing decision on a particular product.

Blog

One of the earliest forms of online content creation, blogs are still an easy and inexpensive way to share great content. As with most well-done content, your blogs should be short and to the point. If you are covering a topic that can’t be addressed comfortably in a single brief post, split it up into multiple posts and link them together in a coherent way using descriptive anchor text so people can learn as much (or as little) as they want. 

You should also consider mixing up your blog style. Lists (like this one) are a nice way to give people easily digestible bits of useable information. Integrating images (when done in moderation) can also help keep your blog fresh and engaging, especially when those images add to the audience’s comprehension of the blog topic and are not just generic stock photos.

Direct Mail

Let’s not forget about the OG of content marketing – our old friend, direct mail. With such a big shift into digital marketing, there’s a little more room in mailboxes than there used to be, so your chances of getting noticed may be a bit higher. Simply sending a postcard does not necessarily qualify as content marketing (especially when you’re doing a wide blast). But when you go from a boring, standard postcard to a unique and personalized direct mail piece, you can jump from the category of outbound to inbound marketing. To do make the jump, you need to not only have a mailer that is unique, you need to make sure it’s directly relevant to the recipients. There are A LOT of creative direct mail campaigns out there, so just do a quick Google search if you need some inspiration.

Still Need Some Help?

If you want to create great content, but don’t have the time, resources, or expertise, we can help! Whether you need help crafting content from scratch, or someone to audit and adjust your current content strategy, Red Brick Partners can help you build your content marketing presence.

Schedule your free consultation here and find out what Red Brick Partners can do for you.

References:

1. Ahmad, Irfan. “Video Marketing Statistics for 2020 [Infographic].” SocialMediaToday, Industry Dive, 30 Oct. 2019, https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/video-marketing-statistics-for-2020-infographic/566099/

2. “Gamification.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, (n.d.). Web. 24 Sept. 2020.