There’s more to content marketing than just blogging.

Blogs are an excellent way to showcase your company’s thought leadership and improve your SEO ranking. 

However, by spicing up your digital marketing strategy with other content types, you can attract a wider range of potential customers and improve your chances of brand loyalty. 

If you’d like to branch out and try something other than blogging to connect with your audience, don’t worry, there are lots of options to choose from. 

Here are just some of the best types of content you can try.

Quizzes and Surveys

Blogs and articles are a wonderful way to share useful information with your audience. But what if you want to entertain your clients while gaining some insights into them too? 

Quizzes are some of the most engaging types of content in the digital landscape.

A personality quiz will show your audience that you understand them by predicting what kind of characteristics they might have. 

With an industry quiz, you can offer information on your niche, while creating a fun and shareable experience for your customers. 

All the while, you also get to gather some useful information about your customers and their likes, dislikes, and other traits.

There are plenty of easy-to-use tools like Google Forms that will allow you to create quizzes for your community without spending a fortune. For example, LeadQuizzes is one of them. It is a very useful online quiz maker, created for anybody who wishes to collect data and leads. It is a simple tool that helps you easily create any kind of online quiz you want – no tech skills needed.

Podcasts and Interviews

Podcasts are growing increasingly popular. They are a fun way to consume content for people who spend a lot of time on the move. 

The great advantage of this type of content is that it doesn’t require a lot of visual attention from your audience, so they can listen in when they’re driving or working.

Podcasts can also be an excellent way to strengthen your position in your industry by connecting your brand to other market leaders. 

For instance, you could reach out to guests and industry influencers who can make an appearance on your show. 

Remember, to create an appealing podcast, use the same consistent voice in your audio posts as you do when publishing other digital marketing content online. 

You can also consider asking other companies with popular podcasts in your industry whether they’d consider hosting you as a guest.

Leverage User-Generated Content

Content is a great way to engage your customers on an emotional level and generate trust. 

One of the best ways to demonstrate your credibility and connect with your audience is to share user-generated content from people who have previously interacted with your brand. 

Videos of customers on Instagram and Facebook using your products or services are a glimpse into the reality of working with your company. 

Testimonials and feedback from real customers are more likely to come across as believable and transparent to your audience than any marketing you can create for yourself. 

If you’re struggling to encourage feedback naturally, consider asking your audience to share videos discussing their favorite experiences with your brand for a chance to win something. 

You could create a social media contest with a branded hashtag where people can post videos to win.

Create Polls and Unique Reports

Few things are more likely to get backlinks in the digital world than original findings and reports. 

If you publish a case study, whitepaper, or some other industry research on your website, you could boost your chances of gaining mentions from customers and relevant brands. 

Companies and customers alike are constantly looking for ways to back up their claims and explain complex topics with links to useful statistics and facts. 

You’ll also have some brand-focused and highly shareable information to put in your social media and email campaigns.

If you don’t have enough cash to finance an entire study, consider running a poll on social media and reporting on your findings after a few weeks. 

To make your poll as successful as possible, ask questions that are going to be interesting to your audience, and cross-promote your study to get as many people involved as possible. 

Shareable Pictures and Infographics

Research suggests that visual content increases a person’s willingness to read a post by around 80%. 

If you want to create the kind of content that earns shares and gets people talking, then you’re going to need to get visual. 

Experiment with quote pictures where you can share valuable information in a small, social-media-friendly format. 

If you have a lot of valuable information or statistics to share, try creating your own infographics. 

Infographics make complex data easier to understand, particularly if you use the right contextual visuals. 

What’s more, you can cut parts out of your infographic to share on social media and in your email marketing campaigns when you want to drive people back to your website.

There are plenty of tools like Canva to help you create infographics with pre-built templates, so you don’t have to spend money on a designer.

Host Seminars and Webinars

Online education has grown particularly popular in recent years. More people are turning to the web for opportunities to improve their skills, both on a professional and personal level. 

If you have valuable information that you can share with your audience, you will be able to get amazing results from a webinar or seminar. 

Free webinars are an excellent lead magnet when you’re trying to convince more people to sign up for your email newsletter. 

You can also use seminars and webinars as a way to demonstrate your thought leadership, increase your industry authority, and build trust. 

Remember, think about what your customers are most likely to learn before you begin creating your seminar. 

Will your clients want a lot of interactive quizzes? Will they prefer live video or recordings? Are you going to offer any one-on-one educational options?

Get Creative with Your Content Strategy

Content marketing is still one of the most valuable tools for online businesses, but it doesn’t start and finish with blogging. 

Although written content still has a lot of value to offer, it’s worth exploring other kinds of posts to appeal to a wider audience and strengthen your position in the industry. 

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Ashley Wilson is a content creator, writing about business and tech. She has been known to reference movies in casual conversation and enjoys baking homemade treats for her husband and their two felines, Lady and Gaga. You can get in touch with Ashley via Twitter.