What Content Should I Create? (Here's 7 Top-Performing Formats)

Content is at the heart of your marketing strategy and your brand needs large amounts of it to drive many areas of the business. From engaging with customers, reaching new target markets and building brand awareness to providing value and converting leads, content has multiple roles to perform.

It can be daunting to come up with enough good ideas to fulfill all these needs, so it’s worth doing it in a systematic way. Think about the data you have to hand and utilize it to influence the type of content you create by seeing what’s worked in the past and how underperforming pieces could be tweaked for better results in future.

Then take a look at the wide variety of content types available and decide on a strategy to allow them to feed into each other. Selecting complementary formats can help you improve the customer experience and maximize your chances of achieving your brand goals.

1. Blogs

Blogs are among the most widely-used content types on the internet and that’s because they work. While following an instantly recognizable and accessible format, they can be manipulated to present the needs of your business and the message you want to get across to your audience.

The most important aspect of ensuring your blog performs well is updating it regularly. In reality, the best way to ensure best intentions in this area don’t start to slide is to implement a content calendar and stick to it. Blogs can be created spontaneously when inspiration strikes, but your posting schedule shouldn’t rely on flashes of increased creativity. Plan ahead and stick to your posting schedule to ensure success.

2. Well-presented data

Stats, graphs and charts can sound dull, but when presented in an infographic or interactive form of content, they can become very powerful. These custom-designed pieces are shareable and enable you to step away from large swathes of text on your website.

They also provide great link-building opportunities as other sites point users toward your visually-interesting content. When producing graphic representations of data make sure it’s done in multiple formats so that you get the most out of it. You’ll need different shapes, sizes and substance for various uses, including hosting on your website and sharing across social media.

3. Listicles

Listicles are a tried and tested format and continue to perform well because they’re so accessible. Users can scan the subheadings and get an overview of the content before deciding whether to read it in more detail. They’re also incredibly shareable on social media, meaning they work hard when it comes to getting your brand out there.

Creating this type of content is relatively easy, but make sure you’re following best practice. This includes:

• Catchy but not click bait-driven headlines
• An introduction and conclusion
• Subheadings formatted with the appropriate H2 and H3 tags

4. How-to guides

Providing value to your customers through content has myriad benefits, including building trust and growing your email list, and what could be more valuable than instructing them on how to complete a task. How-to guides can take a number of forms, including written step-by-step pieces, diagrams and even videos, depending on the resources available to you.

How-to guides must be easy to follow and break the task down into manageable stages. Always keep your audience in mind while creating this type of content and don’t assume prior knowledge, as that’s the easiest way to alienate your customers.

5. Authority content

Authority content showcases your specialized knowledge on a subject and sets you apart from your competitors. It performs particularly well because search engines like Google are designed to look out for it and reward websites displaying this type of content with improved rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).

It’s likely to take a tangible investment of time and resources to create authority content, as it needs to be well-structured and based on credible sources. What it will include exactly depends on the industry, but the detail involved will demonstrate your brand’s standing in the market.

6. Thought leadership

Go a step further and present the employees of your company as thought leaders within your industry. Opinion-led articles taking a deep dive into a specific topic or current event can be very powerful and help put some personality into the image you present to your audience.

Don’t just publish these pieces on your own website either, as platforms like HuffPost and Medium are good outlets for opinion-led content. Utilize their domain credibility to obtain quality backlinks and to reach a larger audience.

7. Ebooks

Offering an ebook on your website can be an effective way to show value to your customers, capture leads and demonstrate your authority on a subject. As a longer piece of content, a certain amount of resource will be required to write an ebook, but it can be evergreen on your website for years or updated to continue bringing in leads if needed.

Ebooks don’t have to be as long as you might think, with some starting at as little as five pages in length. As long as they’re packed with useful and insightful information, they’ll perform well and promote a trusted relationship with your audience.