The 6 Best Content Types to Focus on in 2023

We're already in the middle of January, but there's still time to create your content marketing strategy for 2023. But what does that mean? What types of content should you be creating for your clients and customers moving forward? I know planning your content marketing for the coming year can be time-consuming and even frustrating, so here are the 6 most popular types of content you should be focusing on this year.

Video

Thanks to YouTube and Tiktok, video content is huge. There are over 244.4 million digital video viewers in the U.S. Last year, a reported 54% of consumers wanted to see more video content from businesses and brands they support. Videos are also consumers' favorite content type to consume on social media.

But what types of video content should your business focus on? Popular video content includes explainer videos, video testimonials, video interviews, tutorials, live streams of events, vlogs, and video ads.

Case Studies

If you're marketing a product with a long sales cycle or work in SaaS, case studies can work wonders for your content marketing. According to Content Marketing Institute, 73% of the most successful marketers used case studies last year, and almost 50% of SaaS companies said case studies drove their sales.

Case studies follow a problem/solution format, and show prospective buyers how your product or service helped a customer just like them. For sealing a complex deal a good case study can't be beaten.

Whitepapers

Designed to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision, whitepapers are an important weapon in your content marketing arsenal. They are often considered more credible than a blog post because they are usually written by experts and contain a lot of detailed statistics and research. They are also more informational than salesy, and therefore get shared on social media.

Downloadables

People have always loved getting free stuff, especially if it is useful and helps them solve a problem. Giving prospects and customers something to download, whether it be an ebook, audio or video file, whitepaper or case study, is a great way to not only build goodwill with your customer base, but get some inbound leads as well. Ask for their email address in exchange for the downloadable, and you have their permission to contact them again with other freebies and buy links for your products and services.

Infographics

Infographics are blowing up, as the kids say, and aren't going away. 55% of marketers create social media infographics more than any other visual media. 65% of brands have integrated infographics into their content marketing strategy.

This is for good reason. The use of colored infographics can boost a reader's attention span and comprehensibility by 82%. 50% of users focus more on content that contains images, and including infographics in your content improves readability and comprehension and is shared more often than content without infographics.

Using vibrant, colorful infographics to break down complex data or steps in a manufacturing process will help you better inform and educate your customers while giving them content they'll want to share with their friends.

Blogs

Right now you're probably saying one of two things. "I thought blogging was dead," or "Wait. We're already doing a lot of blogging."

To the first point, even with the advent of things like video and infographics, blogging is here to stay. 77% of internet users read blogs and leave 77 million comments per month on blog posts. Almost 54% of Fortune 500 companies have public-facing blogs. Nope, blogs aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

To those who have already made blogging an essential part of their content marketing strategy, realize that while blogs are still very much en vogue, the way blogs are structured has changed. So if you haven't already, in 2023 work these strategies into your blogs.

Longer posts. Not so long ago a 300-500 word post was good enough to please Google. But those days are gone. According to HubSpot , 2164 words was the median length of blog posts in 2021. I've been writing posts of 1,000-2,000 words for my clients. Shorter posts just aren't cutting it anymore, neither for SEO or being useful. Readers want in-depth, informative content that helps them solve a problem or educate themselves on a complex topic. Longer posts are stickier, keep users on your site longer, and grow your authority and thought leadership.

Pillar Pages. A pillar page is simply a central piece of content that serves as a table of contents for a topic cluster, a collection of related articles on a subject that, when linked together, act as an "ultimate guide" to that subject. Pillar pages are great for pulling together older related posts scattered all across your blog into one convenient place, giving already created content new life and new visibility. They help establish your business as the authority on the subject, and are immensely sharable.

There you go. 6 forms of content to focus on in 2023. And if you need help creating content for whitepapers, ebooks, case studies, or blog posts, let me know. I can help.