27 Killer Ideas For Your Next Content Marketing Campaign
Jan 16, 2023
- Content Creation
- Daniel Trick
Content marketing offers businesses, organizations, and brands opportunities to boost lead generation, increase sales, raise brand awareness and engage with customers and prospective clients through content.
But with so many marketing channels and mediums to choose from, it can be overwhelming to come up with a killer campaign idea.
Don’t worry, we got you covered. In this guide, we’ll give you 27 innovative, exciting ideas for your next content marketing campaign.
We’ve based our suggestions on what really works for us here at FATJOE to ensure you’re ready to create the ultimate content marketing campaign.
Let’s dig in…
Steal One Of These 27 Ideas For Your Next Content Marketing Campaign:
1. Oldie-But-Goldie: Create An Awesome Blog Post On A Hot Topic
Blog posts are one of the most popular types of content used by marketers and business owners to generate interest, promote products and services, and share useful information with readers. Adding a blog to your company website can help you to improve your search ranking and boost SEO results, and it can also provide helpful information or reference points for prospective customers or existing clients who may be visiting your website.
Almost 50% of companies that use a content marketing strategy employ blogging as a means of helping them to achieve key objectives. Blog posts can cover a broad spectrum of topics and you can use them for many different purposes. Articles can inform, entertain, educate and inspire people. They’re also a means of connecting with audiences and encouraging interaction and engagement.
When creating blog posts as part of your content marketing strategy, it’s beneficial to consider the topic or content theme and the aim of the article. Popular content ideas for blogs include how-to guides and educational articles, customer stories, experiences, quizzes and polls, regular series and posts that answer common questions. Your articles should be relevant to your target audience and your brand.
Just think, the fact you’re even reading this post is a testament to the value of blog posts and content marketing!
If you’re struggling with the writing side of things you can always employ Content Writing services to help you out. You can let them know what you have in mind and let them handle the actual copywriting.
2. Conduct Original Research & Provide Case Studies
Case studies highlight the benefits of using specific products and services. They can help brands to showcase evidence and research, which backs up claims and encourages the reader or user to take the next step. Consider the example of a digital marketing service.
A case study would introduce the client and provide a brief overview of what they do, the problems they encountered before using the service and what they wanted to achieve. The post will outline the processes involved and provide data, including facts and figures, to show what happened, for example, implementing a new SEO or paid ads campaign contributed to a 200% increase in web traffic or page visits.
Case studies and research are effective content types because they provide solid evidence and accurate, up-to-date data to demonstrate the efficacy and impact of a product or service. Seeing positive results is likely to inspire other customers to want to get involved.
An effective case study should have an eye-catching title and include digestible, clear data and images and graphics. The information should be detailed but succinct and it should explain how the product or service solved the problem and what benefits it offered. There should also be a call to action.
You can use case studies on your website, include them or links to them in blog posts, or create social media posts. Ideas include:
3. Create ‘Lite’ infographics
A ‘Lite’ Infographic is a form of content, which presents data, facts and figures in a way that is very easy to read and understand. Infographics are a brilliant way to communicate clearly, discuss complex subjects and break down data into manageable chunks.
4. Create a Viral Twitter Thread or Tweetstorm
MVP SEO ⏱️📈
Only have 2 hours spare to double your organic SEO traffic?
K. Just do this:
— Joe (@fatjoedavies) October 30, 2022
A Twitter thread is a series of posts which follow one another. A tweetstorm is a burst of tweets that cover the same subject. Using a Twitter thread or a tweetstorm is a very quick and simple way to draw attention to your feed, gain exposure and get people talking. The more hype you can generate, the more interactions you’ll gain. You should find that your follower number increases and that people like and retweet posts, which can help you increase sales or expand your reach in terms of your client base or readership. Even with Elon’s antics (or perhaps because of?) Twitter had over 368 million active monthly users in December 2022.
5. Create An Infographic
Infographics allow you to turn chunks of text or data into visual representations, which are easy to read and digest. Infographics are ideal for sharing the results of studies, surveys and polls, explaining complex subjects and providing rapid access to key statistics and facts. Research suggests that the human brain processes visual data around 60,000 times faster than text. You can use infographics to open communication channels, promote your brand and diversify your content marketing strategy to connect with the reader and highlight your point clearly and concisely.
6. Collate Blogs Into eBooks
eBooks have become increasingly popular in recent years. Figures from Statista suggest that the market will grow by up to 3% between 2023 and 2027. Collating blogs into eBooks is an excellent idea if you have a substantial amount of data to share or content on a specific topic or subject. You can turn short-form content into long-form content to share advice and expertise, gain trust, improve your search ranking and generate more leads. Research shows that long-form content creates around nine times more leads than short-form posts. If you are considering this option, it’s advantageous to offer a downloadable version, which the individual can purchase or access via a subscription or membership service.
7. Create a Regular Email Newsletter
Emails are a speedy, easy way to communicate with customers and share news, updates and promotions. Using a regular email newsletter, you can promote all kinds of content, including eBooks, new social media posts and blog posts & articles.
8. Feature Your Key Customers
Featuring your customers is an effective way to connect on a deeper level, enhance authenticity and make your brand more relatable.
9. Thought Leadership Posts On LinkedIn
Posting on LinkedIn is an excellent way to connect with targeted audiences and demographics, promote your business, position yourself as a voice of authority and establish a contact network. Using LinkedIn, you can build trust and confidence and draw attention to your company or brand.
10. Start a Podcast
Podcasts have surged in popularity in the last five years. There are now more than 2 million podcasts and statistics indicate that there will be over 464 million monthly listeners by the end of 2023. Starting a podcast is an excellent way to engage with customers and prospective clients, share information and explore a different way to discuss topics. When you use a podcast as part of a content marketing strategy, it’s crucial to champion consistency and focus on topics that are relevant to both your business and your target listener or customer. Ensure that production is slick and professional and use feedback from listeners to influence decision-making moving forward. You may find that listeners want to return to a subject or spend more time talking about specific issues, for example.
11. Interview an Industry Leader
You can enhance your podcast and gain authority by interviewing experts or inviting guests onto the podcast to share their ideas, opinions or experiences. Interviewing influencers that have a following that is relevant to your target demographic can help you to increase follower numbers and gain exposure. You can also use your podcast to analyze and discuss trends and patterns, talk about industry news and encourage debate.
12. Repurpose User-Generated Content
Almost 80% of consumers are influenced by user-generated content. This type of content is created by customers or social media followers rather than marketing teams. Examples include:
- Photographs
- Case studies
- Reviews
- Testimonials
- Video clips
User-generated content often resonates with consumers because it enhances authenticity and it helps brands to build strong connections. If you share photographs of an item of clothing taken by a real customer on Instagram, for example, your followers may be able to see themselves in that outfit more effectively and easily than they would if you used a conventional model. Brands become more relatable and accessible. If you share audio reviews or video testimonials, this can build trust and consumer confidence.
13. Update and Repurpose Existing Content
Trends come and go, new data emerges and people’s ideas and opinions evolve. One of the simplest ways to create content for a new campaign is to update, revamp and repurpose existing content. Take a post and sprinkle some magic on it. Update statistics, add new information and consider using different content types. You could turn a blog post into an eBook or a how-to guide into a video tutorial, for example.
14. Take the Best Post and Make It Better (Skyscrape)
Taking the best post and making it better is known as using the skyscraper method or publishing a 10x guest post. The aim is to choose a topic, find the best article or guide and enhance it. There are multiple ways to do this, including:
- Increase the word count
- Add images, videos, infographics and tables
- Add detail: expand bullet points and include facts and figures
- Update information and data
- Delve deeper into the topic
15. Share Industry Hacks or Tips
Many people use search engines and explore websites and social media to gather information, solve problems and find out more about specific topics. Sharing industry hacks is an ingenious way to establish authority, help readers to tackle pain points and start a conversation.
16. Respond to Customer Questions or Comments
Use customer comments, feedback and questions to create useful guides or stories and articles that discuss the topics people are interested in. Review emails, social media comments and online queries. You could also consider creating a series of posts that answer questions or writing a post based on the ‘question of the week.’
17. Create Product Reviews
Product reviews and comparisons can be hugely influential during the sales process. If you’re looking to encourage buyers to move through the funnel and boost lead conversion, providing detailed, authentic product reviews and comparisons can help you to improve results.
18. Produce Video Content & Publish To YouTube
In 2022 alone, more than 3 billion web users consumed video content at least once per month. Video content is impactful and engaging, and it has much higher share rates than images and text. Social video generates more than 1,200 times the number of shares than images and text combined. As well as helping you to reach more people, video content is also incredibly powerful in terms of spreading messages and providing useful, helpful information. Studies show that people retain up to 85% more information when viewing videos compared to reading text – it’s a shame we made this a blog post and not a video, really!
One of the most significant advantages of video content is that it caters to a diverse range of businesses. You can use video clips or long-form video content to introduce people to your brand and provide behind-the-scenes access, demonstrate how to use products and services, illustrate complex ideas, create a video blog series or diary, share tutorials and animated step-by-step guides, introduce your team or share product demos. If you’re new to video production, or you’re struggling to make an impact, why not have a look at our Video Creation services. If you’re not sure how to start outsourcing your video production and design, check out our Video Outsourcing guide!
19. Take Your Readers or Followers Behind the Scenes
Studies show that consumers are more interested in the businesses they buy from than ever before. Behind-the-scenes videos, interviews and images are an excellent way to give people more information about your organization and show how it works and what life is really like day-to-day. Celebrities, musicians and actors have been using this ploy to connect with audiences for many years. Now, businesses can capitalize too.
20. Create a Buyer’s Guide
Buyer’s guides are detailed, informative features, videos or articles that help customers to choose the right products. They help to educate consumers while also providing golden opportunities to promote products.
21. Make a List On A Hot Topic In Your Industry
Lists are very popular because they’re easy to read and understand and they provide swift access to key points and messages. You can create a list based on all kinds of information or topics. If you sell homeware or you offer redecorating services, for example, explore titles such as the ‘Top 10 interior design trends for 2023’ or ‘20 mistakes to avoid when renovating your home.’
22. Run a Contest or Giveaway
If you’re looking to attract attention, create a buzz and supercharge follower numbers quickly, it’s a great idea to run a contest or giveaway. Choose a prize and then advertise the competition. Make sure you outline clear rules and instructions and try to gain as much exposure as possible. If you’re hosting a giveaway on Instagram, for example, encourage followers to share your post on their story, tag friends and family members, use a hashtag and follow specific accounts. You could also team up with other brands or influencers.
23. Share Your Story
If you’re a business owner, it can be beneficial to use content to build connections and relationships with your audience. Share your story, tell people about how the brand came to be and let them into your world. You could write a blog or answer questions in a video, podcast or interview, for example. Try to be candid, showcase your personality and don’t be afraid to talk about the lows, as well as the highs. Consumers want to connect with businesses and be able to relate to them.
24. Create a ‘Did You Know?’ Post
People often read blogs or watch videos to learn or find the answers to questions. ‘Did you know?’ posts are designed to be informative and educational, but they’re also fun and accessible. Include fun facts, weird and wonderful myths or misconceptions and new data to make your content useful, exciting and original.
25. Create a Seasonal Piece
We often think of the holidays when discussing seasonal content, but there’s a steady stream of events, occasions and traditions that can inspire content throughout the year. From spring cleaning tips, Easter recipes and getting your home ready for winter to travel advice for summer vacations, Halloween dressing-up ideas and gift guides for Christmas, seasonal pieces are often very popular. This type of content can also help you to gain traction from increases in search terms and queries.
26. Discuss Best Industry Practices
If you have a professional audience, or you’re looking to offer readers access to expert advice or useful information, why not craft an article or film a guide that highlights industry best practices? You can offer explanations, provide examples and case studies, share figures and statistics, add data and even include quotes from experts or interviews.
27. Checklists and Templates
Checklists and templates offer simple, accessible ways to help readers. They are easier to understand than long-form guides and they offer instant access to instructions, pointers and tips. Readers can use templates and checklists to access and follow a plan. Good examples for the start of a new year would be productivity lists for 2023 or templates and tools to help the reader optimize content marketing results in 2023.
8 Ways To Generate Hot Topics For Your Content Marketing Campaign
To use content effectively, it’s critical to choose the right topics to discuss, talk about and explore with your readers, viewers, followers or customers, but how do you come up with marketing content ideas for your campaign?
Here’s 8 ways…
1. Take Inspiration From Your Customers
One of the best ways to select topics for your next content marketing campaign is to take inspiration from your customers. Encourage them to respond to questions, share comments and make suggestions. See what your customers are:
- Talking about
- Asking your support team
- Asking you to write about
If you use data, customer feedback, reviews and ideas, you can ascertain what your customers want to discuss, highlight pain points, common queries or problems, provide solutions and pursue avenues and lines of conversation that will interest people and leave them wanting more.
Try to be proactive in engaging with customers and followers and gathering information, opinions and ideas. Use the data and information you have to shape your approach in the future. Gauge responses and reactions to different topics and build on successes. If you share a post that provokes a lot of discussion, attracts huge numbers of readers or gets a lot of shares, develop that post and encourage people to stay with you and continue the conversation. Explore different angles or new takes or share other peoples’ views, for example.
If you’re struggling to find ideas, head to social media or forums to find what potential customers are talking about. Typically there will always be somebody talking about topics relevant to you in Facebook groups, subreddits, Quora discussions, and many other platforms.
2. Run a Social Media Poll
Social media polls are a great way to encourage interaction and engagement and collect ideas from customers and followers.
3. Conduct Gap Analysis
Gap analysis is a term used in content marketing to monitor and assess performance and highlight holes or gaps in the existing strategy. Conducting gap analysis can help businesses and marketing teams to gain insight into how campaigns are performing, identify potential weaknesses and make improvements. Another key benefit of carrying out a content gap analysis is detecting holes in competitor strategies, such as keywords that rivals are missing, for example.
4. Keyword Research
Keyword research is a vital component of SEO strategy, but it’s also hugely beneficial for choosing content topics and understanding what customers are looking for and want to view or read. Use keyword research to highlight popular terms, words and phrases, learn about the questions or queries people are asking or raising and identify emerging trends. It’s also beneficial to use keyword research to ensure your content is relevant to your customer base and target audience.
5. Utilise Google Trends
Google Trends is a tool from Google, which provides fascinating insight into how people use search engines and what they’re looking for. You can use Google Trends to find the most popular search terms and subjects in specific countries or regions, compare search volumes and see what people are searching for in different languages.
A summary of Google Trends in the US in 2022 shows that the most popular searches included Wordle, election results, Betty White, Queen Elizabeth and Bob Saget. The most dominant news stories were the election results, the death of Queen Elizabeth and the conflict in Ukraine. The most searched-for people included Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Amber Heard, Antonio Brown and Kari Lake. The most popular ‘near me’ searches included gas prices, Covid-19 tests and voting.
Using Google Trends provides a snapshot of what people are talking about, why they are using search engines and the topics they’re keen to access more information on.
6. Take Inspiration From Google’s ‘People Also Ask’ Box
When you conduct a search on Google, you may have noticed that a box pops up with related questions. The ‘people also ask’ box is a fantastic source of information for generating content that is relevant to specific topics or audiences.
7. Take Inspiration From a News Headline
We have become accustomed to 24-hour news and viral social media stories. Some headlines pass us by, but others turn heads and cause a storm. Look for headlines that are relevant to your business and the industry in which you operate and create a blog, an infographic or a podcast episode. Perhaps you want to discuss the findings of a new study, you want to talk about a global event, or a bizarre tale caught your eye and got you thinking.
8. Tie Topics In With Your Products and Services
An effective content marketing campaign should be relevant to your business and the products or services you provide or sell. The aim is to promote your products or services using content. When you’re trying to find the perfect content marketing idea for a new campaign, or you’re exploring subjects for a post or video, try to tie topics in with your products and services.
If you’re advertising a clothing label, for example, discuss the latest fashion trends and news from the fashion industry and share styling tips and outfit ideas. From your core posts or clips, you can then branch out. Talk about sustainable fashion if you use eco-friendly delivery options or sustainable materials, or you support conservation or tree planting initiatives, for example. If you offer a service, such as emergency plumbing, cosmetic dentistry or digital marketing, focus on topics that complement your services.
Share articles and how-to guides and video tutorials to help readers to troubleshoot common plumbing issues. Discuss the latest trends in modern dentistry and share advice to help followers improve their oral health. Use video content and case studies to talk about the impact of SEO and help readers to boost social media engagement or write a blog about new digital marketing trends that will shape the year ahead.
What Should I Do Next?
As you’ve seen, content marketing uses content to help businesses and brands to achieve key objectives. There are several different types of content ranging from blogs and how-to guides and features to podcasts, infographics, social media posts and videos. To achieve success, it’s important to consider two critical factors: the types of content to use and the topics to cover.
Research content types, use customer ideas, data and feedback and choose content forms that are popular among your target audiences and demographics. Take inspiration from customer and follower questions, industry trends and Google search popularity, and use keyword research and gap analysis to identify topics that will appeal to your audience. Try to be creative and cater to the requirements and preferences of your readers or customers. Develop content ideas based on customer questions and interests, popular themes or posts and industry-specific topics.
Looking to get the ball rolling on your own content marketing campaign? Check out our Content Writing services here.
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