Search engines can be a daunting and confusing place. It's easy for your business to get lost in the noise of all its content, but it should never lose sight that what you're writing about is helping people achieve their goals - whether they want something or just need help getting started on whatever adventure has brought them here!
But the key to making your online content interesting, be it a blog post or social media, is not easy.
There are many different formats for creating a solid blog post, but how do you know which one will work best? A good strategy can really help when writing new material or just understanding what makes something resonate well with readers.
So without further ado, let's jump into 9 content frameworks you can start using on your way to completing a successful content marketing program!
Did you know we are psychologically wired to love lists?
Lists are a great way to organize information in a blog post, your target audience will LOVE them. They help to break down complex topics into manageable chunks, and they can be a helpful way to highlight key points.
Lists can also be a useful tool for creating catchy headlines and for highlighting key takeaways from a post. When used effectively, lists can be a powerful tool for engaging readers and encouraging them to read on.
We use list formats in a lot of our blog posts. In fact, almost every website out there with a blog will utilise lists in their online content marketing strategy to drive sales with their affiliates, and luckily they're easy to boot.
However, lists are just one example of many when it comes to creating valuable content. All you need to create content in a list is a keyword topic, and you're good to go!
Informational posts are a great way to share your knowledge and expertise with others. Whether you're writing about your personal experiences or sharing tips and advice, these types of posts can be really helpful for both your readers and for fulfilling your content marketing strategies. Here are a few things to keep in mind when writing an informational post:
If you follow these tips, you'll be well on your way to writing informative posts that will be valuable for your readers and potential customers.
A lot of people think that in order to rank for a head term, you need to have the exact head term in your title. However, that's not always the case. If you have a well-optimized piece of content that is relevant to the head term, it can also rank.
This is because Google is smart enough to understand the relationship between the two terms. So, if you're writing about a specific type of product, like "height safety equipment," make sure that your content is high quality and informative.
If it is, there's a good chance it will also rank for the more general head term, like "height safety."
One way to achieve this is to use a "topical" or "clustering" strategy when creating new content on your site. This involves focusing on a single "head term" and then creating other subtopics that relate to it.
By linking these subtopics together, you create a virtual "cluster" of information that is easy for visitors to navigate. Not only does this make your site more user-friendly, but it also helps to boost your SERP rankings even further. So if you're looking to improve your website, consider using a topical or clustering strategy.
On the whole, informational posts are great for getting featured snippets, and similarly to lists, which are also largely informational, they make some of the best shareable content.
Tutorial posts are a great way to share your knowledge and help others learn new skills. When writing a tutorial post, it's important to focus on the "how."
In other words, your goal should be to provide clear, step-by-step instructions that will help your readers achieve the desired results. To do this, you'll need to thoroughly research your topic and plan your post in advance.
Whether you're showing readers how to use a new social media platform, cook a delicious meal, or make a perfect DIY project, tutorial posts are a fun and informative way to connect with your audience.
Additionally, like general informative posts, be sure to use clear and concise language, and include plenty of photos, video content, or diagrams to illustrate your points - no one wants to wade through a wall of text in order to find the information they need (I'm looking at you recipe websites).
Better still, tutorial posts can shine a light on a new problem the reader needs to solve. One example could be a budding DIY homeowner looking to renovate a room, they may think they have all the tools available to satisfy their initial intention, but a tutorial post could reveal that they are missing a specialized tool or piece of safety equipment to properly carry out their job.
Situations like this are more common than you'd think, and including links to relevant products or services can drive profitable customer action for both you and your affiliates!
With a little effort, you can write a tutorial post that is both informative and helpful!
Creating content is a challenge in and of itself. But what if you want to create a post that's helpful and informative while also spurring discussion? That's where review posts come in.
A review post is simply a piece of writing that offers a thorough evaluation of something. It could be a newly released album, a restaurant you visited, or even a recent movie. The important thing is that you offer your readers a well-reasoned opinion on the subject.
To do this effectively, you'll need to do your research and back up your claims with evidence. But if you can pull it off, review posts can be an excellent way to get people thinking - and talking - about the things that matter to them.
Review posts are actually one of the best content marketing examples because they can check off a lot of boxes in your content marketing strategy!
To name just a few examples:
They can be great content for paid ads on social media platforms when directed at customers in the consideration stage. Clicks on these ads - especially to posts with multiple reviews of similar products - can be the definitive factor in finalizing a sale.
Even if a sale isn't completed, a visitor with intent to one of these pages is great for distributing valuable awareness of the various solutions available. Chances are that they'll take these potential options and discuss them with other members of your clearly defined audience.
Review posts are a great way to generate consistent content, especially if you struggle with coming up with new ideas or themes for your blog.
By writing about products, services, books, or movies that you've recently experienced, you can provide fresh and relevant information that your readers will appreciate. In addition, review posts can be a great way to build buzz around a new release or promote something that you're passionate about.
Video content marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach potential customers. According to a recent study, nearly two-thirds of consumers say they are more likely to purchase a product after watching a video about it.
Video is also excellent for building trust and credibility with your customer prospects.
A well-done review video can show viewers that you are an expert in your field and that you are passionate about the products you sell. Additionally, review videos can be highly entertaining, which makes them perfect for sharing on social media to optimise SEO.
. By investing in review videos, you can reach a wider audience and build stronger relationships with your audience.
Review posts are a great way to build brand relationships, spread and improve brand awareness strengthen brand recognition. When done right, review posts can introduce your or your affiliates' brands to a whole new audience and help you build trust with buyers.
Brand awareness is all about getting the name out there, and review posts can be a powerful tool for doing just that.
Brand recognition, on the other hand, is about ensuring customers remember your name when they're ready to make a purchase.
Review posts can help with this by reinforcing your brand message and making sure it's top of mind when people are looking for products or services like yours!
In order for a website to rank highly in search engine results, it must first be reviewed by other websites.
These review posts help to give the Google algorithm an idea of the quality and relevance of the site. The more positive reviews a site has, the higher it will rank in the results.
However, it's important to note that not all review posts are created equal. A review post from a high-quality, authoritative website will carry more weight than a review post from a lesser-known site. As such, businesses should focus on getting reviews from well-respected sources. By doing so, they can improve their chances of ranking highly in a search.
The more positive reviews you create and share on your website, the higher your authority and brand awareness
This is content curated from the opinions of others, it's like a review but not your own - because of this, it's an easy way to write valuable and, more importantly, helpful content. Just be sure to find reviewers from trusted domains and with good authority; the higher, the better!
You can provide links to each critic's website and their original sources and add your thoughts! This linking is superb for SEO, Google will recognize that your site is providing valuable information from trusted sources outside of your locality, increasing your chances of ranking higher. On top of this, expert roundups are also a fantastic way to build and strengthen relationships with other bloggers and experts.
In short, the more well-respected and relevant your experts' domains are by search engines, the higher your page will rank and, thus, the more helpful your post will be - making it that much more shareable!
Just remember to add your own thoughts - failing to do so will result in google ranking your page much lower.
As the name suggests, this strategic marketing approach is excellent for a bit of ego polishing; who doesn't love that?
As every content marketing team will know, all of these frameworks, more often than not, overlap and combine with each other. The clickbait can be a list, a best-of, a review, it could be a list of best-of reviews from experts in the field! (all of which are technically informative)
But surely WE know more about this subject than someone who has to write a clickbait title, to get us to click on an article, right?
Not always. Clickbait doesn't have to be as bad as you may think!
Bad clickbait rightly has a bad reputation in the digital marketing world, because it is broadly used on social media platforms to bring in unsuspecting visitors and trap them in an ad-ridden, malicious expanse. Users often have to battle their way through page after page of invasive adverts just to be frustratingly drip-fed the information they came for in the first place.
Worse still, the quality of information they fought so hard to obtain usually leaves the visitor underwhelmed and annoyed.
Just one example of bad clickbait you might encounter when scrolling through socials could be something like "Man encountered a monkey in the street, you won't BELIEVE what happened next!", probably accompanied by a low-res thumbnail with a huge red arrow pointing to something poorly photoshopped.
When done right, however, it can be quite lucrative to your content marketing efforts. The key is to be subtle and creative with it.
Let's see some examples:
These titles all claim to know more about a subject a target audience could be well versed in -
love them or hate them, clickbait titles just work. They get under our skin.
But if we look past the irk, we can see that they likely contain very useful information for their target markets.
The clue is in the name, it drives traffic to your domains, whether your content delivers on the expectation or not. It's no wonder it gets abused, but luckily for us, Google can tell whether or not a post's content is relevant to the information promised by the title.
So as long as your content is helpful and delivers on that promise, google will rank your post higher accordingly.
A case study is a detailed analysis of a specific situation or event.
While case studies are often used in academic research, they can also be an effective tool for content marketing and SEO. When done well, a case study can provide valuable insights that help to improve your understanding of a topic or issue.
So If you're thinking of writing a case study post, there are a few things to keep in mind.
First, make sure that you have a strong understanding of the situation or event that you're writing about.
Second, focus on delivering clear and concise insights that will be useful to your audience.
Finally, don't forget to promote your case study once it's published - social media , email marketing, and paid advertising are all great ways to get the word out.
Case studies are undeniably another brilliant tool for content marketers. By providing real-world examples of how your product or service has helped solve a problem for a customer, you can create content that is both informative and persuasive. They can also help you to easier identify and target your ideal customer by showing what kinds of people are most likely to benefit from your product or service.
In addition, case studies can help to build trust with your audience by demonstrating that you have both expertise AND a track record of success. As a result, including case studies as part of your content marketing strategy is a great way to boost your chances of success.
If you're ever in a situation where you have a problem but google doesn't have the solution, Sometimes you have to brainstorm and figure out the best process to tackle it. Tracking this process with screenshots and comments effectively kills two birds with one stone, as your new document is packed full of the basis of a great case study, and you fixed your problem!
Basically, if you believe you can deliver a solid explanation or demonstration of something that people would find coherent and useful, then a case study is a good bet.
Better still, if you fix a problem that makes you ask yourself, "why hasn't anybody written about a solution for this?" then you've got a great target audience.
Think of times when you've been using software or service but the search results for your query only yield FAQs and "help" pages with no real answer to your niche problems. Your new case study, in the right niche, could well be the perfect solution for a problem people have been struggling with for some time, and this would bring all of the search traffic for that problem straight to you.
These are more or less reviews and list posts rolled into one, and they're one of the most common search terms because of how blunt and easy they are to type - especially on mobile devices, where over 62% of Google traffic comes from!
We have all done these searches online - Think:
As a huge bonus, because these are basically review posts, they too can benefit from all the same strategic marketing approach-focused perks as mentioned before under Framework 4.
They're simple to understand, and clearly advertise to the visitor the type of content contained within. However, they're not as easy to write. You need a strong knowledge of the chosen topic and the pros/cons of each different product you are reviewing. This varies from industry to industry, so be sure to be thorough in your research when creating online content for multiple different areas. It can help to also include expert opinions in these posts and source them accordingly for added relevance!
As a result of all the prerequisites you should have before composing a "best post", they can be more time-consuming than other options, and therefore less efficient. Consider your present content marketing portfolio and assess whether or not one of these posts could be useful to include.
That said, not all content is successful. Use google analytics to determine what's working and what isn't, and iterate over time. It's a process.
Comparison posts are particularly useful because they can allow your post to rank for multiple specific phrases, which in turn will target a larger pool of related, similar phrases.
This is another popular search term and is, in essence, a toned-down version of the 'best' list. These kinds of posts usually cover two or three products and compare them, which can be more convincing to consumers and more quickly provide the relevant information needed to complete a sale.
When searching for 'best' you will often see versus content frameworks, stuff like:
As you'd think, these posts work best when comparing products/services that provide a similar experience or do the same job.
If you think about it though, the content marketing opportunities are endless with this format.
You could compare products at similar price points to help customers transition into a purchase with ease. You could compare products at different price points to help your visitors decide if a product is worth spending more on.
You could even compare the market leaders at three different price points for the best comparison of value for money! Comparisons like these are great for affirming trust in your brand. If a customer buys a product after reading your review and loves it, they are absolutely going to trust your reviews again!
Sometimes though, your topics won't have a direct motive to sell a product. For instance, we can figure out that the content being delivered in a post titled "Cycling, Running, and Rowing. Which cardio is best?" is mainly going to be informative with a serious tone, and while it should be treated as such - that doesn't mean we can't apply our content marketing strategies to it!
The audience for this post is already clearly defined, it's aimed at those interested in sports and fitness, cyclists, rowers, and runners. We can leverage this to our advantage and add links to several sports equipment retailers.
More importantly, however, it provides us with a clear idea of what head terms we can be ranking for and their respective related terms/phrases. Cardio is the name of the game but we can potentially be drawing in avid visitors from all areas of the target audience, and rank for all three accordingly!
Because it's factual and scientific, we are also going to need to find and link all of our sources to medical websites, journals, and other fitness experts. All of these ideas in tandem provide many marketing angles for us to gain higher rankings on the SERPs.
Each of these content marketing frameworks can be used to create an effective content marketing strategy. By understanding the audience, the goals of the strategy, and the different types of content that can be created, you can create a strategy that will be successful in achieving your desired results.
When creating a content marketing strategy, it's important to consider the following:
By answering these questions, you can create a content marketing strategy that is tailored to your specific needs and that has a clear purpose. With a well-defined strategy in place, you can then start to create the different types of content that will help you achieve your desired results.
That was a lot to digest!
To summarise, using different content marketing frameworks where appropriate and most relevant is a great way to structure your content so that it's effective in achieving your desired results.
By understanding the different types of post-style content that can be created, you can better tailor your strategy to the needs of your target audience. With a well-defined content marketing strategy in place, you can then start to create high-quality content that will help you achieve your desired results.
Thank you for reading! I hope this article helped explain how these different content marketing frameworks can create an effective content marketing strategy.
