At some point in your quest for the perfect marketing strategy, you’ve probably heard the phrase “Content is King.” Who truly said it first is a mystery (though often attributed to Bill Gates), but man, oh man, have we heard it enough for this lifetime.
Of course, there’s a reason every marketing blogger from Joe Nobody to Gary Vaynerchuck have at some point uttered or written these three grossly overused words:
They’re 
true. Content IS king (ugh).
Not only is your content—be it social media, website, etc—often the first line of communication with a potential client, it’s what keeps people coming. It’s what draws them in and sells them. It also has a massive impact on your SEO and page ranking.
But when it comes to marketing, the problem for most isn’t recognizing the importance of content, it’s the execution. It’s choosing what content to feature. It’s a lack of diversity.
Content is not all text and type. In fact, in this day and age, you shouldn’t rely solely on your own written content. There are a handful of alternative forms of content that are just as deserving of the crown, and using them effectively can give your business one heck of a boost. So when you’re developing your content strategy, try your hand at some of these increasingly popular forms.
Infographics
You’ve seen these all over the Internet. They’ve become wicked popular over the past couple of years.
These jokers are powerful—and for good reason. As humans, our brains respond a lot better to visual stimuli. 90% of the information we process is visual, and we remember 80% of what we see, as opposed to only 20% of what we read.
Infographics make content a billion times easier to digest, and they keep our attention a lot longer than text can. They tend to work best when explaining processes, research, and statistics, but due to their popularity and effectiveness, you can be as creative as you want.
Video
Vine, Instagram, YouTube, Spayce (look it up), and Snapchat are just a few examples of the visual based social media platforms that are seeing massive success thanks to video.
Video is huge right now. Really huge. We’re talking 100-million-people-watch-online-videos-everyday huge. Not only is video content one of the most effective methods of engagement, it’s been shown to increase the viewer’s understanding of a product by 74%.
To give you an example of the natural effectiveness of video, consider an experiment we tried here at WideNet. We wrote a blog about dealing with workplace rejection, posted it, and then put up a simple, un-promoted Facebook post. It’s performance was minimal, and it got very little engagement.
Then, we did a video covering the exact same topic almost word for word and posted it to Facebook, again with no promotion. The difference was astounding. Within a couple of hours, the video reached over 1,000 people based off of organic sharing alone.
People love videos. Search engines love videos. Video content not only hooks the visitor, but it’s a major player for positive SEO.
Picture Blogs
Going back to the power of visuals, picture blogs are another popular form of alternative content, championed significantly by sites like Tumblr and Buzzfeed.
Picture blogs rely heavily on photos accompanied by only a dash of explanatory text. Like with infographics, images create stronger sense of connection and understanding.
The difference, however, is that picture blogs allow the image to tell 99% of the story. Some completely forgo text altogether and rely entirely on the picture.
Pictures blogs can be especially powerful when advertising things like cuisine, travel destinations, or entertainment events.
Re-Shared Content
Orthodox, yet totally unorthodox. Reposting content from another site can actually have a pretty solid impact on engagement and SEO. It won’t always be visually based like the last three examples, but it does give you some pretty unique opportunities.
Re-sharing, or content curation as it’s called, allows you to approach the conversation with your audience from their side of the aisles, and you can still make it unique and personal by offering your own perspective. It also takes a little pressure off your shoulders, giving you a break from having to constantly crank out fresh content every day.
Not to mention, sharing content from other places can help you reach people you haven’t connected with yet, especially on Twitter. For example, if I share an article from Copyblogger on Twitter and tag the Copyblogger Twitter handle, I become visible to anyone else on Twitter who follows Copyblogger, whether they follow me or not, thus opening the door to broaden my audience.
There is definitely more than one form of content worthy of the throne. Give these examples a try and see how they impact your site. If you’ve got an alternative form of content that you use, tell us about it in the comments.
