Types of Web Content Your Site Visitors Actually Want from You

Published by Eleanor Hecks on August 13, 2021

For marketers who want to drive traffic, create buzz or increase conversions, good content is one of the best tools available.

Limited resources, however, means you have to make tough decisions. There’s only so much content you can create with the budget you have. Your content also asks something of your audience — every piece of content requires visitors to spend their limited time and attention on.

Certain kinds of web content are more useful than others. Knowing what your site visitors really want to see will help you plan a more effective content strategy.

1. Blogs

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/VWcPlbHglYc

Blog posts are often at the foundation of a business’s web content strategy. The blog post format is highly flexible and allows a business to provide a wide range of information or value for your visitors — like updates on what the business is doing, deep-dives into a particular topic or commentary on industry news.

All of this content can be extremely valuable to site visitors, especially if it’s relevant to pain points your customers may have. A lawn care company, for example, can drive traffic and reach new audiences with a post on gardening tips or a listicle about the top uses of topsoil.

Written content is also typically the cheapest and easiest content to produce — making it a great place to start if you’re exploring the advertising potential of web content.

The low production costs of creating blog posts make them a good complement to slightly more difficult-to-create content types, like video and infographics. While you may not be able to produce a large amount of video content or graphics at first, you should be able to build up a significant blog post archive with a little time and money.

There are some things that blog posts can’t do, and written content will likely require more attention from your visitors than content that can be passively consumed, like a short video or podcast. In most cases, however, blog posts should help you lay a solid foundation for your business’s content marketing strategy.

You can both contract out of the work of writing blog content or handle the process yourself. If you choose to go it on your own, you may want to reach out to a few writers, editors, and/or content marketing advisors to help you generate ideas and polish blog content.

This is a long-term strategy and needs a good amount of investment without seeing immediate results. You might need to wait several months to see actual results.

2. Case Studies

While blog posts are the most common type of written content used for content marketing, there are benefits to trying out different, more specific forms of writing — like business case studies.

Case studies allow you to show off previous work and demonstrate what your business does well using real-world examples. It is the most important form of content to turn your leads into customers.

Effective case studies answer many of the questions that a customer may have about your brand. They break down your process and show how you and your team solve client issues as they arise.

Case studies are an opportunity to show off your expertise and thought process. They also allow you to highlight some of the customers you’ve worked with and provide some concrete proof of how you fulfill the promises you make to potential customers in your advertising.

Like blog posts, case studies are also much easier to create than other forms of content. While you may need to reach out to previous clients for permission to feature their story, it’s often possible to get started on creating a case study right away. That is, of course, if you have an existing customer base. You might need to provide incentives to existing customers to compel them to participate in your case study.

3. White Papers, Studies, and Surveys

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/BaSeK7rwc1A

For businesses that want to appeal to a highly informed audience, like business clients or technical professionals, white papers, studies, and surveys are often a great complement to blog posts.

White papers are in-depth, industry articles that inform the reader on a complex topic and provide some kind of stance or recommendation. Studies and surveys aim to answer a question using statistics or provide some insight into your niche with the data you’ve gathered.

White papers, studies, and surveys are typically more in-depth than simpler blog posts. As a result, they allow you to use your business’s expertise — and certain resources, like data or interesting statistics — to provide a unique kind of value. Sharing reports and studies can also help you get cited by peers and other blogs in your niche, bringing traffic and backlinks to your website.

What makes this kind of content slightly more difficult to produce than just blog posts is the research investment. You also come up with interesting statistics or analysis to back up your writing.

Businesses that already collect information through surveys may be able to repurpose this information for a post.

Almost any business can use studies and surveys to provide value to visitors. For example, a packaging manufacturer may already have numbers on how much businesses can reduce plastic use by switching to paper product containers. Information like this, as part of a discussion on how companies can go green, may provide value to a wide range of customers, helping to drive traffic.

White papers don’t necessarily need as much data as a study or survey, but they do require some expertise to create. For example, a cybersecurity company may create a white paper on the cyber threats faced by a specific sector, along with recommendations on what best practices businesses should adopt.

These papers are similar to opinion-driven blog posts, but are often aimed at an audience of professionals, rather than individuals from outside the industry. For businesses wanting to draw in traffic from potential business clients, this can make them a great complement to blog posts and less technical content.

4. Infographics

Infographics are a highly shareable type of content. Because they are so visual, visitors can break them down quickly, usually learning something new — encouraging them to share them on social media platforms.

If you have an interesting topic or set of statistics that you want to represent visually, you have almost everything you need for a powerful and shareable infographic.

The downside of infographics is that they are tougher to produce than content like blogs. Most businesses probably can’t do infographics on their own, unless their team includes graphic designers who can translate raw data into a scannable visual image.

Infographics are often worth the investment, even if you need to outsource some of their production. The high shareability of infographics and the power of visuals in communicating data make them a great way to provide value to visitors.

5. Podcasts and Audio Interviews

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/k_T9Zj3SE8k

Like blogs, podcasts can take a wide variety of forms and be used to discuss a range of topics. A landscaping business, for example, may use podcast episodes to discuss common problems.

Like blogs, podcasts offer a relatively low barrier of entry for content creators. There’s no right way to create a podcast, and the form offers a lot of flexibility when it comes to script and structure.

Businesses have found success with podcast interviews, short episodes about industry news and discussions between team members. So long as you have the right audio equipment, just about any topic can work.

If you want to make your audio sound particularly professional, you will need to invest in audio mixing and mastering. This is especially true if you want your podcast to be widely distributed — mastering helps ensure your podcast sounds great, regardless of streaming platform.

However, there’s no need for high-end audio equipment or previous experience with audio. The heavy lifting can mostly be outsourced, freeing you up to determine what your audience wants to hear.

6. Video

Like infographics, video is highly shareable and doesn’t demand as much attention from visitors as written content.

Video is also one of the most popular types of content a business can create — according to data from Hubspot, 54% of consumers want to see more video from the brands they follow.

Very few businesses will be able to produce their own video content in-house, meaning that a partnership with other professionals or businesses is likely necessary if you want to add a video to your content library.

The unique benefits that video can offer, however, means that this investment is often worth it.

7. Long-form Writing

Many content strategies can also benefit from longer pieces of writing — like deep dives on industry topics.

Like blog content, long-form writing has a low barrier to entry. The amount of writing that you’ll need does mean that you may want to pick a topic you have a lot to say on — but the writing process will be familiar if you’ve already worked on blogs in the past.

In some cases, going especially long-form can be a good strategy. Many businesses, for example, create informative ebooks that they use to generate leads.

If you can pull off long-form writing, it can provide a valuable addition to your business’s library of content.

Creating the Right Content for Your Business

Effective content can come in a variety of formats. Podcasts, videos, blog posts, infographics, and ebooks can all be great tools for marketers wanting to attract new visitors and generate leads.

The right content will depend both on the resources you have and the content you’ve already created. Video content and infographics, for example, are typically harder to create than blog posts — but they can also provide an excellent, highly shareable complement to simpler written content.