Imagine going to your favorite restaurant and finding that there is only one meal on the menu. You excuse this as an oversight on the restaurant’s part and endeavor to enjoy your meal.
You then visit the restaurant after a week and find the same meal. This continues over a few weeks. Ultimately, you will get bored and probably never visit the restaurant again.
This is exactly how your audience feels if you only have one content type on your website. It makes your content run-of-the-mill, unexciting and boring.
But with content diversification, you can remedy the effects of boredom on your website. Keep reading to understand content diversification, its importance, and how to go about it.
What is Content Diversification, and Why Is It Important?
As the name implies, content diversification refers to using multiple content types and formats on your website. This means using videos, images, and infographics alongside written content on your site.
The primary importance of content diversification is that it allows you to communicate better with your audience. For instance, some concepts are better presented in an image or video than explained in writing.
In fact, research shows that most people prefer to learn a skill from a video than from written content. They find videos more engaging, and ultimately, they learn better through this mode.
Content diversification also allows you to reach a much wider audience.
If you stick only to written content, you will miss out on sections of your target audience that prefer to listen to or watch videos on your content. This can be severely limiting.
Without further ado, let’s delve into how you can diversify your content.
8 Creative Ways To Diversify Your Content
Create Videos Regularly
Videos are, without a doubt, the future of content marketing. This research confirms it.
Videos are by far the most preferred content form according to consumers, and their demand will only increase in the future. Even Google considers videos as the growing format for content creation and consumption.
As such, a content marketer not investing in videos will likely lose out on a significant market portion.
The best thing about video content marketing is that it needn’t be expensive. You could even start recording with your smartphone camera and upgrade to more expensive equipment as your website grows.
And even if you are camera shy, you can use animation to tap into the video marketing space. And what’s better, animation is now remarkably easier thanks to user-friendly video creation and editing software.
It’s not enough to create videos regularly for its own sake. Sure, most people may prefer to learn about your product or service on video, but they won’t hesitate to leave if your videos prove to be uninformative.
You want to ensure that you capture your audience’s attention within the first few seconds of the video. Once they are roped in, continue providing them with value throughout the video.
They will certainly be glad to come back in the future for more informative content.
Sometimes, generating ideas for your videos can be challenging. If you do face this challenge, consider converting some of your old blog posts into videos.
Be sure to choose posts that perform well, as it shows user interest in that area. As such, they will likely perform excellently as videos.
Create Infographics
Since their rise to fame in the mid-2000s, infographics have been a staple of content marketing for years. And they are here to stay.
There is no question that infographics make it easier to digest lots of complex information. This quality makes them invaluable in content marketing.
For instance, you will learn more about ice cream from this infographic than if you had to pore through lines of text to read about it.
Today, however, infographics have become ubiquitous. Therefore, content marketers must put much more thought into creating valuable and unique infographics.
When it comes to infographics, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. You need to ensure that your images have a good design and are not overcrowded.
This will make it easier for your audience to understand your message.
You also must ensure that the infographics explain complex topics quickly and easily. This is the inherent appeal of infographics, and you must tap into it.
Have More Non-Blog Content
Content diversification also entails varying your written content. For most websites, blog posts take up the largest portion of their content marketing strategy.
But too many posts make your site predictable and boring, leading to traffic loss.
Every once in a while, create a post that does not follow a blog format. For example, having several FAQ pages can help give your readers instant answers to their questions.
You could also create a tutorials page where you teach your audience how to perform specific tasks.
Start a Podcast
The audio-marketing market is also growing exponentially. Today, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who has never listened to a podcast.
As this infographic shows, the demand for podcasts has been rising since 2008.
You can also tap into this market while it is still relatively unsaturated and grow your listenership in a few months. This will allow you to discuss your product and build customer loyalty.
For a podcast to be successful, you must be intentional about providing tangible value to your listeners.
One way to do this is to choose insightful guests and interview them or hold a conversation with them.
You can also host influencers on your podcast, as this can increase your brand visibility significantly.
But you want to avoid overly praising your product as it can be deemed too aggressive.
Following this aggressive marketing approach will make it hard for you to sustain an audience, ultimately decreasing the value of your podcasts.
Use Both Long Form and Short Form Content
Varying the length of your articles also counts as content diversification, and it can also improve the performance of your website.
Long-form content is any article between 1000 and 7500 words. It can even be an e-book or whitepaper, depending on how informative you want to be.
Short-form content, on the other hand, is any article that is less than 1000 words.
Short-form content is an excellent option for giving straightforward answers to your audience’s questions.
It lets your readers quickly scan through a content piece and find what they are looking for.
On the other hand, long-form content pieces give people an in-depth understanding of a chosen topic.
When creating long-form content, your goal is to give your readers an informed perspective of a given issue so they can understand it better.
This longer content is better suited for readers at the top of your conversion funnel, as it allows you to showcase your expertise and familiarity with a topic of their interest.
Once they start seeing you as an authority, your readers will likely get interested in your products, thus pushing them further into the conversion channel.
Get Contributions From Thought Leaders in Your Industry
Another way to diversify content is to include pieces from other people, especially those considered thought leaders in your industry.
When you get guest authors on your website, you give your readers a completely new perspective on things, which can be refreshing.
And by choosing only the very best in your field, you can provide your readers with immeasurable value. Ultimately, this will lead to more shares and increased visibility for your brand.
If you cannot secure an external guest writer, why not tap into the expertise of your team members?
For instance, you can have your accountant write a post about managing a small business’s finances, which will be highly valuable to some of your readers.
Take Advantage of Social Media
In this era, social media has proven to be a powerful marketing tool you can’t ignore. You must learn how to create content optimized for social media platforms to boost your visibility.
The first step to creating effective social media content is determining the platform your target audience uses the most.
For instance, if you sell highly visual products, your posts should be optimized for Instagram and Pinterest. For written content, you might want to focus more on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Host Webinars
Webinars can take your content diversification strategy a notch higher. They are the perfect platform to showcase your authority on a given topic and enhance audience engagement.
From asking people to register for your webinar to having them log in to the session, even getting and responding to their questions, webinars drive engagement with your audience to high levels.
And the best thing about them is that you can quickly repurpose them into informational videos, thus making them even more useful.
Research shows that it is best to keep your webinars between thirty minutes and one-hour long. That way, they are not too short to prevent engagement nor too long to be boring.
The Final Word on Content Diversification
It is said that variety is the spice of life, and this is particularly true when it comes to content marketing. The last thing you want is your website content to become so predictable that readers lack interest.
Fortunately, content diversification is not difficult to achieve. Something as simple as writing content of varying lengths or adding more images can go a long way in making your content diverse.
Be sure to implement the content diversification strategies shared in this post to improve your site’s performance.