Chapter 8: Beyond Blog Posts: A Guide to Innovative Content Types
Editor's Note: When we think about content production, it is often the end product that comes to mind. And when we do explore the process and the publishing platform, we often turn our attention to blogging. In fact, one of today's most popular blog categories is “blogging.” In this post (originally published on The Moz Blog on May 11, 2011), Tom Critchlow introduces us to several alternative content platforms—from Q&A sites to product marketplaces—and challenges us to think about what makes each one successful.
Producing great content is a high ROI activity. Too often, however, I see people focused on producing individual pieces of content aiming to get links and attention. Putting together a content strategy requires much more than creating a single piece of content. It requires creating a vision and strategy for how you're going to publish your content, what type of content you will be publishing, and how your audience will engage with it.
I like to think that instead of focusing on pieces of content, you should focus on the content platform. This shift requires lateral thinking, research, and creativity. In this post I break down some alternative content types that I've been consuming recently. Even though I've provided examples, try and look beyond the individual posts and focus on the underlying platform. Think about what makes it successful.
Q&A Content
The growth of Q&A content has exploded recently, primarily due to Silicon Valley's love affair with Quora. This platform is quite undervalued for generating marketing buzz, but there can be gold in Q&A sites. Here are some examples of powerful Q&A content.
• Here's a sliver of a Quora thread (www.quora.com/Google-Wave/Why-did-Google-feel-that-Google-Wave-was-a-good-product) that is answered by a Google employee with amazing details on why Wave failed, and how it was developed in the first place:
• Here's one from the ever excellent Stack Overflow, with so many awesome questions it's difficult to pick one. From recent times I love this Q&A (http://mz.cm/XPx79l) on how Stack Overflow optimized their load speed:
• Of course, we practice what we preach at Moz, and we are pumping out some awesome Q&A content. I love this thread on SEO secrets (www.moz.com/q/what-s-your-best-hidden-seo-secret):
We're seeing a lot of growth in our Q&A forum at the moment, so if you're not hanging out in there asking and answering questions, you're missing out!
• The Reddit AMA sub-reddit is my favorite daily read and has some super awesome threads. As I write this post, this AMA from John Resig, creator of jQuery is happening (http://mz.cm/164K6Y4):
Presentations
I know what you're thinking: what place do stale PowerPoint presentations have in blog posts? Well, quite a lot, it turns out. Rand Fishkin of Moz regularly embeds his presentations in articles that often make for popular posts. In particular, I love his recent article, “4 Presentations with Tips, Graphics + Data You Can Use” (www.moz.com/blog/4-seo-presentations-w-tips-graphics-data-you-can-use).
So presentations work well online. I'm a big fan of how Business Insider is innovating in this space; they have full screen presentations you can flip through. (Enabling the use of arrow keys to scroll through them and # URLs is very slick, too.) Here's a screenshot of a presentation based on a recent survey of iPad users (www.businessinsider.com/ipad-survey-two-thirds-of-ipad-owners-use-their-ipads-1-5-hours-a-day-1):
Curated Content
I'm a big fan of online content curation. I think it's a largely untapped niche that has been steadily growing and will explode sometime soon. In the meantime, some pioneers are paving the way forward.
• The Atlantic Wire (www.theatlanticwire.com) is a phenomenal aggregation of hot news and information. It's a combination of reporting, journalism, investigation, and curation. They publish all kinds of different media depending on what's relevant to the story. They transparently cite sources and aren't afraid to post short-form content where it adds to the conversation. For example, this post about Obama having an iPad is just a link to the Whitehouse flickr stream and a paragraph of text (www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/04/obama-has-his-very-own-ipad/37155):
Copyright © 2012 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. Original photo US Government Work.
• I'm a big fan of personal storytelling. Storify is an awesome app that lets anyone quickly and easily create a story by curating content that appears elsewhere. A perfect example of how Storify can effectively be used is Danny Sullivan's awesome recap of the guy who live tweeted the Osama news (http://storify.com/dannysullivan/the-death-of-osama-bin-laden-live-tweeted):
Magazine and Long-Form Content
Let's jump from short-form content to long-form content. I'm a huge fan of the more editorial and in-depth content pieces. Although these are more effort, they can produce excellent rewards.
• A List Apart is an online magazine that's been running for years and has a wide audience. They produce phenomenal long pieces that are very well written and thoughtful. Of course, magazine and long-form content has been around for a long time, but it still delivers for you and I think it's relevant to highlight people still doing this well online. For example, see the excellent piece about orbital content that they recently published at www.alistapart.com/articles/orbital-content.
• the99percent.com is another awesome online content platform that publishes very strong editorial pieces, such as this one on Francis Ford Coppola: http://99u.com/articles/6973/Francis-Ford-Coppola-On-Risk-Money-Craft-Collaboration.
Editor's Note: the99percent.com is now 99U (http://99u.com), the educational division of Behance (http://behance.net), an online platform for showcasing and discovering creative work.
• Longform (http://longform.org) and Longreads (http://longreads.com) are two excellent curators who showcase in-depth articles on a wide range of topics. This culture of long-form curation, however, has spawned some very innovative startups such as Byliner (http://byliner.com), which aims to publish very long-form content about current events.
© 2012 BYLINER INC.
Imagery and Photojournalism
Say what? Your list of innovative content includes images? Aren't they a little dated? Not at all. We're only just scratching the tip of the iceberg when it comes to images.
• The Atlantic's “In Focus” and The Boston Globe's “Big Picture” are leading the charge for high-quality online imagery and photo journalism. Who would have guessed that amazing, high-quality photos could be so appealing? For example, you can see a series of photos from the 1913 Women's Suffrage Parade at www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/03/100-years-ago-the-1913-womens-suffrage-parade/100465/.
Source: Library of Congress
• Cinemagraphs—unless you live in a hole underground, or don't follow me on Twitter, you will have seen me raving about these awesome classy animated GIFs. Yes, you read that right; I'm including animated GIFs in my list of innovative content types. Just take a look at the cinemagraph online at http://mz.cm/V2r2qg, created by the stunningly talented duo Kevin Burg (http://kevin.tumblr.com) and Jamie Beck (http://fromme-toyou.tumblr.com). (Watch closely.)
Video
There are more innovations in video than I can cover in this blog post, so I'll stick to a few of the more attainable ones.
• Interviews, Mixergy style. The video interviews from Mixergy are very low-budget and simple, but also very effective. The key here is in understanding your target audience and really getting the interviews your audience is hungry for. For example, check out the great interview with Paul Graham at http://mixergy.com/y-combinator-paul-graham.
The Startup Foundry (http://thestartupfoundry.com) also runs interviews using a split-screen style and it works very well. For example, check out their interview with Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, online at http://mz.cm/YT59r6.
• Live Video! 2011 is going to be a big year for live video events. There are a lot of big players all pushing for live coverage and streaming media, which I think will shake up the way we consume content online. YouTube is obviously making a push for live streaming with YouTube Live (www.youtube.com/live). As you read this, Google I/O (www.google.com/events/io/2011) is likely streaming right now!
But live streaming of events isn't just for conferences. As ever, entertainment is pushing the boundaries for what's possible. I really enjoyed the idea behind the recent live music video from Death Cab For Cutie (www.youareatourist.com).
• Of course, it's hardly innovative, but we're practicing what we preach at Moz by producing our Whiteboard Fridays and webinars (www.moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-friday and http://www.moz.com/webinars), and they attract a lot of attention. Crucially, they also seem to have their own audience independent of the blog.
Interactive Infographics
Are infographics dead? Hardly. At our #LinkLove conference in NOLA, Chris Bennett (@chrisbennett) said that infographics are alive and well, it's infocrapics that are dying out. It's so true, and it applies to any content form—if the substance is sub-par then you're not going to have success. That said, there are some very exciting interactive infographics coming out at the moment. My current favorite is Where Did My Tax Dollars Go? (www.wheredidmytaxdollarsgo.com). You input your salary, and the site creates a pie chart that reflects how much of your U.S. federal income tax was spent on Social Security, National Defense, Healthcare, etc.
© 2010 ANIL KANDANGATH
This is an excellent example of how you can turn complex and large data sets into something that is not only interactive, but personally engaging. I encourage you to go and lose 30 minutes of your life browsing the data. I'll wait.
Product Marketplaces
Using products as marketing is nothing new, but there are a few really awesome examples of this.
• Moleskine (www.moleskine.com). Everyone at Distilled is a huge fan of the Moleskine brand and they're doing some innovative online marketing at the moment; for example, they launched the online Moleskine Artist Marketplace (http://artistmarketplace.moleskine.com/en), an online space where users can buy and sell Moleskin notebooks customized by artists.
I really, really love this concept for inbound marketing! It has all sorts of benefits from gaining links, growing a user base of brand evangelists, generating social media buzz and also appealing to the hacker/Etsy crowd. (By the way, if anyone from the Moleskine marketplace is reading this and wants to create some Distilled branded moleskines for me that would be super awesome.)
• Threadless (www.threadless.com). An oldie but a goodie and worth including since they're pretty much the perfect example of building a marketing plan into their product.
“I AM OLDER THAN THE INTERNET” Design by Peter Cardwell-Gardner (www.threadless.com/profile/626592/Fluffy_Cheese)
Facebook Notes
This really caught me unprepared but it's such a genius marketing tactic. The New Yorker published a story from author Jonathan Franzen on a Facebook page, which you can only access if you like the The New Yorker's Facebook page. There's a fascinating write up on Business Insider, but suffice to say, they gained over 17,000 Facebook likes and links from all over the place, including Mashable, Forbes, and The Atlantic.
Why Everyone Needs a Marketing Oracle for Their Content Platform
Everyone needs a Marketing Oracle. What's that, you ask? Simply put, it's someone who helps steer your brand's content vision. Taking lessons from a lot of the above content types, there is a strong editorial leaning, and I think people from the world of journalism often fill this role nicely. Think about this question: “How would you innovate your brand's content model?” If you're excited about tackling that question, you are passionate about creating content, have a strong editorial vision for your brand, and possess a deep understanding of social media, then you might make an excellent Marketing Oracle—if you're not already one.
I'll say it one more time: Everyone needs a Marketing Oracle. If you're producing content to aid your inbound marketing, you should think long and hard about what your content strategy looks like. There's value in building a content platform, defining your target audience, and building something that's going to provide long-term value for you. Think about becoming more like a media hub than a blog. Think about becoming a Marketing Oracle.