There are three main types of content that you should be sure to include in your content marketing plan.

These are very broad categories of content, not referring to specific types like articles, videos, etc.

It’s very important to have a good mix of the three types of content if you want to get the most traffic possible.

Each type of content serves a different, specific purpose as far as generating traffic and converting it.

Let’s take a look at the three content types, and what each one is used for.

Educational content

Is the foundation for almost any type of content marketing plan.

It’s the type of content that gets searched for

The type that really converts readers into subscribers or buyers,

and it will keep people coming back to your site.

If you want to get search engine traffic, educational content should be the cornerstone of your overall content marketing plan.

It’s also the type of content most likely to help you establish yourself as an expert in your niche.

Trendy content

Content that is based on breaking news, trends, current events, etc. –

Will get you traffic from people who may already know a significant amount of info about your niche, but are looking out for new things.

Finally, there’s viral content,

which is the type of content that is entertaining, exciting, or shocking.

Viral content is obviously the most likely content to be shared via social media because people like to share content they think will surprise their friends and family, and they like to be the first to do it.

 

Not all websites need all three types of content.

For example, some sites focus specifically on the news or viral
content like celebrity news or cute animals.

Those sites might not need educational content.

But MOST websites do need a good mix of all three types.

Unless you have a site that focuses on viral content like celebrity gossip, breaking news, cute animals, or other types of viral content, educational content is probably going to be the foundation of your efforts.

Creating educational content isn’t particularly difficult, but you have to make sure you’re writing to please both the search engines AND, most importantly, your visitors.

The best way to do this is to create longer content that is more in-depth instead of writing short articles just to try to get visitors.

A few years ago, people tried to get as much traffic from search engines as possible by writing a separate, usually short article for every single variation of a particular keyword.

This created a lot of mostly useless content that made visitors unhappy.

These days, Google likes to see longer content, because most spammers won’t take the time to write unique, grammatically correct content that is 1,000+ words long.

They’ve come to see longer content as quality content, so if you want to get traffic from Google, you need to focus on quality over quantity.

In fact, now that Google’s algorithm is more advanced, you no longer have to write a separate article for every single variation of a keyword to rank for all those variations.

Writing one long, high-quality article and weaving a few of those keyword variations through it where appropriate will help you rank for more than just the keyword you use in the title!

Semantics help search engines understand what your content is about, often helping you rank for keywords you don’t even include in your content at all!

They do this by comparing your page to other similar pages and looking for similarities.

If a lot of pages similar to yours use a particular word in their content and you don’t, you still have a chance to rank for that word because your page is similar to those other pages that do include it.

So focus on writing quality content, NOT on trying to create dozens of variations for different keywords or working in keywords to fit some magical percentage.

Those tactics don’t work anymore.

Quality is the most important factor.

Age is another important factor, and if your site is new there isn’t much you can do to get faster rankings, but thanks to social media, you don’t actually have to wait for search engine traffic to start coming in to get traffic to your site.

That’s where it’s helpful to write quality content because it’s more likely to be liked and shared on social media, which will bring in even more traffic.

While educational content is crucial for most sites, trendy content is a lot more likely to get social traffic!

Trendy content is the type of content that follows all the latest breaking news and trends in your industry.

It includes new inventions, innovations, new products, and product discontinuations, news, special events, etc.

 

Trendy content is often somewhat seasonal – meaning you may get a surge of traffic for a while after you first post about it, but the traffic will wane when the information becomes “old news”.

But trendy content can get you a lot of traffic for a short while after it’s posted, and that traffic will often
come from social media since people are more prone to share content that is new or different from the type of content they normally see.

It’s not likely that you’ll be the very first to post a particular piece of breaking news unless you’re truly an
industry insider in your niche.

Instead, you’ll need to keep up to date on events in your niche by following social media accounts that often post breaking news and perhaps by signing up for Google Alerts regarding news-related keywords in your niche.

You don’t have to be the first to post the news, you just have to post it quickly enough that a good number of people haven’t yet heard about it.

For this reason, it’s important to not only stay on top of news in your niche but also be ready to write content at the drop of a hat in order to be one of the first to post it.

Don’t procrastinate when it comes to posting news!

You can procrastinate a little in other areas if you must, but this is one place where it really pays to respond quickly.

Whenever you post about some sort of trending topic, it’s especially important to share your content on all of your social media accounts immediately after posting.

This will get your content out there in front of as many people as quickly as possible, and give you the best chance of being the first place people see that content.

This type of content loses its impact quickly if readers have already seen it elsewhere.

It’s not like an educational article that will be evergreen in a niche.

Technically any type of content COULD become viral content.

You could write a really incredible educational article and it could explode on social media overnight.

Trendy content often has the power to go viral, but the effect doesn’t usually last long.

You’ll see a brief surge in traffic, and then it wanes to nearly nothing before too long.

The type of viral content we’re talking about now is the kind that never really wanes.

For example, celebrity gossip CAN wane over time, but sometimes the traffic continues for a long time because new information comes out on the story and renews its popularity.

Cute animal videos and shocking crime stories stay popular for a long

time. Interest doesn’t wane too much, mostly because these topics have wide enough appeal that they don’t reach critical mass for a longer period of time.

Viral content is usually either:

* Funny

* Exciting

* Shocking

* Entertaining

* Some mix of these

It’s not easy to create viral content.

Most people who deliberately try to create it fail, because they think they know what people will like and don’t, or because they fail to get enough influencers to see and share the content.

Sometimes it helps just to profit off OTHER people’s viral content.

For example, if you see a particular video trending on YouTube or Facebook, you can embed it into a
page on your own site or share it to your own social media accounts to piggyback off its success.

You may not profit from it directly if you just share toy our social media accounts, but you WILL benefit by getting more followers because your current followers will share the content, and some of the people who see it will end up following you.

Viral content doesn’t necessarily have to be exactly in your niche, but it does at least need to relate loosely to it.

For example, if you have a beauty website you might post celebrity gossip from time to time because there would be a significant amount of overlap between the two markets.

Or if you have a pet care website, you could post shocking, cute, or funny animal videos.

They’re not exactly about pet care, but many people who are interested in pet care would be interested in that type of content.