19 types of content that every blog needs

Why do we need different content types?

First, people acquire and process information differently. While some of us crave visuals, others prefer text, sounds, or need to apply logical patterns to information they want to come to grips with. That’s why the one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work when it comes to creating content. It’s vital to identify what styles of processing information suit your audience most and leverage content marketing strategies of all kinds to accommodate their needs.

Secondly, if you want to reach out to wider audiences and diversify your traffic, it’s important to mix various content types to engage as many visitors as possible. And last but not least, different information is best presented in different content formats.

Content types to leverage in affiliate marketing

So, what are the different content types you can use to achieve your marketing goals? There are tons of them, but in this post, we’ll cover the 19 most common ones. 

1. Blog posts

Though many people perceive blogging as a creative and emotional outlet only, blog posts are also a great marketing tool and you can reap many business benefits from them.

What are the benefits of blog posts?

1. Blog posts are great for getting people to your website.
2. Expert blog posts help you establish authority and build a reputation.
3. They are a long-term investment as they will continue driving traffic and generating leads for years. 
4. You can place affiliate tools in blog posts and drive conversions. 
5. They help educate your audiences, provide solutions and establish trust.

What makes a good blog post?

1. It’s relevant and useful to your audience and resonates with them.
2. It’s of top-quality and engages your readers.
3. It contains action-oriented language and CTAs.
4. It has a compelling headline, subheadings, a powerful lead, a well-structured body, and a conclusion.
5. It’s easy to scan as it includes lists, bullet points, visuals, etc.
6. It’s SEO-optimized and contains seamlessly embedded relevant keywords.

What purpose do blog posts serve best?

Well, blog posts are a universal tool. You can write about almost any topic and combine various blog post types with other content. For example, on the Travelpayouts blog, you can find a wide range of blog posts that serve different purposes. In some posts, we share affiliate marketing tips and review tools. In others, we publish product updates and event announcements, interviews, success stories, etc.

2. Infographics

Infographics allow you to visually represent data and make it easier-to-perceive. Though creating eye-catching quality infographics can be quite challenging, the web offers loads of top-quality infographic tools to help you with this task.

What are the benefits of infographics?

1. Grab attention and allow marketers to get more eyes on their content.
2. Present complex information in a simple, easy-to-digest way.
3. Are easy to share and can get you backlinks.
4. Help grow brand awareness and establish authority in your niche. 
5. Help you rank higher in search results.

What makes good infographics?

• It’s relevant to your business and the needs of your audience.
• It’s concise.
• It cites the sources of data presented.
• It is perfectly designed.

What purpose do they serve best? 

You can use infographics for many purposes, for example, when you need to tell a story or represent figures or data visually. It’s also perfect for comparing things, for example, tools or services, and for explaining how something works. For example, on the Travel Affiliate Club website, the complex relationships within affiliate marketing are presented visually in the form of infographics, and as a result, are easier to understand.

3. Presentations and slides

Whether you’re hosting a webinar, a conference, or a meeting, presentations and slides are a must. However, don’t leave them to gather dust afterward. You can always repurpose these materials and share them with your audience.

 How can you benefit from presentations and slides? 

1. You can reach out to people who haven’t attended your events.
2. The slides and presentations can be used to brush up some information.
3. Visual slides help you communicate the idea you want to get across correctly.
4. It’s a great tool for expressing an idea in a laconic way.
5. They can help you grab readers’ attention and engage them.

What makes a good presentation? 

1. It contains valuable content.
2. It has a linear and clear structure.
3. The slides are well-designed and visually appealing.

What purpose do they serve best? 

Presentations and slides are perfect for providing educational information, sharing data, highlighting some key takeaways from webinars and events. At Travelpayouts, we often use webinar slides to share the most practical takeaways with those who don’t have time to watch the webinar or just prefer to process information visually.

4. Webinars

Though hosting webinars requires a lot of effort and can be time-consuming, the benefits you can reap from them are difficult to underestimate.

How can you benefit from webinars? 

1. Webinars are a great way to establish rapport with your audience. 
2. They allow marketers to engage their audience for a long time.
3. Webinars are a great way to get immediate feedback.
4. They are cost-effective.
5. Webinars help build brand awareness and establish authority in the niche.
6. Webinars can be a great soft-sell tool.
7. They are great for building relationships with other niche experts and reaching out to their audience.
8. You can later repurpose content from webinars.

What makes a good webinar? 

1. It has an appealing presentation.
2. The speakers can keep the audience interested and engaged. 
3. There is a host to direct the flow of the webinar. 
4. There is a mix of different media types, for example, short videos, GIFs, images, etc.
5. It creates a seamless user experience without technical and sound problems, background noises, etc.

What purpose do they serve best? 

What should you build webinars around? You can pick a narrow topic that resonates with your audience or discuss a topical issue in your niche. Besides, you can interview a well-known person in the niche or provide a how-to tutorial your audience will find useful. In Travelpayouts, we regularly host different webinars, so if you don’t want to miss out on our upcoming events, subscribe to our newsletter and stay tuned.

5. Video 

Video content is one of the most popular and powerful content formats today. According to HubSpot, in 2019, video was the #1 form of media used in content strategy, overtaking blogs, and infographics.

How can you benefit from video content?

1. Video content can help influence your customers’ buying decisions and as a result, is effective for boosting conversions.
2. It’s attention-grabbing and allows you to boost engagement on your website.
3. SEO-optimized videos can work miracles for increasing organic traffic to your website.
4. Videos help build trust and boost brand awareness.
5. Video content is a buzz in the marketing world, so using it shows that you manage to keep up with what’s trending.
6. People like to share videos. This can help you get more eyes on your content and website.
7. Video content is cost-effective and shows a great return on investment.
8. Video content can help you explain even the most complex concepts to your audience.

What makes good video content? 

1. It’s engaging and entertaining.
2. It’s emotional and uses storytelling. 
3. It’s easy to share.
4. It includes a compelling CTA to encourage people to perform an action.
5. It provides some value to the audience.

What purpose does video content serve best? 

Video content can help you achieve almost any marketing goal. To name but a few, you can create video content to advertise, explain some things about your product to your audience, tell a story about your brand, create updates, etc. In Travelpayouts, we invest lots of time and effort into creating video content to help you yield better affiliate results. To make the most of it, take free video courses from Travelpayouts Academy and join us on YouTube.

6. Podcasts

The popularity of podcasts has soared recently and there is a wide range of topics available in the format. With so many people involved in podcasting, marketers have also started leveraging it for their marketing purposes. 

How can you benefit from podcasts?

1. Podcasts have great marketing potential as their target audience are mostly educated, quite young, and well-off.
2. As a rule, people listen to podcasts while driving, running, or doing some household chores. So, they give quite a lot of time and undivided attention to the content you offer them.
3. The competition in podcasting is quite low, so make sure you leap at this chance and jump in. 
4. Podcasts can help boost brand awareness, visibility, and authority.
5. They can increase the flow of traffic to your website.
6. Top-quality podcasts can help you build a loyal following.

What makes a good podcast?

1. It has a regular release schedule and is published consistently.
2. It offers a seamless user experience and immaculate sound quality.
3. It engages your audience by asking them to comment and give feedback.
4. It can boast professional hosts and interesting guests.

What purpose do podcasts serve best? 

You can podcast on almost any topic, for example, to tell stories about your brand and the way your company functions, teach listeners how to use your product, share some tips and insider advice, hold interviews with experts in your niche, etc. For example, the Big Travel Podcast hosted by Lisa Francesca Nand explores life-stories in travel and features a great number of celebrities as well as ordinary people. 

7. eBooks

Today, eBook marketing is one of the most powerful marketing strategies. But what’s an eBook? eBooks are usually centered around broad topics and contain links, graphics, and statistics. Though it takes some time and effort to create a top-notch eBook, you can benefit greatly from it. 

How can you benefit from eBooks?

1. eBooks are perfect for lead generation.
2. They are a powerful tool to grow your email list and blog subscription.
3. In eBooks, you can share links to other content on your website.
4. eBooks can help you to build a reputation of authority in the niche.
5. They provide tangible value to your audience.
6. They can be easily monetized.
7. Writing an eBook is a cost-effective strategy.

What makes a good eBook?

• It has an appealing cover.
• Its title is attention-grabbing and easy to remember.
• It contains data and statistics from reputable sources to back your ideas up.
• It has a table of contents to help readers find the information they need.
• It contains compelling visuals, including graphs, charts, tables, images, etc.
• To help readers dive deeper into the topic, it links to useful resources.
• It includes social media sharing buttons.
• There’s a landing page for it.

What purpose do eBooks serve best?

It’s great to write an eBook in your sphere of expertise that will solve some pain points of your audience or help them achieve better results in a sphere related to your business. An example of this can be the eBook we created in Travelpayouts which covers 25 easy ways to make money online. 

8. How-to guide

How-to guides are another way to offer your audience something of true value. What makes them different from eBooks? If eBooks cover broad topics, how-to-guides usually focus on some practical skills and aim at walking readers through some process step by step.

What are the benefits of how-to guides?

1. They help tackle your audience’s problems and establish closer relationships with them.
2. They are a great lead-generation and retention tool.
3. How-to guides are highly shareable. 
4. They are interactive and engaging.

What makes a good how-to guide?

• It contains clear and concise instructions and verbs in the active voice.
• It breaks the process described into several stages and labels these stages with headings.
• It uses compelling visuals.
• It contains numbered lists to structure the content.
• It provides detailed information.

What purpose do how-to guides serve best?

How-to guides are great when you need to provide an outline of a process or create some technical instructions to help readers use a piece of software or technology. A good example of this is our guide on building a website in 10 easy steps. 

9. White Paper

White paper marketing is one of the most popular and powerful strategies today. White papers are in-depth reports on a specific topic that help readers understand the matter and provide a solution. Hubspot calls white papers the academic papers of content marketing. 

What are the benefits of white papers?

1. They help boost your credibility in the niche and establish trust with your audience.
2. They are a powerful tool for generating new leads.
3. They are great for engaging existing readers.
4. Top-quality white papers can help you gain the reputation of an expert in your niche.

What makes a good white paper?

• It’s long enough to present all the relevant information on the matter.
• It contains compelling visuals.
• It has a clear-cut structure.
• It’s written in a professional and rather formal style.
• It has an attention-grabbing cover page.
• It highlights the key takeaways of the information presented.
• It’s easy to scan.
• It presents data and statistics in an easy-to-digest manner that is in the form of infographics and charts.
• It has the brand’s logo, colors, and types incorporated in its design to boost your brand recognition.
• It offers some tangible value to its readers.
• It doesn’t sound like a sales pitch.

What purpose do white papers serve best?

White papers are the go-to solution if you want to provide a thorough evaluation of the market situation, share expert knowledge, data and advice, etc. For example, the Travelpayouts Covid-19 Survival Kit provides an in-depth analysis of the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on the travel niche and offers some robust solutions to cope with the crisis. 

10. Mobile app

Today, the world is witnessing the heyday of mobile and more and more people are using smartphones and mobile apps when making their purchase decisions. According to Statista, in 2020, there are 3.5 billion smartphone users around the world and the number is constantly increasing. So, if you’re not into mobile yet, you’re leaving money on the table.

What are the benefits of mobile apps?

1. You can use them as a way to provide value to your audience and make their booking experience hassle-free.
2. They can be a tool for turning your readers into an army of loyal customers. To do so, you just need to create a loyalty program within your app. 
3. You can use a mobile app to provide top-quality customer support.
4. You can deliver personalized content through your mobile app.
5. You can keep your customers up-to-date with push notifications and instant updates.
6. Having a mobile app gives you a competitive edge.

What makes a good mobile app?

• It provides some tangible value to its users.
• It creates a seamless user experience.
• It can function offline.
• It’s regularly updated. 
• It can boast a top-notch design.
• It’s available both for iOS and Android.

What purpose do mobile apps serve best?

Today, almost every business can benefit from a mobile app. However, if you’re in the travel niche, a mobile app is a must. People are getting used to planning and organizing their trips on the go. At Travelpayouts, we offer several effective solutions for creating a mobile app. FareFirst is a good example of a mobile app created with our tools.

11. Newsletter

A newsletter is a kind of an email containing your company’s news and updates. 

What are the benefits of newsletters? 

1. They allow you to reach out to customers who don’t visit your website regularly.
2. They are a great way to engage your customers and provide extra value.
3. Newsletter marketing is a cost-effective strategy.
4. Newsletters can inform your customers about upcoming sales and promotions.
5. Newsletters can educate your customers, thus building trust and boosting your brand’s credibility. 
6. They can help you drive more traffic to your website.
7. Newsletters are a powerful sales tool.
8. With newsletters, it’s easy to find out what performs best with your audience.

What makes a good newsletter?

• It’s 90% informational and 10% promotional.
• It’s tailored to the readers’ needs.
• It provides valuable content.
• It contains compelling images.
• It has an attention-grabbing headline.
• It allows subscribers to opt out at any time.
• It’s published regularly.
• It’s mobile-optimized.

What purpose do newsletters serve best?

Newsletters can serve different purposes. For example, you can send newsletters to notify your readers of new blog posts you’ve published, give event roundups, promote new products, features, or services, educate your readers on niche-related topics, etc. 

12. Checklist

Checklists are widely used in content marketing today and can become another handy tool for driving traffic and conversions.

What are the benefits of checklists? 

1. They provide extra value to your audience and help you establish rapport with them.
2. They allow you to guide your customers through the process of using a product.
3. They are easy-to-use and powerful.
4. They are perfect for lead generation.
5. They are easy-to-make and budget-friendly.

What makes a good checklist?

1. It contains clear, concise, and easy-to-understand items.
2. These items are grouped by categories.
3. It’s easy-to-navigate.
4. It’s scannable.
5. The formatting is consistent.
6. It covers the whole process. 
7. It’s printable.

What purpose do checklists serve best?

Checklists are great for onboarding your customers and guiding them through the process of using a product or service. You can also create checklists relevant to your niche to help your audience manage their to-dos efficiently. For instance, many travel bloggers create travel planning and packing checklists and generate loads of leads with them.

13. Case study

In marketing, a case study is a detailed study of a person’s or business’s specific challenge or goal, and how they solved it. Case studies allow you to describe your client’s positive experience with the advertiser you promote, share some practical knowledge that might be useful to other readers and highlight the benefits of your business.

What are the benefits of case studies? 

1. They can build trust and boost your credibility in the niche.
2. They demonstrate what real problems a product can solve. 
3. You can repurpose case study content in different formats and on different channels.
4. Well-written case studies can help boost conversions.
5. Case studies prove that your business manages to fulfill all the promises it gives.
6. Case studies are easy to create.

What makes a good case study?

• It tells the whole story.
• It’s well-formatted and easy-to-read.
• It includes facts and figures.
• It highlights a specific solution to some problems of your audience.

What purpose do case studies serve best?

Case studies are a powerful content marketing tactic to highlight the benefits of the product you promote and demonstrate the tangible results that can be achieved with its help. On our blog, you can find lots of insightful case studies and success stories of Travelpayouts affiliates. For example, take a look at the case study of Antoine Brisset, who managed to get his affiliate business off the ground and become one of our top affiliates within a year.

14. Social media posts and stories

Social media is no longer just a series of platforms for sharing photos and keeping in touch with your relatives and friends. They have become powerful tools in the marketing toolkit and can serve many business purposes.

What are the benefits of social media posts and stories?

1. They boost brand awareness and allow you to reach out to new audiences.
2. They can be effective for driving more traffic to a blog or website.
3. They allow you to join in conversations with your audience and build loyalty and trust.
4. Being present on social media helps create a better customer experience and gives your customers a chance to get in touch with you on social media.
5. Social media posts and stories can be a powerful lead generation tool.

What makes a good social media post?

• It has a compelling headline.
• It contains special characters and emojis to garner more attention.
• It has relevant and trending hashtags that help users discover it.
• There is some whitespace within the post which makes it easy to read.
• It has top-quality, attention-grabbing visuals with captions that complement them.
• It has a powerful call-to-action.
• It speaks the language of its audience.
• It has an easy-to-recognize brand voice.

What purpose do social media posts serve best?

Social media posts can serve a wide range of business goals, including building rapport with your customers, helping them solve some pain points, showcasing a product, keeping your audience up to date, announcing events, etc.

15. PDFs

Many marketers avoid using PDFs as they believe it does their strategy more harm than good. Why? Because, as a rule, PDFs are not mobile-friendly and don’t allow embedding multimedia and tracking user engagement. However, PDFs still have many benefits and, if harnessed properly, this content type can become a powerful tool in your toolkit. 

What are the benefits of PDFs?

1. They maintain their formatting when printed out. 
2. They are easy to navigate and read.
3. They allow you to repurpose content.
4. They are great for lead generation.
5. They are smaller in size than other file formats.
6. PDFs are easy to create.
7. They are indexed by search engines.

What makes a good PDF?

• It’s SEO-optimized.
• It’s text-based which boosts its chances for being indexed by search engines.
• It’s optimized and formatted for mobile.
• It opens in a new window or tab as the format doesn’t allow users to go back to the website.

What purpose do PDFs serve best?

PDFs are a perfect solution for any kind of content users may want to print out, for example, guides, checklists, manuals, White Papers, etc. In Travelpayouts, we often use PDFs for guides and ebooks, for example, the guide on using affiliate tools like a pro. 

16. Reviews

Traditional advertising methods have lost their power and customers tend to trust personal recommendations more. That’s why every marketer should consider various types of user-generated content, especially reviews. In addition to the trust they help build with the audience, UGC in general and customer reviews in particular are one of the easiest ways to get free content for your blog.

What are the benefits of reviews?

1. They are free.
2. They help a brand build trust and credibility.
3. They use the language your customers speak and, as a result, can resonate with them.
4. They can show a product or service from a different perspective.
5. Positive reviews help customers who are on the fence make purchase decisions.
6. They help your website rank higher in search engine results. 
7. Reviews help you identify where there is room for improvement.

What makes a good review?

• It’s informative, detailed, and specific.
• It contains visuals, for example, photos or a short video.
• It’s not left without a response.

What purpose do reviews serve best?

Reviews are a perfect tool for boosting sales and your brand’s visibility and credibility. They are also the go-to solution for highlighting some specific features of your service or product. For example, the Superstar blogging course for aspiring travel writers uses students’ reviews as social proof of how effective the course is.

17. Interviews 

Interviews are a great way to establish connections in your industry and partner with niche experts. However, they also provide some tangible benefits for your blog or websites. 

What are the benefits of interviews?

1. Interviews with niche leaders can boost your brand awareness and credibility.
2. They allow you to reach out to new audiences and drive engagement.
3. Interviews can help your audience tackle some specific pain points.
4. You can repurpose the interview content.

What makes a good interview?

• It focuses on the topic relevant to your audience.
• It addresses some issues your customers have.
• It features an expert in the niche or a well-known person. 
• It has well-prepared and engaging questions.
• It’s promoted in advance.

What purpose do interviews serve best?

Interviews are perfect for telling your audience more about your business or team. They’re also great for giving your audience some insightful tips on a relevant topic and sharing success stories of your clients.

18. Gifs and memes

Gifs and memes are an important part of online communication as they are fun, easy to remember, and attract a lot of attention. That is why today, more and more brands choose to make them a part of their marketing strategy.

What are the benefits of gifs and memes?

1. They are great for developing relationships with your audience.
2. They can boost engagement.
3. Gifs and memes are great for driving impressions.
4. People are used to sharing enticing visuals, so gifs and memes can boost your brand’s visibility.
5. They are easy to create.

What makes a good gif and meme?

• It’s of top-notch quality and is visually appealing.
• It targets a specific audience and resonates with it.
• It’s relevant and supports your content, but doesn’t replace it.
• It’s custom and reflects your brand’s culture and voice.
• Gifs should be short.

What purpose do memes and gifs serve best?

You can implement both memes and gifs in any type of content, including emails, blog posts, social media posts, etc. Memes and gifs are perfect for boosting engagement, connecting with your customers, and responding to both negative and positive comments. Gifs are also a great tool for showcasing a product. 

19. Quizzes and surveys

Quizzes and surveys are powerful content types that are often underestimated and overlooked. Yet, they can work miracles for the performance of your website, social media, or blog.

What are the benefits of surveys and quizzes?

1. They are great for getting insights about your audience.
2. They allow you to boost engagement.
3. Using surveys can give you feedback on your performance.
4. They are easy to make and cost-effective.
5. They are a perfect lead generation tool.

What makes a good survey and quiz?

• It offers your audience an incentive for spending their time and providing you with information.
• It’s short and sweet.
• It’s fun.
• It offers a chance to share the result.
• It contains images.

What purpose do surveys and quizzes serve best?

Quizzes and surveys are a great tool for generating leads, entertaining your audience, or getting insights about them or your niche. Also, you can later share the results you’ve collected to educate your readers or provide a comprehensive picture of the main trends in your niche like we did in Travelpayouts.

How to leverage content to grow your brand

When developing your content strategy, you may be sorely tempted to choose one or two content types and stick to them. However, using a wide range of different types of content can do wonders as it allows reaching out to different audiences, boosting engagement, and establishing a connection with your readers. So, make sure you experiment with various types of content, and leverage strategies, and tips we’ve shared with you and it won’t take you long for you to see some tangible results.