Content marketing strategies come in many shapes and forms. Sometimes it can be intimidating to create a strategy. That is why we want to help by providing you with ideas as you start to craft your strategy for 2020.

If you want specific content marketing strategies, join us today at noon CST for a free upcoming webinar on Creating Valuable Content that Generates Leads.

29 Content Marketing Strategies

Fara Rosenzweig ManyChat

With more than 2.5 billion people on mobile messaging apps, it’s a critical area for content marketers to explore in 2020.

Creating content is one thing, but the type we create and where we distribute—and how—is another. Articles, videos, and podcasts are a must as we move forward in the digital age. However, the content created must be valuable, otherwise, your users will go to the next competition.

Forgo sales tactics, and deliver stories and tips that customers want, which you can distribute through chat marketing. Creating conversations via Facebook Messenger and driving customers to the content is one way to get your valuable tips out there. It also provides another way to distribute content in addition to SMS and email. You share content with your audience on their preferred channel.

Stacy Caprio  Her.CEO

Ask others to guest post on my site to get free, high-quality content. I’ve found guest posters can produce great content that ranks, and all for no cost.

I think it is important to have high-quality content on your site, and sometimes you don’t have time to write it yourself. This is why utilizing guest posts can be so helpful.

Madelyne Churchill  Social Eyes Marketing

Our top content marketing strategy to use for 2020 is making more video content. We’ve used this strategy several times for client testimonials for several years. people prefer to watch videos because you can sit back and passively take in the information.

A lot of the words on a website or blog can be turned into a video for better engagement. Having video content enables companies to tell a story in the exact way they want it to be portrayed. Taking a video out of context is much harder than taking words out of context. For those reasons, video is very important for company branding.

Ron Stefanski  Prison Insight

My top strategy for 2020 will be a continuation of my 2019 strategy which is focused primarily on answering users’ queries through a dedicated blog post. I’ve found that this does well with search engines and now that Google has emphasized queries in snippets, my traffic has steadily increased.

This has been a big part of my content strategy for the last three years and has continually shown results. Lately, though, it seems that Google has favored these pages even further.

2019 was full of people creating pages that were extremely in-depth and had high word counts, maybe to a fault. I think that Google and other search engines have realized that users want specific answers related to direct queries and feel that with the emphasis of Google snippets, it’s a great time to focus primarily on this.

Nick Leffler WPHubSite

The top content marketing strategy I want to use is to create help documents that cater to a wider audience than just mine. So, I want to help my users and also help users outside of WPHubSite find solutions and become better acquainted with WPHubSite.

I have been using this strategy for about three months for WPHubSite. It has been a successful strategy for other projects I’ve worked on. Though it takes some time to build traffic and trust, the inbound leads are free and they are valuable because you aren’t selling directly to them.

Jacob Landis-Eigsti  Jacob LE

Being a small business, using my time effectively is key. I will often ask my potential, existing, or past clients what kind of content they would find useful.

Once I get a variety of responses, I’ll do keyword research to make sure that people searching online will be able to find the content. Then, I’ll write a blog post and record a video. When it’s done, I can then email the content to my potential, existing, and past customers. I’ll also share it on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Apple podcasts, and LinkedIn.

I’ve been using different content marketing strategies for 3 years, but I started implementing this exact strategy 4 months ago. I have a 40% increase in leads after implementing this new strategy.

Now that I am creating content that I can use in many ways, I’m able to reach more people, connect with past customers, and drive more sales. It’s quickly increased my revenue, so I am going to put even more time and effort behind this approach in 2020. Keep your answers to 1 paragraph each. We might edit your responses for brevity or grammar.

Sydney Liu  Commaful

Something we’ve found has worked really well is leveraging our community to see what they care about and then creating content and tools that tackle those topics.

If they have questions on the publishing process or how to market their fiction, we see those questions asked in our community chats, letting us know that people are curious about that topic. This allows us to provide real actionable value through our content marketing.

Matthew Ross The Slumber Yard

I truly believe video is the future of internet content and consumption. We’ve structured our entire content strategy around video. Not only do we pay for video advertising but we also create video content ourselves. To cut to the chase, we create helpful YouTube videos in-house to attract viewers and (hopefully) turn them into customers.

All in all, creating YouTube content is a lot more cost-efficient than strategies like PPC ads or traditional print marketing. In other words, you can get in front of potential customers that are searching for related services or products for a very low cost. So far this year, our in-house content hs attracted over 2 million views for a fraction of what other marketing strategies would have cost.

Kent Lewis Anvil Media, Inc.

I recently launched a new podcast with a seasoned co-host, Podcast for Closers. My agency, Anvil, has also helped create and market podcasts including Craving the Future and The Conversational Podcast.

Podcasting was hot for a minute years ago and is seeing a resurgence. It’s different this time around because there is money behind it (advertising and sponsor dollars, robust platforms/tools and affordable equipment). The money is coming in because research shows podcast listeners are more engaged than other channels in terms of recall, engagement and purchase behavior.

From my perspective, it’s also a powerful content tool that powers SEO, social media and other marketing efforts. For brands not able or willing to create their own podcasts, they can leverage advertising or become a guest on relevant industry podcasts, as I’ve done.

Syed Rizvi REV MED

We have been successfully leveraging social media, specifically Instagram, for a few years now. During this time, things have changed dramatically.

For example, Instagram is pushing for videos to be the content of choice for content creators since they unveiled IG TV last year. Going into 2020, I’ll be doubling down efforts to focus on Video content.

Zach Evans Piano University, LLC

YouTube is king in 2020 – there are so many advantages to this platform.

First, video provides the richest experience someone can have online by combining audio and visuals. People feel like they know you by watching your video

Secondly, unlike social media, YouTube is evergreen. Every video you create generates views even years later. Also, YouTube is a lot easier to rank than a blog on Google is nowadays.

Thirdly (and this is my favorite), once you have a good YouTube video up, you can repurpose it into a blog post, a podcast, and social media content. I pay an assistant to handle all of this, so one video multiplies out to create a TON of content.

I even used these videos as ads! This means my video content is always generating interest.

Nicholas Rubright SalesFreaks

Our content marketing strategy for 2020 is going to be the same as it was in 2019 – to create blog content that addresses the major pain points of our users that our products ultimately solve. If we create blog content that addresses these pain points in full, it draws traffic from search engines.

By positioning our product within the content as a solution to the reader’s problems, we’re able to convert readers who came from search engines into customers.

Faizan Ali  WPBeginner

Content needs to be tailored for voice searches and smart devices. It is expected that by 2020 almost 50% of the web searches will be by voice searches. And the latest algorithm update by Google suggests that SEOs will have to get a better understanding of NLP (Natural Language Processing) and semantics.

I have been optimizing my content with semantics for over 5 years. It’s important because like I said, voice searches will take over in the
coming years and the search algorithms will give preference to the content
that optimizes for LSI keywords and NLP.

Alda Grigoryan Incredo

The top tactic we use in our content marketing strategy is to rely on partnerships. I am talking about outreach-based partnerships that are mutually beneficial.

We have been leveraging this approach for a long time but we started implementing it even more actively since the beginning of this year.

I think it’s important because we have already seen a natural increase in quality backlinks, social media shares, and brand mentions.

We reach out to potential partners and say we can do something for them – feature their product in our post, include their expert quote, and ask them whether they are willing to cooperate with us. This works because both sides receive a benefit from the relationship.

Emil Kristensen Sleeknote

One of our top content marketing strategies for 2020 is continuing to build an authentic brand voice in our content.

It’s always been important to us to create content that is purposeful, useful and engaging. In all of our blog posts, we try to stay informative, informal, and helpful.

In a world that is saturated with ads and sales pitches, people have become very sensitive to content that tries to get them to buy something. The experience can often be very off-putting. With the continued growth of content marketing, this feeling can only increase. That’s why we aim to write blog posts that touch our consumers’ pain points first, so we can build trust and loyalty between them and our brand. In the end, we believe these are the things that will increase our sales and growth.

Paige Arnof-Fenn Mavens and Moguls

I am a big fan of Content Marketing which is a great way to build your brand, increase your visibility more broadly, raise your profile and attract more clients.

To make content even more attractive and drive conversion you need to understand two things. First, how customers purchase a product, experience or service; and second, we need to identify our audiences’ underlying motivations.

Becky Kerr  Becky Kerr Photography

My top marketing strategy for 2020 is the skyscraper method, producing detailed, long-form content that not just ranks well, but is also genuinely useful and interesting to my audience. It’s saved me from writing lots of small articles that don’t produce results and let me focus my energy on a few, in-depth articles that have become very successful.

I’ve only been using the skyscraper method for 2 months, but I’m already seeing results, with a few blog posts driving significant traffic to my website. Results are currently still improving, with these articles starting to gain high rankings for multiple keyword variations.

Search engines are rewarding websites that provide users with the detailed answers they’re looking for, and that’s not likely to change in 2020. It’s a great method of ensuring the most valuable content is getting the highest-ranking, there aren’t any shortcuts, you simply have to produce quality content.

Debashri Dutta Blog Tyrant

Our plan for 2020 is to focus more on creating live content and video content. We plan on creating live video sessions on social media platforms where our audience can ask questions and we’ll do our best to answer them and help them out.

People are looking for more personalized and interactive content. There’s so much marketing communication that people just don’t tune in anymore. We aim to stand out by talking to people directly instead of trying to drive more marketing communication.

Nikola Baldikov Brosix

Our current plan is to continue with SaaS tools comparison articles and their alternatives. The idea began 2 years ago when some brands decided to cut off their services from the collaboration tools market due to various reasons. This resulted in having many clients who had to find an alternative to use for their organizations.

We realized that sharing alternatives articles drove a lot of search traffic from those brands to our software. We continue to update these strategies, but we hope you can benefit from our experience in the field.

Praful Sharma LeadsPanda

A strategy we want to explore more is repurposing blog posts into different mediums, especially audio and video content. We developed a 4-step strategy to make repurposing easy and effective. We call it the ABC (All Bases Covered) Method. It’s a strategy that allows you to 4x your reach, without the 4x effort. The formula is designed to turn blogs into graphics, presentations, videos, and podcasts.

As days pass and the more businesses relay to digital marketing, there will be a high demand for content. All content marketing strategies require hard work. It is not easy to produce high-quality relevant content. Applying this repurposing strategy saves marketers more time to focus on other important things and allows them to reach more people.

Matt Schembri CreditPlus

We have three priorities going into 2020. Value, voice, and video. The added value is centered around building early connection and transparency to make car buying easier. Voice reflects our atomized content through small snippet definitions whilst video provides another medium to communicate easily digestible content around finance.

2020 is going to be about amplifying our existing strategy of delivering value-add content to consumers, which have proven successful over the last year. We’re doing more video to improve visual communication and leveraging the trend to use natural language searches in voice content.

Both cars and finance are heavily researched before commitment. Trust is the number one factor in that decision. We’re looking to cover all avenues so our customers can consume information wherever they are, and through whichever medium they choose.

Taylor Baker Cosell.io

We want to focus on increasing consumer awareness by doubling-down on our podcast — The CoSell Show.

We interview thought-leaders in the SaaS Partnerships world. Each episode, we ask thought-provoking questions that encourage the sharing of valuable insights around partnerships and co-selling. We then transcribe the voice to text using Rev.com, post it on our blog. The audio gets published tot Apple Podcasts and Stitcher. We encourage our guests to share the post on social, which gives us instant distribution to our target audience.

In our industry, personal recommendations hold more weight than ever because customers have trouble focusing online. As a result, they tend to go with the majority’s product choices.

We believe we need to capture the knowledge of thought-leaders in our industry. We can then inform our target market (SaaS Partnership Managers) on the growing trends for partnerships and co-selling we will be well-positioned in the SaaS partnership market.

Adam Hempenstall Better Proposals

Our content strategy for Better Proposals is a bit unusual because we don’t chase keywords so we can rank better in search engine results.

We get the best results when we create content our customers want to read. The inspiration for 90% of the content posted on our website comes from our customer support. We read what our customers are interested in and what they struggle with and we come up with blog posts covering those answers. We plan to double down on this method in 2020 and see what kind of results we can get.

Tommia Hayes Community Health Charities

Make your content scannable. Based on our metrics, I’ve realized our audience doesn’t read our long, text-heavy content. In this digital and video age, most folks want you to get to the point, and honestly, I don’t blame them.

Especially when visiting your site on a mobile device. You have a split second to grab their attention and even shorten the time frame to get for them interested in learning/reading more. So make sure when creating your content, you use shorter paragraphs and use bullets for key points. No one wants to scroll endlessly on site. Now that we use this style for our blogs and newsletter content, we have higher traffic and more people subscribing to read our content.

Plus, it lowered our bounce rate, because readers we’re immediately leaving our site after that particular post. With the shorter, precise content, they now click the links in the blog or visit other pages during the same session.

Alex Kehoe Caveni Digital Solutions, LLC 

The best content strategy mixes traditional writing with SEO research. We find topics where websites with similar authority to us currently rank. We then read the content in-depth to see if they answered the search query in the best way possible.

For those sites that didn’t, we create long-form content that is well researched and provides a more complete picture of a given topic.

This content strategy may seem simple but has proven effective for both our clients and our websites over the past three years. 2020 seems to follow this trend of search engines valuing high-quality content and a willingness to promote newer better websites over more established versions that have become outdated over time. All factors lead us to believe that our simple content strategy will be just as effective, if not more, in 2020.

Kirky Galt Creative Real Estate Copy

Curation: Had it on my mind to try for years. We finally implemented the strategy with clients this summer – as a supplement to their blog. So far, we have seen a good response.

Now employing curations using Scoop.it. This strategy is inexpensive and easily scalable. Other benefits include:

• Boosts visibility on social media
• Generates traffic that search engines notice
• Establishes credibility
• Enhances your awareness of others in the industry
• Builds your awareness of content trends
• Helps you identify opportunities for needed answers and topics

Saurabh Jindal Talk Travel

For 2020, we want to focus heavily on the backlinking strategy by putting together a list of highly acclaimed and successful resources, provide value to them and thus get featured on their website. This would help us raise our Domain Authority and get more traffic.

We have been working on this project for almost 1 year now – during which our Domain Authority has gone from 18 to 31. This has enabled better rankings for us, increased traffic as well as made us more attractive to collaboration with other players.

Sam Rexford Chill Reptile

The content marketing opportunity I’ll be doubling down on for 2020 is online courses. With the proliferation of easy and affordable course-building software (Thinkific, etc.), the opportunity to provide massive value to your leads in the form of training and education has never been so accessible for small businesses, bloggers, and entrepreneurs.

Online courses and digital content can be used as a free lead magnet to get new leads into your funnel. The courses are a nurturing tactic to generate leads from your products and become a new revenue-generating product for your company.

Easy to build, simple to deliver, with very little overheads once completed, there’s very little downside to providing added value to your customers and leads with courses.

The best part is, the perceived value of training content is much higher than more traditional forms of content like blog posts and whitepapers. With a course, you can deliver a truly transformational experience for your subscribers, which will boost your authority in your niche, and help build rapport and goodwill from your leads.

David Leonhardt THGM Writers

I want to use video more. Specifically, I want to use video clips. These would be short videos or perhaps two sentences. That will give just enough information to get people to click through to my website. I have not used this strategy yet, but I am in the planning stages.

Simply put, I don’t use enough (or almost any) video. I know this can be effective, especially to grab people who might otherwise be scrolling past my posts on LinkedIn and Twitter. This should close some of that gap.

Final Thoughts on Content Marketing Strategies for 2020

Let us know in the comments below what you thought about these content marketing strategies? Which one do you plan on using in 2020? Are you looking to use multiple content marketing strategies; curious to hear your thoughts?