Hi, Lauren Kaye here with this week’s Content & Coffee with Brafton. Today, I wanted to ask: How diverse is your content strategy? Click play to watch the video or read the full text below. 

Are news articles your bread and butter? Do your blogs bring visitors back to your site? Or does social media drive the most referral traffic? It’s great if you’ve found that sweet spot and can rely on certain practices to consistently fuel results. But I have bad news. The internet marketing landscape is changing and soon, it won’t be enough to rely on those tried-and-true practices. You can’t leave new-fangled formats to other content creators.

You need to diversify. According to the Content Marketing Institute, the majority or brands already have. In a report about B2B trends in 2014, the CMI found marketers use an average of 13 different content types, and highly effective companies use even more – as many as fifteen. Of course, not every type of content is created equal and there are some formats that are rising faster than others.

Let’s start with the basics – blogs. In 2010, just over half of B2B marketers surveyed said their companies were creating blogs. Now, more than 76 percent tap internal thought leaders to give their sites a personal touch.

And content doesn’t necessarily mean the written word anymore. Visual formats are red hot and brands are moving fast to develop graphic and video marketing plans. In 2010, 41 percent of respondents said they were creating videos, but now, 73 percent use this media. Infographics didn’t even make it into the CMI’s 2010 report because marketers apparently weren’t using them. But now, 51 percent are findings ways to turn information into eye-catching graphics.

There’s a similar trend with mobile – 11 percent of marketers were creating content for smartphones in 2010, but it’s now nearing 40 percent. I’ll bet this type of content takes off in the future because smartphone use is only growing and Google has been paying more attention to mobile UX.

The point is that we’re moving beyond the basics. You should keep doing what drives results, but you must also explore sophisticated content types that will draw wider audiences and more effectively push prospects through your sales funnel.

Catch you next week, and happy content marketing!

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.