To better understand what content is, it is best to start with a short story. Imagine waking up on a sunny morning, eating breakfast, going outside and starting for a walk. While walking, you see a man playing a cheerful song with his beautiful and colorful harmonica, and you enjoy listening to it. Then you continue your way and encounter a clothing store with a large banner announcing its great discounts. You also enter the store and see the clothes inside it, get the necessary information from the seller, and if you like a dress, you buy it.
But what does this story have to do with the topic of our article, which is content? Stay with us to learn about the interesting concepts of content, including its definition.
What is Content?
Content is anything that contains information and a specific structure. Content has a variety of types, such as audio, video, text, and images, which we use to express and convey emotions, knowledge, and create effective communication with others.
You are probably confused when you hear the word content; when you ask different people about the meaning of content, they tell you phrases like “content can include anything” or “content does not include everything and is a specific form of information”. You probably will not understand the meaning of content in the end. Pay attention to the definition and example below:
In short, it can be said that everything you see, hear and are affected by is content. For example, imagine you are going out of the house in the morning, you see your colleague on the way, and he greets you. Then he talks about giving a raise to the company’s best employees. All these communications and conversations contain content.
In the story at the beginning of the article, each of the things we described can be a content on its own because each of them is able to convey a message or communicate with you.
A sunny morning may evoke a pleasant feeling in you; A delicious breakfast can make you feel good; Walking in the pleasant morning air and listening to the attractive sound of a beautiful man’s harmonica will certainly have a positive impact on you; Seeing a store that offers great discounts leads to arousing your sense of curiosity and convinces you to enter the store to get more information and buy the desired products if needed.
Content is a collection of useful, high-quality, attractive, and enlightening data, ideas, and messages that are prepared and made available to the audience in a written, visual, or audio form for the use of others in order to create a feeling or interaction.
Now that you know what content is, it’s time to learn its types.
Types of Content
There are so many different forms of content that it would be difficult to list them all. In the following, we describe some of the most important types of content so that you can get to know them.
Video content
Today, video content is one of the most popular types of content because video content can respond to the needs of users in a short time and in the best possible way. Digital content is also great for entertainment, and for this reason, it has many fans. As the largest video content platform in the world and the largest source of entertainment and information in various fields, creating content on YouTube has many benefits in terms of finance and branding.
Visual content
Images can also play a big role in attracting the attention of audiences and influencing them. Visual content has a long history; as far back as we can remember, we have been dealing with this type of content. Visual content can be in the form of banners, magazine covers, etc. Images can also be classified as a subset of digital content; the modern form of this type of content can be attributed to three-dimensional images, panoramic images, etc.
Audio content
Songs, podcasts, and radio are included in this category. These contents have always attracted the attention of many people throughout history and their popularity never decreased. Podcasts are one of the types of audio content that have gained many fans today. Many digital marketers use podcasts to promote their brand and further their marketing strategies.
Textual content
It’s time for the most important tool of SEO and digital marketing experts, namely textual content. Everything you read is a type of textual content that can influence you. Text content is very important because if you can use it to answer users’ questions, you can be sure that your business will succeed.
What is Digital Content?
Digital content is a method of communication through devices connected to the Internet. You can use this content to communicate with one or millions of people on the Internet. Access to this content is easy for the users at any time, anywhere, and on any device. Through digital content, people can learn a wide range of complex and difficult concepts through images, animations, charts, videos, and infographics.
The purpose of this type of content creation is to help people. This content is used by individuals, businesses, organizations, news channels, students, professionals, and governments to communicate with target audiences. It can be said that this content is a way to automate online communication.
Simply put, the personal images you upload on your Instagram are a type of digital content; These images communicate with your friends and followers. Social media, blogs and websites are systems that deliver your message to users through this type of content.
Benefits of Digital Content
Digital content, in addition to important benefits such as helping people and businesses and creating effective communication, has other benefits as well. Traditional content such as environmental advertisements, billboards, tracts, etc., had many problems and largely wasted the resources and budget spent on advertising; But digital content has eliminated many of these problems. Some of the important benefits of digital marketing include:
Flexible and is published in different formats
Imagine a lecturer hosting an online seminar. This lecturer can convert the content of his seminar into text and publish it on his website, he can convert pieces of this presentation into a podcast format and publish it on the website, Telegram channel and other platforms, or he can upload a video of this seminar to Instagram or YouTube. In this way, the content can be converted into different formats and bring significant benefits to the business.
Easily reviewable and editable
If you design a billboard and install it on a busy street, you will not be able to change or edit it after the design. But digital content is editable whenever you want, and you can easily edit it according to your preferences and your user’s needs at any time you want.
Always Available
Digital content, unlike traditional marketing, has no expiration date! It is available to your users at any time of the day or night. A working woman or a housewife who is busy all day can easily make personal or household purchases online at home late at night. This means that digital content will be available to users at any time and place and has no time limit like physical stores or libraries.
Publishable on various digital platforms
You can publish a text as content on Telegram or a website, as a caption on Instagram, or as a post on LinkedIn. Practical and well-crafted content can be profitable for your business in several ways.
Measurable
You can never measure the number of people who have seen your billboard or received your flyer, but digital content is easily measurable with tools like Google Analytics. You can even measure how far a user has scrolled down your website page or where they have stopped browsing. This way, you can easily find your business’s strengths and weaknesses and satisfy your audience.
How Can Content Have Maximum Impact on Its Audience?
Any content published by any media and platform (TV, YouTube, blog, etc.) has only one goal: to attract a large number of viewers. But how can content attract audiences? Before preparing content for publication, you should ask yourself who are the target audience for this content and what needs of the users will this content meet?
For example, if you are preparing an article about the best restaurants in New York City, you do not need to explain the history of New York City and its tourist attractions. This is because the audience who searches for the phrase “Best restaurants in New York City” on Google is obviously looking for a good restaurant to eat at, not to learn about the city’s tourist attractions. Based on the example we explained, content can have the maximum impact on its audience if it provides a clear answer to users in a short period of time and directly targets their needs.
The Intertwining of Content in Human Life
In every moment of life, all humans are engaged with content. As we mentioned in the definition of content at the beginning of this article, anything that can have an impact on you and transform your perspective is considered content. This very article that you are reading is a form of content; The work you do through which you succeed or get challenged is content; The action movie that you are amazed by its exciting scenes is a type of content.
If you think about it for a moment, you will realize that content is intertwined with all of our lives. Content is considered a necessary existence, and a necessary existence cannot be denied. Please share your valuable opinions on this matter in the comments section.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What does content mean?
Content means the narration of data and information in a way that is understandable and usable by humans.
2. What does digital content mean?
Digital content is any content that we create and share online for the purpose of interacting with visitors, customers, or users of our website or business.
3. Why do we need content?
Every business needs content to be heard. These days, businesses that do not use content marketing have the role of an illiterate and backward person and will definitely deny themselves a lot of profit. Content can be the voice of your brand.
4. Why do they say content is king?
Bill Gates once said, “Content is king”. This phrase is a metaphor for the high importance of content for the growth of businesses.
5. What are the types of content?
Types of content include audio (such as podcasts), images, videos, and text.
Entertainment icons created by Parzival’ 1997 – Flaticon
Content icons created by Freepik – Flaticon
Phone icons created by Flowicon – Flaticon
Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik