Rich media becomes a content marketing mainstay

Content marketing has undergone significant evolution since SEOs frantically scrambled to produce a higher quality of link bait back in February 2011, at Panda’s advent.

We went from guest posts to surveys to infographics – and, now, rich media. It’s a term that’s bandied around a lot within the digital marketing arena, but what does it mean, is it genuinely ‘rich’ and is it here to stay?

To answer this question, let’s first revisit the premise of content marketing. Company A produces a piece of content, which acts a vehicle for links back to Company A’s website. The content may or may not live on Company A’s website and they may or may not promote it via their other owned channels, e.g. their social media platforms and/or their blog.

The content is designed as a reciprocal vehicle: Company A may offer Company B said piece of content in return for a backlink from Company B – which tells search engine providers, such as Google, that Company A is actually rather good and worth ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

The problem with text and static images is that they’re boring… and this is where rich media is a real departure from tired content ideas trotted out time and time again by brands, in the hope of a backlink or a social mention. Rich media, then, engages users in more ways than one: text and image – but also audio and video.

It’s this last component which makes rich media so compelling. The dynamic part of rich media allows brands to tell their story in greater detail and to provide a far more convincing reason to visit that website, sign up to that newsletter or take part in that competition. The increased length of rich media also means that various touchpoints or calls to action can be made within the same piece of content.

The result? Greater engagement and an uplift in conversion from that one piece of content.

What’s more, the likes of animated infographics – which most certainly fall within the rich content remit – are a great way of instructing your audience in how to do something, how to better something or how to aim for something.

Because, after all, isn’t the whole point of content to be useful?

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