What types of content does your website need?

 "Content marketing," whether you view it as a powerful new approach to marketing or the latest fad, is a redundant phrase. All marketing tactics consist of "content"-- if you realize that headlines, recommendations, jingles, TV commercials, logos and other graphic designs are all content. What's good about the phrase, paradoxically, however, is exactly that it draws attention to the almost infinite variety of types of content that a marketer can use -- and that's the value of Hannah Smith's post and excellent infographic published yesterday on the Distilled blog: 4 Types of Content Every Site Needs | Distilled:

That said, the value of the post and infographic, IMHO, is decidedly not in her four specific categories, nor in the assignment of specific types to those categories, nor, finally, in the assignment to the scales of emotional to rational and awareness to purchase. In other words, the value of her content is not in the content itself!

Okay, maybe I go too far. For example, Hannah assigns "Events & Conferences" to the quadrant "Entertainment," high on the Emotional scale and close to the middle of the Awareness to Purchase scale. I would put them closer to the Rational end of the scale, and closer to Awareness than Purchase.

So maybe that specific assignment is a judgement call and a quibble, possibly related to our different experiences of the content type.

One more point: the linear model of the sales funnel Hannah uses is out of date.

Nevertheless, the post is valuable because it forces one to consider a much wider range of content types.

Most important point of all, Hannah starts by reminding her readers the point of their content choices: to achieve specific business goals.  And that reminds me of one more note: I'm betting that "content marketing" will fade in 2014, to be replaced by "utility marketing."