What special and not commonly known approach is successful in content marketing?

Like Jonathan mentioned, content marketing is about establishing authority in a certain domain. One not commonly known approach that more and more brands are adopting that assists in building authority is the social hub. What is a social hub? A social hub is a digital property for your business or brand that collects the content you post on various social networks and displays it together. It may or may not contain user generated content. Social hubs allow brands to tie together disparate content into a more cohesive presentation that they have more control over. Anyone from a personal portfolio site to a Fortune 500 company can benefit from a social hub, and there are a variety of tools (including Tint) that can be used for technical novices to put together a beautiful social hub. A social hub can do a variety of things for your brand, namely it allows you to: Target your website audience with your social media marketing. Your website audience is the most likely to be the one purchasing or learning about your brand, and a social hub can bring the marketing effort put into social media back onto the website. Make the most of each post. A social hub allows a brand to re-utilize the content they post on each social network to the maximum benefit, to reach the users most interested in their brand (the ones landing directly on their website) Build trust. Brands that are active on social media are more trusted because their active presence indicates legitimacy. A social hub showcases this activity where it matters most. Increase engagement. By aggregating and showcasing social media content, a social hub can create more opportunities for a customer to interact with a brand, whether it be through a retweet, or a shared Facebook post. Increase sales. The cumulative effect of the above is to increase conversions and improve brand performance when it comes to sales. Save time. Social hubs are inherently no-maintenance, since all of the content is coming from a brand's social feeds, all a brand has to do is to continue to engage customers on those channels, and the hub gets automatically updated. So my suggestion would be to build a social hub, and I have a greater detail in a blog post I wrote: http://www.tintup.com/blog/social-hub-getting-started-guide/ Disclaimer: I work at a company that helps brands create social hubs: http://www.tintup.com

Thought these stats shed some light on your questions: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Which-Content-Marketing-Tactics-Best-ROI/1009706 At the top of the list, you have obvious content marketing strategies like Video and White Paper. However, at the bottom are some that might not be obvious to you, e.g. illustrations and motion graphics. One other thought: we published a comic book (can view here: http://blog.msgme.com/2010/09/15/mobile-marketing-gets-a-comic-book/), which was a great way to make clear how our business worked in a way that was easily digestible for folks just learning or new to our industry. As for distribution, think about places where you will have a hyper-focused group of your audience. For example, my friend works in the travel industry, so posting his content to tourism website or in actual tourism centers has worked really well for him. Remember, it's not the size of audience as much as the quality of audience that's really important for content marketing.

Content marketing, in general, is about choosing what type of content you want to use to drive traffic to your niche. If you want to use articles as your content, create a blog on Blogspot or Wordpress, write press releases http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Press-Release or update your article directory with high-quality articles related to your niche. It's important to choose one article directory with high page authority so your time and effort will not be spent on spinning articles. Instead of spinning, it's better to use your time on circulating the link around the web. Remember: Posting an article in an article directory provides one backlink, therefore, be patient in circulating it. Circulate it manually. If you want to use videos, go to YouTube. Creating video is an excellent way of creating contents for visual learners. Most online users are not reading articles that are long and wordy. These users prefer to watch instructional videos - that if they like what they are watching, they will click on the url in the description box. Same procedure goes with this type of content marketing. You need to manually circulate it in social bookmarking sites. Contents can also be photos. If you're fan of taking pictures and share these photos to your friends, use Flickr or Instagram. Like videos, pictures are also one of the easiest ways to connect with your audience. Pictures call their attention right away. Podcasts are contents for audio learners. There are times that your audience want to listen to a file rather than watch your videos. http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/230/what-is-a-podcast/ To understand more about content marketing, I'll suggest you to seek suggestions from content writers in forums or begin it by reading this page http://www.agentsofvalue.com/web-content/web-content-writer/ To answer your question "What special and not commonly known approach in content marketing?" It's suggested to study who your audience first before choosing the right type or types of contents.

The best content surprises. It's like a good book that way. It shouldn't be too predictable. The title shouldn't give the blog post away; otherwise, the blog post should exist as a tweet. It should be a journey, not a statement.