What types of content and formats have worked best (or not so well) in 2013?

Kelvin Newman, organiser of the Content Marketing Show:  

I’ve been seeing more and more success with what could broadly be described as interactive content, HTML5 infographics, quizzes, parallax scrolling sites etc.

Again these have been around for ages but I’ve seen more examples of successful content along these lines being produced by agencies and brands.

Andrew Warren Payne, senior research analyst at Econsultancy: 

I would emphasise the importance of formats that can work well on mobile devices and can be shared easily.

As well as the whole question of link penalties, I think this is one reason why the infographic is failing to keep impressing audiences.

Kevin Gibbons, UK MD at Blueglass:

I think quite often people think of the content format too soon, when in fact it should be about telling your brands story online and then choosing the best type of content available in order to get that message across afterwards.

I’ve seen lots of good and bad examples for all types of content, it’s more about the execution of the idea than the type.

It’s really about building a solid content strategy mixed between different types of content and channels, so that you can create content to get your message across in a variety of ways to resonate with your audience.

Jason Thibeault, senior director of marketing strategy at Limelight Networks:

Video is clearing pulling ahead as the best kind of content to produce. The problem is that a lot of marketers fear it, partly because they think it’s expensive to produce and partly because they don’t know how to report on it.

Mike Dubin at DollarShaveClub showed us what video-based content marketing can do with just $4,000.

Doug Kessler, co-founder & creative director at Velocity

SlideShare is a great medium for linear storytelling as it’s embeddable and there’s a community to reach new people, while scrolling sites are a whole new ballgame.

Andrew Davies, COO and co-founder at Idio

I think LinkedIn’s move into content marketing services has been very slick and offers great value. I’m really expecting it to get pretty sizable budgets in 2014 as it continues to become a primary target for B2B content marketing and advertising dollars.

Infographics are becoming passé. Although great ones really cut through, the tsunami of dross means they seem to catch less attention.

It’s noticeable that companies are intentionally producing content that maps to a certain buyer need or stage in the funnel (sometimes with different formats per stage). I assume others are seeing value in that, like we do.

We’ve ridden the content marketing hype here at Econsultancy, and to prove it, here are more than 70 of the posts and reports we’ve written on content marketing.