I'm with Rand on this one — inbound marketing is going to continue making waves in 2013 and beyond for every business (and individual) that wishes to sell things online.

One personal prediction that I would humbly put forward, however, is that creativity is going to play an increasingly important role as more and more startups attempt to garner attention for themselves with content.

"...so you're saying creativity doesn't matter much now? You're dumb."

Of course not! Creativity is a significant part of any content strategy being done today, all I'm saying is that many of the tried-and-true techniques of the past will need to be supplemented with more creative efforts as the web gets ever more crowded.

I mentioned in my last post on SEOmoz that infographic promotion just ain't what it used to be: sites that were all hot n' bothered by a pretty infographic in 2009/2010 are just about sick of them now.

Sure, they still work, but as with anything, returns atrophy over time.

That said, today I'm going to break down three creative inbound marketing tactics and show you the numbers behind how they performed (mini-case studies, so we can see some implementation).

Let's jump in!

#1 — Using Animated Video

I'll be honest here: video content (outside of the talking head video) is really hard to do.

Even video series like our favorite Whiteboard Fridays take a lot more planning/scripting than you might expect, but fully animated videos and other sorts of professionally edited videos are on a whole 'nother level (unless you've already have a ton of experience).

The thing is, a popular video is incredible for building traffic and links, and for business purposes; it doesn't take a viral sensation like Gangam Style to see results.

I would know, as I was recently lucky enough to be featured in a "viral" video in early December:

The video was for my behavioral psychology blog Sparring Mind, and to date, it has amassed 380,000+ views and is still climbing.

It has also landed me features on The Discovery Channel blog and one of my favorite sites ever, Brain Pickings.

Here's the thing: I can barely operate Microsoft Paint, let alone any animation programs!

I'm a content strategist who is into writing and researching behavioral psychology studies, not an animator or videographer; so how did I make this happen?

The answer lies in teaming up with interesting "mediapreneurs" who are way more talented than I. In this case, I partnered with the team at ASAPscience to make the video a possibility.

We all know that networking is hugely important in getting in front of audiences that can help build our businesses, but too often my fellow content peeps are so caught up in worn out strategies like guest blogging that they often miss out on more creative opportunities on other media outlets.

More importantly, although I've been featured on "big news" sites like Forbes and BusinessWeek, they've never had the return that these more creative projects have had, because as Rand tweeted a few weeks ago, big media outlets usually only benefits those who already have an audience.

Back on topic: The key reason why I love this more creative video content over traditional outreach pieces like infographics is because people love featuring short videos.

A long-ass infographic is hard to pitch: they take up a lot of space, so it is hard to "squeeze one in" to a post they were already writing about.

Videos, however, are easy to fit into posts because they can be used to quickly strengthen an author's point.

Neil Patel actually featured a different video by ASAPscience in a recent post of his about becoming wealthy, and people like Neil rarely ever share videos!

If you don't have the ability to do videos like this in-house (like me), partnering up with someone can seem scary... what the heck are you supposed to offer them in return for a cool video?

Here's how I collaborated with ASAPscience...

• They get all video revenue: Media-producers (especially those on YouTube) are often not concerned with building blogs or web traffic: they want video views and ad-clicks. I wanted neither of these, so I made it clear when I reach out that they would keep all video rights, I just wanted to be featured.
• Do as much legwork as possible: Since I couldn't do anything on the animation end, I did my best to do as much work as possible on the research/script-writing end. I gathered all of the sources, wrote out the "flow" of the video, and wrote out as much of the script as I was able. I wasn't useful on the video end, so I made myself as useful as possible everywhere else.
• Spearhead the promotion: As mentioned, you need to keep the other person's need in mind, and YouTube channels want more views, so I made it my job to promote the video everywhere I was able during the first week of launch, including a big post on my own blog as well as places like Gizmodo and Lifehacker.

Bottom line — video content rocks and is far easier to promote (people are tired of infographics). If you can't do short animated videos in house, team up with some "mediapreneurs" who can and make sure you take up most of the legwork outside of producing the actual video.

#2 — Big Visual Content (NOT Infographics!)

Jon Cooper is a smart guy, but he really impressed me recently with his coverage of the Visualization of Content Marketing.

In it, Jon describes how visual content is beginning to become more and more important for gaining mindshare in a crowded web (on this, we obviously agree). He points to folks like Amanda Cox, who works for places like the New York Times just to do big interactive graphical pieces like this and this.

I would assume that most startups these days have dabbled with graphical content, but it is almost always in the form of infographics, and as I've mentioned, those still work, but they are becoming a bit stale.

The best way that I see to switch things up is to really get bold with you "big content" and focus on visuals that fall outside of infographic territory.

One of the most surprising examples in the post was a Forex site that was using a piece of "big visualization" to amass a ton of links. What did they do? How could they garner so many powerful links naturally with visual content?

The project was called You vs. John Paulson, and it allowed anyone to enter their salary and compare their earnings to billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson.

So, let's say you made a yearly salary of $42,979 (based off of the 2010 National Average Wage Index), how would you compare to John Paulson?

You would find that it takes 4.6 minutes for John Paulson (during his best year) to make your entire annual income.

You'll also find out other statistics, like how much John Paulson is making as you view the page, how many years (usually thousands) it would take you to make that much, and what your equivalent spending amounts are, via metaphors like this gem:

Damn you Paulson! :P

Big visual content like this is effective, and we found that out first hand through our own visual project.

(Don't worry though, ours doesn't equivocate your income to a ham sandwich!)

The project was called the Crazy Ones Quote, and it was a huge letterpress (and formerly a poster which you could buy) of some famous words from Steve Jobs on those willing to take risks.

The results were amazing in several ways.

First, all of the proceeds of the poster went to the Acumen Fund, and the team loved giving back to a good cause.

Second, the site itself generated a ton of hits through social media and incoming links:

That made it a win-win and entirely worth the investment, proving once again that when done right, "big content" really is worth the risk.

It takes some out-of-the-box thinking, but I guarantee that if your content team can come up with a better visual idea than an infographic, you'll see monumentally better returns for your efforts.

Lastly, I'll point to how interesting visuals can enhance already good content... and for that, I have to point no further than the (formerly) amazing OKCupid dating blog, which I consider one of the greatest examples of content marketing of all time.

#3 — Making Use of SlideShare

SEOs and content marketers everywhere are really starting to take notice of the sincere usefulness of platforms like SlideShare.

I've personally enjoyed how much Rand and Dharmesh utilize slideshows both for giving life to new content (such as old webinars and posts) and as a new way to drive relevant traffic and leads.

If you're a B2B startup, you especially need to pay attention here!

Below is a small sample of our leads/traffic from social networks only:

You'll notice that despite the fact that Twitter sent over 22x the amount of traffic as SlideShare, they almost tied in the amount of leads.

(I highlight LinkedIn because that's also known to be a great B2B platform... but still not as effective per-visitor as SlideShare)

Although this is a small sample size, I've seen the same results on a much larger scale, and the data is clear — SlideShare is freaking awesome for building leads, especially in the B2B space.

Far too many folks look at SlideShare as an afterthought though, and that's a shame, because the biggest benefits of SlideShare come from hitting the homepage (and that's far easier to do with original content or finely re-purposed content, not throwaway slides from your last webinar).

Check out this slidedeck from our account that got over 35,000 views:

It was on the SlideShare homepage for around 18-24 hours, garnering a ton of direct leads as well as thousands of brand impressions.

(If you want to read my strategy on getting featured on the homepage, be sure to read this post)

The thing with slideshow content (particularly on SlideShare) is that it benefits from some of the same advantages as video that I mentioned above.

Those being...

• Stealing is encouraged: People can link to articles, but don't get anything out of it. With slideshows, they get content to share on-page and won't mind throwing a link to you as a thanks.
• Promotion is easier: I must have said the word "Infographics" about 100 times in this post... but here's the deal: infographics are starting to get ignored more often by webmasters who have been pitched to far too many times. An interesting slidedeck stands out by at least being something different to look at.
• *You double-down on exposure: Not only does 3rd party visual content like videos or slideshows generate exposure from your site and being featured on other sites, you can actually start to take off on the hosted sites themselves — YouTube video rank in YouTube search and appear in related videos, and SlideShare prezis can be featured on the homepage or in the "related" section.

Last but not least, SlideShare can help you promote other forms of "big content" by reassembling them in a slide deck.

When we wanted to promote our latest resource called The Business Case for Loving Customers (lovingly inspired by the Beginner's Guide to SEO), one of the first things that we did was to create a PDF/slideshow version and promote it with a guest post on the BufferApp.

The slideshow + post was able to add a few thousand more views to our resource, and all it took was a little extra legwork and a SlideShare upload.

Is your team taking advantage of this seriously useful platform?

Your Turn

Here are two questions I'd love to discuss down in the comments:

1. What did you think about some of these tactics? Did any of the examples resonate with the content strategy at your startup?
2. Have you seen any other creative visual strategies being utilized by startups?

Thanks for reading!