Using Data To Identify Key Content Opportunities For Your Business: A Step By Step Guide
Today, there is more content online than ever. Obviously, not all of it has value for the reader. Time is of essence and we want our customers to consume data-driven content. This is why we created a step by step guide on using data to identify important content opportunities for your business.
Find the Right Angle
Finding the right angle starts with coming up with a topic, which is harder than it seems. The first step is choosing a trending topic. You need to do research in your niche to see which topics are in demand. Narrow topics are best. Something like “Basics of Content Marketing” won’t work.
Always aim to fill a knowledge gap with your content. Browse sites in or directly related to your sector to see what people are talking about. You can use Buzzsumo as a tool for this. It is simple to use: just enter a keyword to see what people are posting on a topic and click “Go”. A list of trending pieces will come up.
Finding a knowledge gap is the second step. To carry it out, you need to optimize your topics. Your titles should be specific and include one number, preferably odd, as these have been shown to attract attention. It could be based on a key piece of data, which will be elaborated on in the body of the content.
Understand Your Target Group
Begin by asking yourself what problems your business’ service or product solves. Normally, a business will know why their offering exists if it has been on the market for any given time. The content should be tailored to that goal. We don’t encourage sharing irrelevant information even if it’s interesting and attention-grabbing in itself. Irrelevant data plays no part in effective content marketing.
Ask yourself who your current competitors and customers are. You’re probably aware of the competition, but there is also secret competition to reckon with. A quick search on social media and Google can show upstart competitors you probably don’t know about. To see which businesses come up, search for keywords related to your niche. Look at their “About the Company” pages and company descriptions where possible. This will help you get a good idea of who your competitors are.
In case you don’t know who your customers are, it’s highly likely that someone else in the business does. Ask a member of the sales or marketing team. Then, proceed to categorize customers. You might segment them based on needs, budget, or location.
Finally, ask yourself what these customers gain by choosing your business instead of another one. Do you have any unique offerings? Do you do something better than anyone else?
Create and Use an Email List
This is the next step is using data to identify critical opportunities. Email is an important, far too often neglected element of content distribution. It gets your company’s name into subscribers’ inboxes, which they check at least several times a day. It lets you communicate with them without intermediaries. List-building is an excellent approach if you want to amplify your content.
Your email service provider lets you send out emails, create, and maintain a list, and check analytics and reports on the impact of your email campaigns. It also ensures your emails don’t end up marked as spam and that you’re obeying all applicable laws governing emails.
Which email service provider should you choose with so many options available? MailChimp, AWeber, Campaign Monitor, and ActiveCampaign all have low startup costs and are quite popular among marketers. MailChimp has a plan that’s completely free for a max. of 1,000 subscribers.
When it comes to ESPs, you don’t need to invest in a costly option. To achieve email goals, just the bare minimum functionality is required.
The 3 Steps of Keyword Research
When you’re thinking about your target group, you want to find out what the people you know for sure to be in it are searching for right now. What are they not being exposed to? Is there anything they’re unable to find?
Once you’ve spent some time thinking about your target group’s needs, there’s a 3-step process for coming up with the specific keywords and topics readers are seeking out. This forms the basis of the approach to content marketing.
1. Brainstorming
Obviously, the first step is brainstorming. Jot down as many ideas of topics of terms your readers are looking for. To gather results, use a keyword research tool. Enter the terms into a site like keywordtool.io or Google’s Keyword Planner and see what you get.
2. Expand and Group
The terms or topics yielded will be related. Take your full list of results and group them together to narrow it down. What makes sense to your business and what doesn’t? Organize the terms into a spreadsheet. Enter the data the tool generated, such as keyword, difficulty, estimated search volume, and opportunity. Give each term a priority. Which ones are critical to your business?
3. Build Content Based on top Terms
Finally, take the terms at the top of the list and build your content accordingly. They will serve your audience’s needs, your business’ goals, and the keyword targeting.
We hope our guide has been helpful. We’re sure it will go a certain way toward optimization of your content and achievement of your business objectives.
