Giving people what they want is a lot easier when you KNOW what they want.
This sounds simple, but sometimes it’s too easy to forget that market research should be the foundation for creating a high quality content marketing strategy. Duh.
Seriously though, investing time and energy into product research, market research, and connecting with people working and living in the area of concern is overlooked time and time again.
Rand Fishkin of Moz SEO, recently posted a great video blog about the importance of research and analysis periods before starting a content marketing project. In his post, he says, “[People often] put something together that they hope will achieve their goal of reaching a new audience, of getting promoted, but it falls flat mostly because they had the idea before they talked to anyone else. Before they realized whether anyone else was interested, they went and built it…That’s actually kind of a terrible idea.”
Here is 5 ways to create better – more strategy driven content based off of some of the ideas Rand outlines in his recent post.
1. Learn about the industry you plan to work in.
Rand says, “This is going to be dozens of hours of research to understand the niche before you can effectively create content for it. That’s something where it isn’t just an on demand kind of thing.”
2. Learn about the community you plan to work with.
This is going to consist of many hours browsing through topic forums, YouTube channels, blogs, and magazines getting to know the people using and buying certain products or services. The one not so exhausting characteristic about this step is all of the aforementioned resources are easy to find and free or cheap.
3. Before you create any content, know that it would be unique and others would actually share it.
This is where having connections and being able to reach out and shake a hand come into play. Simply asking for an insider’s opinion sounds to easy, but it’s commonly overlooked. Also, if you’ve been doing your research, you should have an idea of what your audience is needing and wanting.
4. Visual and/or interactive content is going to perform a lot better than text.
Images are memorable.
5. Cater to an audience that will help you reach your business goals.
Creating content for the purpose of driving leads and closing deals involves a completely different strategy than creating content that drives traffic and builds brand recognition. The easiest way to explain this is: content that go viral usually don’t end with “sign up today.” Viral content is usually short, simple, universally understood, and instills strong emotions. Content that that drives leads is mostly analytical and logical.
In conclusion, if you’re going to do it, do it right the first time. Investing in research periods may be costly, but a content strategy that falls flat is always a waste.
If you need help developing and implementing a high quality content strategy, contact Clix. We’d be happy to help!
