When you plan your content, do you think about what interests you, or do you try to identify your audience’s pain points so that you can create material that will resonate with them emotionally?
Do you create a content map based on research-backed audience understanding or do you just sketch out a plan for content titles based on your own guesses about what the audience wants?
You know what isn’t content marketing?
You should write an article on your blog each week about your company’s thoughts or actions.
Neither writing about what interests you nor writing about what is of interest to you is a good idea.
In order to start a content strategy or update your content plan, you should take a survey.
The responses from your audience will provide you with the insights into their:
- Pain points.
- Challenges.
- Needs.
Your content ideas and plan should be based on this.
Give your audience what they want and need, and be specific with content that will resonate with them. That is exactly what I have been thinking. This person really gets me.
Surveys can provide you with data and insights that can help you create content that journalists will want to write about. You don’t think I care or am interested in sharing this?
One more thing, marketing is a conversation that happens all the time and it’s a way to connect with customers.
By offering a survey or questionnaire, you give your audience a chance to have their say, participate in a two-way dialogue, and feel more involved with your brand.
Priceless.
Are surveys more useful than sliced bread? I think so. Let’s get started.
The article is discussing the two main applications of a survey specifically relevant to content marketing, and then provides tips on how to create a survey and how to write questions.
A Survey Helps to Better Understand Your Audience
What Is Your Biggest Challenge?
Conducting a survey will give you an understanding of what motivates your target audience.
What is their biggest challenge? If you can identify a problem that your target audience has, and provide a solution, then you will have their attention.
There is a lot of data that can be found through analytics and social media that can give insight into how users are engaging with your brand on your site. But you want to get in their head. The only way to get the information you need is to ask the people involved.
The best way to come up with content that will resonate with your audience is to first consider what pain points and interests they have. Once you know this, you can create concepts and titles that will be of interest to them.
Each piece of content should focus on solving or highlighting a pain point or challenge. The more niche a title is, the better.
Set up an Auto-Respond on Email Sign-Ups
A good way to understand what people want is to ask them directly.
When a user completes an email sign-up or contact form, they will receive an auto-responder email with one or two questions to answer.
For example:
- What is the biggest challenge you face?
- What one product would make a major difference to you right now?
This information can be used to target other people with similar challenges.
Segment Your Audience
If you want to get even more specific with your content, you can add a survey to your email sign-up form to segment your audience.
With MailChimp, you can add preselect check-boxes to your sign-up form by using the Groups function. If you are targeting an audience in the European Union, you must comply with the General Data Protection Regulation.
For example, if your sign-up form is for a content marketing newsletter, you can ask:
- Do you work for a brand in-house?
- Do you work for a content agency?
- Do you work at a startup?
- Do you have your own business?
Once your audience is divided into groups, you can send your standard content marketing newsletter to everyone or you can send targeted content to each group based on the specific problems that group faces.
A Survey Will Feed Your Content
To Inform Your Content with Unique Data
A writer will want to link to their references to back up any claims or points of view in their writing, or to offer statistics.
You can increase your chances of being linked to by offering unique research, data, or statistics for your industry or niche.
One strong set of data and research can be applied to several channels of content to gain maximum value:
- A webinar and/or industry talk
- A gated whitepaper/ebook download
- A data visualization
- A SlideShare deck
- An in-depth article on-site
- Quotes on social media
- Promotional printed marketing material
How Do I Generate Data for My Brand?
Conduct a survey to research your industry and see what the current state is. The Content Marketing Institute does this frequently to stay updated. BuzzSumo also regularly produces in-depth industry research.
Look through your customer data to try and find any patterns in their purchasing behavior.
An index or map that shows regional bias is always popular for outreach, especially to local media.
Your audience may be interested in a series of hypotheses or sets of data.
For example:
- Where in the UK is it easiest/hardest to gain planning permission?
- What are the best/worst restaurants in the UK when dealing with gluten intolerance?
- What are the job titles that get paid the most in your industry?
- Do the early birds at the gym earn the most money?
If your data can answer your questions, then you can construct your content around this. This will give you a significant story to approach journalists with.
How to Create Viral Content: 10 Tips and Tricks
Viral content is content that resonates with your customers. The good people over at [ company name ] have some great tips on how you can make your content go viral. Follow their advice and you’ll be well on your way to internet stardom!
1. Longform content
Since everyone carries mobile phones on their person, they have access to information on the go. Most of the information consumption happens on mobile phones. Creating shorter pieces of content is the best way to get relevant information quickly.
But nothing could be farther from the truth. There is more to the situation than what is visible.
It is a fact that longer articles are shared more often than shorter ones. Long-form content is content that is at least 2,500 words. People generally agree that longer pieces of content are more valuable than shorter ones. Many people save or download these pieces for future reference.
2. Include compelling visuals
If your article doesn’t have any pleasing visuals or funny memes, do you think it will be able to keep the reader’s attention? Of course not. Additionally, images help to keep readers engaged by breaking up the text and making the information easier to consume.
If you want to add something extra that your readers will appreciate, try using visual aids such as pictures, infographics, faceswap designs, GIFs, emojis, memes, and videos.
Infographics are one of the most popular forms of visual content because they are informative and visually appealing. There is a lot of room for statistical data and other numbers in the text. This makes them easy to consume and more likely to be shared across social media.
3. Be authentic
People would love to hear your true voice. If you want people to have a positive image of you, don’t make all of your emails sound sales-y or corporate-ish.
Your viewers will only trust you if you seem authentic. You need to be honest with your audience in everything you do. It is all right to be vulnerable too.
To create content that will go viral, focus on the people in your life. These people could be anyone who you work closely with. The challenges that they meet on a daily basis include finding reliable transportation, affording housing and food, and maintaining employment. These problems can be solved with the help of your business by providing reliable transportation, affordable housing, and food options, and by helping to maintain employment.
4. Interact with your audience
You can’t have a great relationship if you’re only putting in effort on one side. If you keep talking, your audience might get bored.
People crave variety and also enjoy sharing their thoughts and ideas. If it is possible for you to include your audience in your performance, then do so.
The audience can be featured in your advertisement, give a testimonial, or even be a guest on your channel. You should try to make your content go viral by making your audience look good. Let them have a platform to speak on and an opportunity to be heard.
5. Positive content
Apostles of positivity are needed now more than ever before. With all the emotionally distressing things happening in the world, apostles of positivity can help spread hope and promote a more positive outlook.
If you work in the food industry, you could talk about how difficult it is for delivery workers in your city. You could talk about the farmers who are working hard to provide you with food. Consult with other restaurateurs who might be experiencing difficult times as well. Uplift them by sharing their stories with the world.
Look on the bright side of things and try to find the good in everything. Look for opportunities to share positive news with your audience. They will love you for it.
6. Be unpredictable
One of the keys to making your content go viral is to be unpredictable.
Being unpredictable is not an exact science, but you can do things that are out of the ordinary to achieve it. Use successful strategies from other companies as examples to help you be successful. As long as you can make things interesting and unpredictable, people will continue to be interested.
The unpredictability should not be used just to promote your product. It should be an extension of your brand personality. People love brands like that.
7. Go deeper into topics
Make sure the information you share with clients is thoroughly researched and comes from credible sources.
You shouldn’t write content that isn’t well thought out and doesn’t present any clear points. If you do enough research, you can write an article that is very informative about the topic.
8. Interview influencers
If you want to make vira content, a good way to do it is to interview influencers and write an article. They will share it with their audience.
These are people who already have a huge following. The book Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris is an interview with more than 200 world-class professionals who are experts in their field. A best-seller book just by interviewing influencers. How’s that! Tim’s pre-existing popularity gives him a definite advantage.
Assuming you are in the B2B industry and sell productivity software, let’s say that a potential customer is having a hard time figuring out how to use your software to its fullest potential. You can interview successful people from a variety of fields, including motivational speakers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and business leaders. These individuals can offer insights and inspiration, and people would love to hear from them. The final article or video that these influencers share using their social media handle would get a phenomenal reception.
9. Practical content
Be sure to post a lot of “How-to” content.
What if your business was the go-to place for your reader to get information about your industry? How would that be! People would come to your website to get more information. If you create a website that is interesting and useful, people will tell their friends about it and bookmark it for future reference. This is exactly how going viral works.
To create viral content, it is beneficial to publish a lot of guides that are comprehensive and tailored to your niche audience. If you want to gather information from your visitors so that you can send them more content, use these guides.
Your readers are always looking for helpful tips and advice on how to improve their own abilities in your niche. You increase your chances of going viral by writing practical guides and slowly gaining the trust of your readers.
10. Dominate on search engines
If you want to be at the top of the search engines, you need to have a mix of organic content and paid ads. We’re not going to talk about paid ads here because going viral can’t depend on it.
The majority of visitors to your website will come from search engines, which is also the most efficient way to generate traffic. Your team should focus on identifying potential viral topics and finding low-competition keywords that could increase the chances of going viral.
Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs can help you find low-competition keywords. In order to improve your website’s ranking on search engines, it is important to segment your keywords into different groups and to focus on the ones where you would be able to rank reasonably well. By doing this, you can avoid wasting time and effort on keywords that are too difficult to rank for. Then work on the content.
You should write for your readers and not the algorithm. Everything you do to improve your algorithm should be done to increase your chances of success. Your goal is to make your reader happy. That kind of attitude rarely fails.
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