3 easy ways to create content that your audience actually wants to read
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Do you spend more time thinking about what content to create than actually developing articles, videos and white papers?
Every content creator has been there. Not only do you want to come up with a new and unique idea, but you want to create something that will be helpful to your clients.
There are ways to ensure you are creating valuable content that will resonate with your audience. By paying attention to what your target market is saying in both the physical world and digital worlds, you can find out what content topics will resonate the most.
Here are three simple ways to do just that.
1. Answer client questions
No doubt your sales team are bombarded with questions from clients on a regular basis. Your clients are likely to have many questions about your company, your services, and what it's like to work with you. This is especially true if you work in information technology, as related product and services can be confusing to non-technical folks.
It’s as simple as taking these frequently asked questions, generalising them, and turning them into blog posts, explainer videos or any other form of content that would suit your audience.
Not only does this give you a content idea that will serve your client needs, but it also makes responding to frequently asked questions faster.
We have turned your questions into some of our most popular content:
- What's the difference between a creative agency and a content writing agency?
- How hiring an external content writer can save you tonnes of time and money
- How we work with content writing clients
2. Keyword research
By analysing popular keyword searches, you can find out exactly what your potential customers are looking for. This is pull marketing at its finest - and a great way to meet buyers at their point of need.
Tailoring content based on keyword research opens up endless doors for content ideas that will not only appeal to your target audience, but also bring in new visitors and attract potential clients.
While there are several ways to do this, we suggest using a search aggregator like Answer the Public or Google Adwords Keyword Planner.
Search aggregator
Answer the Public is my favourite keyword aggregator tool. This free website provides valuable insight for any marketer. Search any topic you want to see common search terms displayed visually.
For example, when I searched for the term 'content marketing', I was given more possible blog post topic ideas than I could ever write.
In an instant, I found three common search terms that could form the basis for future articles:
- How content marketing builds your business
- Content marketing vs traditional marketing
- Content marketing trends 2017
Keyword Planner
Google's Keyword Planner is a more targeted way of finding what people are searching for. Using an AdWords account, you can filter results by country and date and see how many searches that term has per month.
I used a general search for the keywords 'content marketing'. This was the result:
From looking at the related search terms, I can see what people want to know more about.
We could write about content strategy or writing for SEO, but if i want to focus on B2B content I am given several more ideas including looking at B2B marketing, strategy and examples.
Social listening
There are many benefits to social listening, such as finding influencers, highlighting pain points or engaging in the conversation - but we think finding content ideas is a big one.
Through listening in you can find out what’s trending in your industry, and how well people are engaging with this content. This will allow you to create targeted content that is both valuable and relevant to your audience.
You can conduct social listening yourself by monitoring certain hashtags or phrases, or by using paid social monitoring software.
Hashtag searches bring up industry conversations in real time. A simple #contentmarketing search on Twitter, for example, shows that SEO is trending in the content marketing world.
Mint Content could jump on this trend by publishing a blog post about content writing for SEO.
If you want more sophisticated social listening software you can subscribe to a paid platform that optimises social listening. We particularly like BuzzSumo, which displays the most shared content across different social media handles for your search term. You can see what topics people are really engaging with in your industry and come up with your own content ideas from there.
If you need more help thinking of content ideas, check out our article: Content at your fingertips: 6 simple, stress-free ideas for creating winning content
Where do you find inspiration for your content ideas? Let us know in the comments.
