Content Marketing Topic Research

Categorized in: Content

When you first begin writing content for your blog, website, and social media, the topics probably come easily. As time goes on, you run out of ideas or recognize that your topics don’t seem to be resonating with your target audience. Here’s what you should know about topic research for your content marketing:

Know Your Audience

Your products and services are made for your target audience and your content should be created for them as well. Your audience needs to come first when you are creating content. Research can involve website analytics and surveys in addition to what your target audience is talking about.

Writing generalized content is not a good strategy because you aren’t honing in on one specific audience. By understanding the needs of your target audience, you will retain the attention of current customers and allow people who haven’t heard of you yet, to discover you.

Search Social Media

Social media is a treasure trove for ideas for your content. By looking at what you’re followers are talking about, you have first-hand insight into the topics that interest them. You still want to make sure the topic is relevant to enough of your target audience to make it worthwhile content. Writing content because just one person mentioned something isn’t enough to go on. You want to make sure it’s a topic that much of your audience resonates with.

You should also check out your competition’s social media accounts to see what people are talking about and asking. If you can address these topics, you will attract your target audience. When scouring social media for topic ideas, pay attention to the following:

Frequency of question or topic
Likes, shares, and comments
Which platform specific topics came up
Engagement in a specific topic
Keywords/Hashtags

Consider the Sales Cycle

You are honed in on your target audience, which is a great first step, but you can’t forget that each consumer is at a different phase of the sales cycle. Consumers are more informed now than they ever have been before because they have access to all the information they need and want. Not only can they get information from companies themselves, but they can engage with others who have purchased what they are looking for.

When creating content, you want to appeal to consumers who are in the awareness stage, the consideration stage, and the decision stage. For those in the awareness stage, you will want to use keywords that help you to show up prominently in the search engines. This is going to show consumers that you have authority and have gained the trust not only of the search engines, but other consumers. For those in the consideration stage, you will want to show consumers what you have to offer.

You want to educate consumers not only through blog posts and social media content, but offer them research studies, white papers, and ebooks. For those in the decision stage, you want to highlight why you’re the best option and why your competition might not be. This is the time to be clear about your unique value and your advantage over the competition.

Creating content for your audience requires education about them, your competition, and the buyer cycle. With this information, you can get more specific with your research and your content.