Really good content marketing is a combination of both creativity and data. It presents the opportunity for brands to distinguish themselves from the crowd by turning aggregated information into social media posts that users want to read. The best way to getting started is to separate your analysis into two categories. One is data that will tell you what type of content to create and the other is post-distribution metrics.
What To Create
Know your audience
Always keep in mind who you are creating your content for. That can be easily discovered by doing a market segment analysis. Who buys from you and what do they like reading about? Concentrating your efforts around a hunch or what is trendy might sound right but being relevant to your users is far more important. That is the only way you will manage to build a community of influencers.
Content Analytics
Understanding how traffic flows through your website is vital. What pages get the most attention and how are they discovered can help you see what content ideas work for your customers and what they are looking for. Google Analytics is the most commonly used tool here so we strongly recommend you integrate and review your website traffic frequently. If something doesn’t work you can always change it.
Find out what people are saying about your brand and lookup keywords related to your industry. On Twitter, for example, you can read a thread and see in a conversational format a point of view on a topic. If something is discussed positively you can use that as an inspiration for your next blog post.
Post Distribution ROI
Traffic
While creating content that narrates your brand’s story is crucial, data can tell you if it is of interest to your audience. So how many people are you reaching and are they who you intended to reach in the first place are key questions. While most business owners are mostly focused on sales attention should also be placed on brand awareness, customer loyalty and engagement.
Engagement Value
The availability of social media platforms to everyone led to a sharp increase in brands becoming publishers themselves. Most of the content out there is created just for the sake of posting without any particular meaning. If you keep it fresh and current people will like what they see and start engaging. Likes and shares are nice but not necessarily everything. There seems to be some sort of fatigue due to the volume of average content produced daily so cutting through the noise and finding what you want is becoming a task.
Conversions
Sharing information about a topic in your industry that is well written and accurate gives your brand authority on the subject. Experience in the field is what we are going for. You want potential clients to not just read your article but check out the rest of the website too and possibly sign up for something. Creating leads is not as easy as it seems since competition is fierce and getting noticed even harder. You must personalize the buyer’s journey and differentiate your self from the marketing masses.
With this plan in place, you already have made the first steps towards creating good quality, data-driven content. This process sometimes needs constant oversight and editing but with the right team and tools, you should be able to overcome every challenge. Remember to develop, test and compare. We all have a story to tell and the data is there to help us.
