Generated thousands of backlinks.
Generated hundreds of shares.
Generated millions in sales.
How? Prioritizing research...
Here are 9 ways marketers can use research to increase the likelihood of content success:
Customer Research
One of my fav ways to figure out who an audience is for a SaaS product is to run an analysis of the reviews that a company (and its competitors) are getting.
Scrape all the job titles for the reviewers and do an analysis of most common job titles.
Audience Research
In a remote world, the location of your audience isn't always the most important anymore BUT tools like @AudienseCo offer a great insight into this.
It's also valuable for learning how your audience self describes themselves. Here's my audience:
Social Share Research
Want to create content that gets shared? Study the content that has already gotten them. Use @BuzzSumo to better understand what links get love on FB, Twitter, Pinterest or even Reddit.
Look for trends on the 'type' of content that resonates.
Media Behaviour Research
What podcasts, newsletters, blogs, YouTube channels and other media channels does your audience follow on a regular basis? Tools like @sparktoro help with this...
This is powerful cause you can use it to find the stories that have content-market fit.
Backlink Research
What type of content in your industry generates the most links? In Martech, we found that free tools get the most links followed by definitions (ie. what is SEO) followed by stats posts.
Export industry content by links, track by content type and analyze it.
Top Content Research
Go to Reddit and sort the content in a niche Subreddit by the top posts. Go to Product Hunt and type in a keyword relevant to your industry.
See what content has generated the most engagement to see trends around the type of content people want.
Community Research
Want to tap into a community? Do a search for the sites that get shared within them the most. You can do a quick search in Hackernews for @TheHustle and see a ton of their greatest hits in this community.
More Community Research
Go inside of the Slack channels, Facebook groups, Discords and spaces where your audience is spending time. Look for threads that get tons of engagement.
These are insights around what your audience cares about and wants more information on.
Virality Research
Go to the search bar on Twitter and type:
[KEYWORD or Phrase] min_retweets:50 min_faves:50
This will give you only the posts on that topic with a minimum of 50 retweets and 50 likes. Use this to get insight into what type of content people resonate with
That's enough research ideas for now...
The team at @FoundationIncCo might not like that I'm giving away all our strategies for free... But it's real.
These research techniques and tools can unlock some amazing insights & returns.
If you made it this far... You're my kinda people.
And I know you're a marketing geek so I have a gift for you. It's a collection of my favorite marketing threads:
You can give them this gift by studying the principles that have helped stories shape culture. I've used these ideas to craft stories that have reached millions.
Here's 7 ways to improve your storytelling:
The Gift Of Curiosity
Our curiosity gap is the most powerful practices online for creating stories worth reading. It's the gap between what we know and what we want to know.
Don't reveal everything in the headline or require 'prior reading' to see if a story is worth reading.
The Gift Of Simplicity
Bruce Lee once said: Simplicity is the key to brilliance.
Don't overcomplicate your story. Don't try to sound smart just for the sake of sounding smart. Speak plain english and communicate clearly. Remember:
Spoiler: Remote work doesn't mean working from home.
Remote work means: having the flexibility to work from a co-working space, a local cafe, that restaurant up the street, next to the beach, a cottage in the woods or your parents backyard before a BBQ.
Remote work means having the ability to take a midday shower after a run, a spontaneous catch up with a friend, a tea party with your kids and a moment to just relax and chill after a big deliverable.
Remote work means skipping that long commute in the morning, avoiding road construction, reducing your carbon footprint, reducing your budget for gas & not being forced to sit at a desk for multiple hours a day.
I've had social posts reach 100,000+. I've had blog posts reach millions. I've created strategies that have made millions. All because:
I've studied Content Marketing for YEARS 🧠
Grab a coffee and enjoy 👉 Here are 23 resources and techniques for fast tracking your skills 🧵
Use Wayback Time Machine to See The Golden Era Of Marketing Forums 🧠
You can learn a TON by browsing through old marketing AMAs in forums like GrowthHackers. You can literally find old AMA's between the community and the CEO of Zoom discussing their growth plans. So valuable.
Study & Research The YouTube Archives 📺
Go to Google and type in "Interview [Brilliant Mind]" and listen to a bunch of their interviews. For example, you can go to YouTube and find a TON of @aprildunford interviews that will arm you with a ton of value.