28 Mar How To Identify The Content Your Audience Likes

One of the number one factors that you need to consider in your content marketing strategy, is to find out exactly what it is that your audience wants to read, watch or consume, before investing in the time and cost of content creation.

Creating content can be a relatively easy task for someone who is clued up on their niche or specialty but creating content that you know your audience will love and engage with, is no walk in the park.

Using analytical research of your ideal audience is one way to help you brainstorm the topics/content and increase engagement with your target audience

But before you dive into content research and creation, first you should really get out there amongst your ideal audience and get to know your industry, niche or community better.

A key signal to your audiences current interests is what they say in comments;

Positive and constructive YouTube comments. Source: YouTube.com

How To Perform Comment Analysis

Implement the following methods of audience research into your content marketing strategy and you will be on the right path to know how to identify the content your audience likes.

Although this is an old-school method, of scrolling through popular web pages, blog topics and video content sites to see what comments people have left, it is one of the best ways to find out what it is, that makes your target audience tick.

Find out where they hang out and go and join them!

It could be discussion forums, Q&A’s on social media, Quora or your industry’s top blogs and websites.
Pay close attention to the comments section as this is where readers/viewers like to engage with each other and the influencer who created it.
Check out Reddit to see if your niche has a Subreddit as these threads can be absolute gold when it comes to doing content research!

Comment analysis is a great way of discovering your ideal audience’s pain points and best of all it’s free.

It does require you to spend some time to go through and research these hangout spots but it is a direct way to finding out what it is your ideal audience needs answers to, or if there is something specific that they’re really struggling with.

Reach out and Validate

With all this information you scoured from forums and heated debates on blogs, you should be in a better position to go ahead and start creating content…but before you do…

You should validate whether this content you’re about to invest some time and money into will be something that will be shared or get engagement.
The best way to do this is to reach out to your potential audience and ask them if this something that interests them.
You already know where they hang out!

In these comment sections, if there is already a running commentary then you can use this platform to get involved.
Engage with them and ask if this new topic you’re thinking about delving deeper into,
is something that they would be interested in or is content that they would consider sharing.

Don’t forget to check in with your existing audience too.
Get on Twitter and fish for some reactions. Let them know that you have a topic that’s really bugging you or tell them you have a question that you need to get to the bottom of and ask, “does anyone feel the same?”

You could email your current list of subscribers with a personalized email campaign, telling them that you need their opinion, specifically, to help you with your issue.

Granted, many of us don’t have enough time to carry out all this research and engagement.
You’ve got enough on your plate to be scrolling through countless websites, Q&A discussions or forums, I get that.

But don’t worry I’ve got a solution that could cut all that strenuous work out of your schedule.

Analytical Tools For Content Marketing

Content research software is currently in an abundance online with the trending popularity of content marketing, but when it comes to really cutting down on your research time there is only one software worth mentioning.

BuzzSumo, in my opinion, is the best content marketing analytic tool, currently on the market.
It is a research and monitoring tool that uses keywords you enter into a search bar, to find the most shared and engaging content on the internet.

This is done by extracting data from multiple social media platforms in seconds, so you don’t have to.
It is also a great way of finding industry or niche influencers.

But not only that you can easily track your competitors and how their engagement is doing or what’s working for them, by analyzing their content.
The process to identify the content your audience likes couldn’t be easier.

How to use Buzz Sumo to understand what people want

If you’ve been creating content, you should know the specific keywords within your niche that you want to be ranked for on Google, YouTube, etc…

Take these researched keywords and insert them into the search bar over on BuzzSumo’s homepage.

(You can avail of 5 free searches a day, but to achieve some of the more technical information, like, how many backlinks the content has, you will need to sign up for a premium account).

Given the results you can see below, there is enough free information to find out exactly what kind of content people in your niche or industry like to engage with.

You can even filter by the “type of content” you’d like to see, if you specialise in video content or how-to-tutorials, or if you just want to see what content is popular in a specific country or language, apply the filters to niche down further.

You can also, easily find out what content happens to be trending right now by clicking on the sub-heading at the top of the page.
This software is perfect for brainstorming and creating content, with enough social proof to give you the confidence to invest in its creation and make it worthwhile.

Obviously, you need to build on these topics and bring something new to the table.
But rather, take what people are already engaging with…put your own spin on it…and write it for your audience.

By finding out where your ideal audience like to hang out, or where they get loose and have an online debate or discussion, you’ll be in a better position to leverage free information to create the content that they actually like.

Ask the right questions!

By empathising and showing that you actually care about their problems is a great way to get some organic shares on your content, once you’ve created it.

What are some of the best ways you’ve used to pull together valuable information that you then you used to create epic content?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.