Will anyone care about the content I’m making?
That’s the question we’re constantly asking ourselves as content marketers, as we produce videos, write articles, or launch new podcast series.
How can you increase your chances of creating content that your audience will care about? How can you provide real value to the burgeoning community you’re building?
A successful product meets a need that can’t be met elsewhere. People need to clean their clothes and Tide pods let them do it easily. People need to transfer money and Venmo makes it instantaneous. People need to connect with their friends and Facebook (in some ways) facilitates that.
In the same way, your content needs to provide something that your audience can’t get anywhere else. What is your audience searching for that they can’t get right now?
Your answer doesn’t have to be a shot in the dark. Today, you can figure out what your audience is looking for and not getting. As with all good marketing, it starts with a laser-focused understanding of your community. Who are you helping?
At Tongal, we are laser-focused on our community of creators - the Tongalers that create the award-winning work our clients have come to love. Our community team spends a lot of time coming up with content to serve that community: events with industry experts, articles on pitching, editing, animating, and everything in between. We pride ourselves on being a hub of knowledge on topics that matter to creatives.
Knowing your existing community is the cornerstone of any content strategy. The next step is to figure out what you can provide that they can’t already get elsewhere. Today we’re going to discuss a simple framework for doing that by looking at competitors, leveraging analytics, and looking at each step of the buying process.
Do you know what your competitors are producing? Do they have a regularly stocked blog? (A real rarity these days) What themes are they focusing on? Let’s say you’re a brand selling hand-made pasta and your competitor has one of the most popular blogs focused on DIY pasta-making at home during the pandemic. Instead of creating content that competes against them head-to-head, what is another topic or theme you could “own” instead? Seeing that the need for DIY pasta-making content has been met elsewhere, maybe you decide to focus on pasta-themed arts and crafts for your new video series, or creative recipes for on-the-go athletes that utilize your pastas. The more narrow your focus, the better. Niches make riches.
You looked at the marketplace and have some ideas, but how do you identify which is worth your time to invest in?
This is where you should leverage technology to get a better understanding of what people are searching for. One of my favorite tools is Google Trends, which allows you to see how popular various terms have become over time. Below is the 12-month chart for “Pasta Crafts.” At certain times this year, this was a very popular (although inconsistent) search. Looks like right around the beginning of the pandemic and near Thanksgiving were the peak times.
Seeing that there is some potential in this, you can now dive deeper by doing your own Google search and seeing what you find. If it’s fragmented, poorly updated and disorganized, you may have found the perfect place to start creating.
So the framework looks like this:
Step One. Understand your current audience. Do this by talking to them and seeing what content of yours they currently engage with the most.
Step Two. Look at what competitors and others with similar audiences are creating in the space. Where are they doing a good job and where are they lacking? Use this as a starting point for ideas to explore further.
Step Three. Head to Google Trends and try to put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. What might they be searching for in relation to the content you’re thinking of making? How popular has this been over time? Is it declining or climbing?
Step Four. Narrow down your ideas and start searching for people who are creating content across the web and social. When you find an area that has high search volume (demand), but poor search results (supply), you’ve found your space to invest in.
