Do you know what sort of content your audience wants to see?
Many old-school search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing advice maintains that you should start with keyword research. The trouble is, that’s no longer relevant. Instead, you need to find the right topics to write on, then build your keywords out from there.
As for how to find those topics? If your goal is to establish yourself as an expert or thought leader, your best bet is to do a bit of research into the sorts of questions they’re asking. Figure out what they want to know, and from there, it’s only a short jump to some great content.
Here are a few places you can look.
Take Your Research to Social Media
Social networks are good for more than just relationship-building. Pay attention to what prospective customers talk about, and keep a particularly close eye on the sorts of questions they address to your competitors. Reddit is the holy grail in this regard — if you can find a subreddit related to any of your products or services, then there’s a good chance you’ll find plenty of potential topic ideas, too.
Check Online Discussion Boards
Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook aren’t the only communities you can seek out online. Communities like Quora tend to be a goldmine, too. But, of course, if Quora is too general, you can also seek out industry-specific sites for a bit of inspiration, as well — Github, for instance, tends to attract a lot of tech geeks, making it an ideal community to check if that’s your primary demographic.
Use a Q&A Tool
If you’d rather not spend time trawling Reddit or poring over Quora, you can simply use a tool like AlsoAsked. There are also plenty of AI-driven content creation and research tools, such as Market Muse, that generate a list of possible questions based on content. And even keyword research tools may occasionally have questions mixed into their results as long-tail keywords.
It’s All About Answering the Right Questions
When it comes to devising a content creation strategy, knowing your audience is a crucial starting point. By understanding what they know, what they’re asking, and ultimately, what they want to know, you can gear yourself up to create more compelling, engaging content. Finding those questions need not be difficult, either.
At the end of the day, you simply need to know where to look.
