Many online businesses use content marketing these days and it’s not difficult to see why.
According to Content Marketing Institute, it costs 62 percent less than outbound marketing but produces 3x as many leads. Content marketing also provides 6x more conversions than other popular methods and is the most effective SEO technique.
It is why online businesses are looking to create high-quality content because it is king of modern digital marketing. Well, online audiences find it helpful, so it’s safe to assume that content marketing is here to stay.
Creating high-quality content remains a challenge for many businesses, though. It’s just difficult to produce it on a consistent basis because every idea put out there should be worthy.
Validating ideas before giving them the green light therefore is a critical challenge for everyone involved in content marketing.
Here are some effective ways you can use to validate your content ideas to ensure their popularity and relevance.
Research Already Popular Topics for Your Content Marketing using Special Tools
Buzzsumo is a tool for finding the most shared content and influencers. It is great for coming up with some fresh ideas and ensuring their popularity. The tool actually uses a simple strategy: analyzing the topics currently used by competitors. Content marketers around the world love it for its ability to provide inspiration and showing how competitors’ content is performing.
Let’s see how it works. The homepage of Buzzsumo contains a search bar where you enter the keywords you want to check out.
The tool shows the most shared, therefore popular, content which is performing great right now. You can use the titles of the articles in the search results as an inspiration for your own content. As you can see on the image, the examples of the titles are really narrowed down, so coming up with ideas for in-depth articles will be easier.
Determine What Kind of Monthly Searches are Generated by Content Ideas
Keyword planners are an important part of the content creation process of many content marketers. They confirm whether the keywords used in an idea for a title can generate some serious traffic. The most widely used planner at this moment, of course, is Google Keyword Planner. As for the free alternatives, Keywordtool is probably the best.
Let’s see how the latter works. Use the keywords from the content idea you’re validating and type them into the search bar on the homepage. Also, you can select the language of the query as well as a search engine (Google, Bing, Amazon, eBay, App Store, and YouTube are available).
The free version of the tool generates a lot of high-performing keywords. As a result, you can validate whether an idea is relevant. If the keywords generate a lot of monthly searches, it’s sufficient evidence of its popularity and is, therefore, suitable for a top-notch article.
Create Content Effective for Your Distribution Channels
As simple as this tip sounds, many content marketers out there forget about it. Before you even begin creating a piece of content, you should consider the channels that you’ll use for distribution. Let’s consider social media.
According to QuickSprout, Twitter users like to read and share intellectual quotes, often with images, and how-to articles. The most popular and the most shared content on Facebook, on the other hand, is long how-to articles and brief entertainment-related ones. The vast majority of LinkedIn users, however, prefer factual content with helpful tips.
“A post targeting women who love skin care products will not perform well on LinkedIn. The audience on Facebook, however, will read it gladly” explains Alyssa Pool, marketing manager at Awriter. As a professional content marketer, you should remember these factors the next time you’re considering a content idea.
Final Thoughts
The process of content validation should not be overly complex and expensive. As you can see from this post, you can cover this part with your own creativity and effort. As a result, you’ll be sure that your time investment into content creation won’t be a waste.
