It doesn’t matter what product or services you offer. Every industry out there which has an online presence surely needs content to grow. Your brand visibility starts with content, so surely you can’t miss that out.
Content is the very foundation of your effective online presence. Because if not content then how are you planning to attract users.
But, content is not just some random words arranged in a specific manner. It has to be relevant, must provide value to the users and not be boring at the same time.
That’s why, you can’t just open your laptop, type content straight out of dust and expect heavy leads. Here comes the first step of the content creation process, Research. Content research is quite a crucial factor to create content that is effective.
Further in this article, we will discuss what is content research and why does your business needs content research.
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What is Content Research?
Clearly content is a critical part of both B2C and B2B businesses. Or more clearly, for every business that has an online presence.
Effective content can bring you a huge amount of organic traffic through search engines like Google. And many of them might convert to become your clients or buyers of your product.
But what is content research? The general idea is to evaluate the online content of your industry giants or competitors. And then use that to create a strategy for your business’s content. The strategy is designed to help the business in long-term growth and increase brand visibility.
Content research’s most basic exercises include looking at the top results of the keyword that you want to rank on. Or looking at which type of content in your industry is getting the most social shares. Including keeping an eye on the industry giants, noting their strategy, etc.
So, you can’t start shooting in the dark.
Before you create content, you need to know:
What content does my target audience needs or wants?
You must know the answer before starting creating content as it is the reason for your content creation. Knowing the answer will help you to write or create the content that your audience finds value in.
The answer to the question will keep you aware of the direction of your content strategy. And that will keep you a foot ahead of your competition.
This can be a slight big procedure and enough to make you feel stuck and tired. But not to worry as we have already written a complete guide on content research to help you throughout the process.
Read: How to do content research
Why Your Business Must Do Content Research?
Bill gates said in 2008 that, “Content is king”. And its value has been increasing since then.
Yet, content can not be king or efficient if you don’t put in the work to know what you should write. You can’t shoot in the dark and hit the bullseye. Sure, there is a slight probability of that but you wouldn’t want to risk your online presence on probabilities. You must analyze and evaluate content to come up with a strategy that is efficient for your business.
Now, let’s take a look at some content marketing statistics quickly:
- An average user reads 11.4 pieces of content before buying a product from an online store (by Forrester).
- 74% of companies believe that content marketing increases the number of potential leads (by Curata).
- 95% of B2B buyers rely entirely on the online content while deciding to purchase from a company.
Till now, you must have got an image of why content research is critical for your business. Now, let’s discuss some additional and specified reasons.
Lets you know what content would work best for your industry’s audience
It’s the most important reason of all. As if you wouldn’t know what your targeted audience wants, how can you provide them value? Content research helps you understand the requirements and wants of your targeted audience. So that you can write content that delivers directly to the audience that you want.
Helps you make an effective content marketing strategy for your business
Content marketing is no doubt a long process. And to thrive on that, you must have a solid strategy that helps you throughout the process. Content research can help you understand what will attract users to your business. And ultimately become your customers/clients.
Builds trust among the industry
Effective content research will boost your content marketing and would become a known name in the industry. When you would have a mountain of quality content on your website, users will trust you as a go-to source. Then, whenever a user has to know something around your niche, they will trust your content than others.
Helps you create content for the entire buyer’s journey
Users go through a certain engagement journey while buying a product on the internet. If you don’t know the exact pace and requirements of your audience, you might not offer them the whole information. But content research helps you understand the exact requirements and buying procedure of your industry’s audience. Knowing that you can write content that would help users throughout their buying journey.
Long-term investment
As I’ve already told you content marketing is a long process. And detailed content research can help you create an effective strategy to help you throughout the journey. Now, you might think of it as tiring but it’s more of a long-term investment. As your right efforts now, can bring you momentum in generating great web traffic and quality leads.
Offering quality content that provides users value will surely increase your social shares out of the charts. And social shares can help you in a lot of ways, including growing your brand visibility. You will be exposed in front of new audiences and new potential clients.
Conclusion
Content has been king always and it will always be. You wouldn’t want to take risks on the very important element of your online presence. Content research is the step that determines your business’s online future. Good research will make you jump a step forward from the starting point before the start. Research, if done properly can bring you more profits than you can count. So, don’t miss out on the critical factor only because of the laziness of doing research. I hope you would’ve found all the answers you were looking for.
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