What Content Is Your Audience Hungry for?

As we move toward an integrated marketing approach, it’s important to know what content types resonate with our customers. In this blog post, we’ll offer some helpful tips toward nailing down the kinds of content your audience wants so that you can get better results from your content marketing and reach your business objectives.

There are lots of different content types you can create:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to choose?

 

Look at the data

In order to find out what content types your customer wants, look at what they’ve responded to in the past. Do they love podcasts? Are they all over your webinars? Do they open your email newsletters and click through to your website consistently? Are they devouring apps the minute you release them? Check out your analytics to find out.

Website

Use Google Analytics to better understand which content resonates strongly with your audience. Monitor the following:

• Which pages/posts are getting the most traffic? (Per month? Per quarter? Per year?)
• How long are people spending on key pages?
• Which pages/posts have the highest conversions?

Track social data for every post to see which content types are shared on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Email

It’s important to go beyond Google Analytics to review multiple data points across all of your digital channels. Be sure you’re tracking the following metrics:

• Which emails have the highest opens?
• Which email sections get the most clicks?
• Which emails have the highest conversions?

You can also create an email survey to find out directly from the folks on your list what they want to receive from you. You can simply ask, “What content types are you interested in?” with select-all-that-apply checkboxes for each type of content. (You don’t have to include all 20 content types above in your survey. Instead, pick 8–10 content types that make the most sense for the story you want to tell and the resources at your disposal.)

You might also collect demographic information at the same time in order to break down the data into relevant audience segments. If certain segments of your audience are more interested in white papers vs. webinars, it will be helpful to know that as you’re strategizing segmentation in the future.

Social Media

Track anywhere you have a presence online to see what your audience is eating up.

• Which posts get the most engagement?
• Number of webinar attendees
• Attendance and reach for Twitter chats
• Views and downloads of online presentations

 

Talk to people

One of the best ways to find out what content types your audience wants is to ask them directly in person. That means you get to leave your cubicle behind, head out, meet your audience and have conversations with them. Lucky you!

You can go on ride alongs with your sales team or attend a live event your organization is putting on. Ask folks directly what kinds of content they want. Then, listen. Really listen. While one person’s thoughts aren’t enough to drive your strategy, you want to look at the trends cropping up as a result of numerous conversations.

When it comes time to create content, you’ll want to further hone your content types depending on your business goals, the segment you want to reach, the message you want to convey, and the resources you have available. Different goals, different messages, etc. require different types of content.

When you’ve identified the right content types for your audience, you’re ready to move on to step 4 as outlined in our post “Content DIY: Build an Integrated Digital Campaign in 8 Steps.” Check back in a couple of weeks to get the deets on putting together a plan that encompasses everything you’ve learned about your audience, the right channels and the content types they want.

 

Get in touch with Filament to start creating strategic content today.

Tagged: content marketing, content types, integrated marketing, types of content