Why high performing content is so difficult to create for many content marketers

What is high performing content?

High performing content is the kind of content that users love to share. It’s engaging, informative, and valuable. It creates a positive emotional response in people, encouraging them to share it with their friends and followers. When you create high-performing content, you’re not only satisfying your readers’ needs; you’re also building relationships with them. This kind of trust can lead to future business opportunities down the line.

The characteristics of high performing content:

To create high performing content, it’s essential to:

1) Publish valuable content that will interest your target audience.

Google has stipulated that content that gets promoted in search engines is people-first. What does this mean? When you write for search engines, you must ensure your content is appealing to your audience. Write about topics that will interest your target audience and spark their curiosity, and write in a way that appeals to your audience. Make them feel like they are in the right place by using language they would use when discussing these topics. 

2) Engage your readers with an attractive writing style and entertaining content.

When you write, use a tone that your audience will find interesting. Think about how your sentences are constructed and vary the length of each sentence. Use a tool like Grammarly and set goals to receive suggestions from the tool to make your writing more engaging. For example, you can set the tool to provide recommendations for Academic, Business, General, Email, Casual, Creative, and General content. You can also set the content Intent to Inform, Describe, Convince, Tell A Story, or Experimental. There are additional settings to help you create content that conforms to a particular style. If you have a tool such as Grammarly, you don’t need to be a highly qualified or talented writer to create high-performing content.

3) Write in an easy-to-read style.

The key to high performing content is making it easy for readers to understand what you’re saying. Readability is essential because it’s easier on the eyes and makes your message more likely to be absorbed and shared by others. So make sure your sentences are well constructed, use clear grammar, and avoid slang or overly technical language whenever possible.

4) Include valuable and relevant information to help your reader experience transformation or enlightenment.

When you’re writing content, providing a transformative or enlightening experience is a great way to increase engagement and sharability. For example, someone in the finance niche could provide tips on saving money or decoding complex financial statements. Most important is that it is relevant to your audience and at a level, your audience will understand. Once again, this comes back to understanding exactly who you are targeting and knowing their problems, pain points, needs, and desires. 

5) Connect with readers by sharing your thoughts, ideas, and experiences. 

Include individual lessons you have learned on the subject due to your experiments or personal experience. Sharing your experiences and thoughts with others is essential, as this helps build relationships with your readers. People love connection and familiarity. If they know you deeply, beyond the surface level, they are more likely to return to read your content. When you create high-performing content and build familiarity and trust, this can lead to more business opportunities. 

6) Ensure your headline sets up realistic expectations for the content.

Your headline is the first thing readers see, setting the tone for your content. The headline must grab your audience’s interest enough for them to click through to read more. However, once they click through, you want them to stick around and consume your content. Clickbait is not cool. You’ve probably experienced clickbait yourself. Clickbait is content designed to get people to click on a link to read more about a particular topic, but generally, the article is not worth the time it takes to read. When writing your headlines, ensure they accurately represent the article and are interesting enough for readers to click. Your headline should elude to what is in the article and nothing more.

7) Use an angle that gives the audience a new insight or view of the topic.

When you’re writing about a topic, think about how you can provide your audience with an insight or view they haven’t seen before. You can do this through anecdotal evidence, illustration, or statistical analysis. Thinking outside the box can help you create unique, engaging content for your readers and can separate you from the competition. 

8) Use images and video to increase engagement, deepen understanding and illustrate points.

An image can add depth to your content and help make it more interesting to read. In addition, adding visuals can help break up text and add impact. When selecting images, consider using visuals that are relevant to the article and will engage your readers. For example, if you’re writing about fitness, include pictures of people working out or who have lost weight due to exercise. Images also allow you to break up long paragraphs, making the content less tedious and more entertaining.

Use multimedia to enhance your content. Consider adding multimedia elements, such as videos or infographics, to make it more engaging for viewers. Video is vital in increasing engagement on social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. Videos are often shared more than other types of content because they provide a visual experience you cannot replicate with text alone. They are also easy for users to share on their timelines without needing much additional editing assistance from the person uploading the video. 

9) Use a pillar content strategy and create strategic pillar content.

Pillar content is a popular strategy in content marketing that divides your website’s content into different topic categories and then creates one or more key, long-form content pieces that represent each category.

Pillar content pieces are shallow in terms of content depth yet broadly cover the topics of that category. Smaller yet deeper content pieces are then created to cover specific topics within each pillar that link to the pillar content piece, and that is linked to from the content pieces.

Using the pillar content strategy can help make your website more organized and make it easier for visitors to find the pieces of content they are looking for.

10) Interlink your pillar and cluster content.

Once you have created your pillar content and the related articles, don’t forget to insert links into each of the articles to link them together. This will help to reinforce the relationships between the different pieces of content and make it easier for visitors to navigate your website.

11) Including calls to action that encourage users to take specific steps.

By including a Call to Action in your content, you can increase the engagement and shares your content will receive. Calls to action are instructions with buttons or links that, when clicked, take users to a particular page where they can complete specific tasks or buy a product. Calls to action work best when they’re relevant to the article and easy for readers to understand. For example, if you’re writing about fitness, include a call to action for readers to sign up for your email list so you can send them valuable content regularly.

12) Use social media platforms to amplify your message.

When creating high-performing content, it’s essential to use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., to amplify your message even further. For example, share promotional posts that link back to your articles on these sites with your followers to grow your audience instead of simply reaching those who visit your website directly.

13) Stay up-to-date with trending topics.

To stay relevant and exciting to readers, you must keep up with the latest trends in your field. You can ensure that your content is fresh and relevant by monitoring popular social media platforms and forums for industry updates and trends. Then, follow the industry leaders and influencers to spot trends early on. 

14) Provide thorough explanations of complex subjects.

If something is particularly complicated or confusing, take the time necessary to explain how it works. Doing this will help readers who may not have prior knowledge of the topic feel confident reading through your article without feeling intimidated or lost.

15) Build relationships with amplifiers and influencers.

When creating high-performing content, it’s essential to deliver valuable information intended for a specific audience demographic and build relationships with amplifiers and influencers. “Building relationships” means cultivating positive connections with those who read your work and share it on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. More than simply putting out good-quality content is required. 

Active engagement (i.e., commenting on other people’s posts; liking/following their pages; talking about your favorite pieces on social media), creating content that aligns with, compliments, and references their content is essential. For example, if you mention the influencer’s content in your content and email them to let them know and ask them to share it with their audience, this can be mutually beneficial. 

16) Measure your results.

Measuring your results regularly and making changes based on what works best is essential. You can only succeed if you measure your results. Monitor KPIs (key performance indicators), such as engagement rates and clickthroughs, to determine what is working and what is not, and optimize and improve your content. 

Use tools like Google Analytics to track how many people click through to your articles, how long people spend reading them, and which keywords are most popular among your audience. When you find out which content is performing well, use those ideas as the foundation for future blog posts. With regular measurement and adaptation, you’ll be able to create high-performing content that keeps your readers engaged and happy.

The first and most crucial step is to do market research to achieve all of this. Without understanding your market and your audience deeply, you won’t be able to create high-performing content.

What is market research?

Market research is systematically acquiring qualitative and quantitative information about a target market. It can be used to understand the needs and wants of your target market, which will help you create relevant and helpful content. There are many different types of market research, but some standard methods that content marketers use include focus groups, surveys, interviews, online analysis, and observations.

The first and most crucial step for creating high-performing content is market research. Market research provides information about your audience’s needs and wants, who they are, what they stand for, and what’s going on in the market. It can help you identify which topics an audience is discussing, what people want to know more about, and where they are struggling. For this reason, market research provides the knowledge needed to create content that will resonate with a target audience.

How to do market research

There are many different ways to do market research. Following are several common methods that are used by content marketers to determine a target audience and to understand the audience:

Focus group

This is one of the most popular methods for market research because it allows users to collect feedback from a representative sample of people with similar interests or experiences as the subject matter of the study. The main advantage of using a focus group is that participants generally feel comfortable discussing their thoughts and opinions openly without fear of judgment. In addition, focus groups are relatively inexpensive to conduct and can provide valuable insights into what specific issues interest or concern your audience.

Survey

A survey is a great way to gather information from a large population in an efficient manner. You can use surveys to ask questions about customer satisfaction or product usage ratings. Surveys also allow you to track changes over time to see how your content affects user behaviour.

Interviews

An interview is another versatile method for conducting market Research. Interviews allow you to gain insights into customer behaviour by talking with people who have experience with a product or service. Interviews also allow respondents to freely share their opinions and provide rich data that marketers can use in their marketing campaigns.

Online market research in forums and on social media: Forums such as Reddit and Quora and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn offer an ideal environment for conducting online market research. You can quickly gather data about different audiences’ problems, desires, needs, and trends to inform your content marketing using forums and social media channels.

Once you have collected this data, you can look for common characteristics of groups of people with specific desired outcomes and problems. This process is called seed research. Once you have this information, you can decide the particular audience or audiences that will be the target of your content marketing efforts.

Research is to see what everyone else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.“

Albert Szent-Györgyi

What is target audience research?

Target audience research is the process of identifying and understanding the needs and wants of a specific group of people who you are targeting with your marketing efforts. Knowing your ideal audience allows you to create content and products relevant to their needs and interests.

How to use market research in content marketing

Market research is an essential part of content marketing. It should be the starting point of every business’s content marketing process. As mentioned, seed market research is the first step to identifying audiences and their desires, problems, and needs. Once you have determined your ideal audience, you can conduct audience research to understand their demographic and psychographic profile. You can also do competitor research to understand the market.

By understanding who you are targeting and the competitive landscape in which you are operating, you can use the insights gained to develop strategies that effectively target this group of people and differentiate yourself from the competition.

For example, suppose you determine that the audience you want to target is predominantly female, and you know those female consumers are more likely than male consumers to make purchasing decisions based on emotional factors. You may decide to create content that taps heavily into emotions to appeal to female customers. Or perhaps your research leads you to discover that your ideal audience will respond to particular content topics. In that case, you may launch a marketing campaign focusing on these specific topics.

Audience research can also uncover your audience’s semantics (the words and their meaning), which helps you communicate your message in a way that will resonate with your audience.

Additionally, audience research can help you choose the most effective platforms, media types, and advertising strategies to reach your target audience. It can also help determine which products or services to offer and where to market them.

In short, market research, in general, and more specific audience research, are a critical part of creating high-performing content and creating marketing campaigns designed to ensure that your ideal audience receives the message you desire them to hear.

How can market research be improved with AI?

As market research becomes increasingly automated, there is potential for more effective and efficient market research methods and better content marketing performance. There are now many market research tools available that can make market research and, more specifically, audience research more attainable to marketers and business owners. CrawlQ is one of these tools.

CrawlQ is a platform that uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to help users conduct audience research. CrawlQ can parse English text and identify the keywords and phrases used to describe a particular topic. The beauty of CrawlQ is that you can do seed research manually to discover your audience and then input a few keywords about this audience and their desires to help start the research process.

Once you have provided these keywords, CrawlQ will begin analyzing online content and automatically compile data about the audience from online content on Google and discussions in forums. CrawlQ provides users with comprehensive audience profiles that include information such as demographics, interests, and behaviors. You can use this data to improve your content marketing by helping you better understand your target market and how best to reach them.

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