Creating content that engages and informs audiences requires a certain amount of planning rather than just relying on guesswork, the equivalent of throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks.
One proven technique to create content that grabs audiences’ attention is to use a data-driven marketing approach. Data-driven marketing helps you collect, analyse and apply the correct data to your content.
Let’s say you’ve run out of ideas for blog content and are unsure of how to use data in your content. This can be solved with data-driven marketing.
Below we show you the best ways to use data before, during and after the content creation process, so keep reading!
Creating content using a data-driven marketing approach
To create compelling and engaging content, you need to use data at all three stages of the content creation process.
Before you create content (to decide the type of content to create and who you are creating for), during content creation (to inform the narrative) and after content creation (to analyse how well your content performed).
Let’s take a look at how to use data correctly at all three stages (before, during and after) of the content creation process below.
1. How to use data before creating content
No one sets out to build a house without first having a solid plan. Likewise, no content creator should create content without looking at all the data points first.
Looking at insights from various data points can help you determine what type of content to create, who to create for and the best format to present it in.
Below we get into some specifics of how to analyse data and use it before you create content.
Conduct keyword research
Before you create anything, you first need to know what people are interested in and searching for, otherwise, what’s the point, right?
You also need to know which keywords you’d like to target before you get started. This can be done through something called keyword research.
Some of the best tools to use for keyword research include, Semrush, Ahrefs and Moz.
In addition to conducting keyword research, you need also to bear in mind user intent.
This is because a thorough understanding of user intent helps you to:
- Target search terms that align with your audience’s needs.
- Create content that answers users’ questions and structure pages in a way that’s friendly to both users and search engines.
User intent can either be:
- Navigational – A user is trying to find something (e.g., “pots”)
- Informational – A user is trying to learn more about something (e.g., “What is the best pot to buy?”)
- Transactional – A user is trying to take a specific action (e.g., “buy pot”)
- Commercial – A user is trying to learn more before making a purchase decision (e.g. “Which is best, Le Creuset vs Tefal?”)
Correctly identify your audience
Even your best pieces of content can have mediocre results if you show them to the incorrect audience. For instance, imagine creating content that promotes the best steaks in town but then trying to sell them to a vegan audience… You won’t make any sales.
Precisely why creating content using data is so important. It helps you to identify the right audience through their age range, interests and more.
Using tools like Google Analytics, social media analytics and even online surveys can help you uncover important data insights about your audience.
Choose the right content format
Besides uncovering who your audience is and what they like, you can also use data to discover what content format they prefer the most. Do they like reading blogs, Twitter threads or watching videos on Instagram, Youtube or TikTok?
Whatever the data reveals, concentrate your efforts on making that type of content to effectively reach your audience.
Tools like BuzzSumo and Sparktoro are also great for finding out which content format your audience loves.
2. How to use data during the content creation process
Including data in your content doesn’t mean pasting spreadsheets directly into your posts. No, it means thinking about a way to frame data in a way that supports your narrative.
By using data to strengthen your point, readers think about the information long after they have left the page as it has been effectively substantiated.
Here are some ways that you can use data in your content:
- Revealing a dramatic trend, whether it demonstrates deterioration or improvement, can spark an emotional response from readers as well as add weight to the discussion.
- Showing discrepancies between people’s perceptions versus reality can reveal gaps and help them to see a different point of view.
- Using data to show a connection between two or more different things helps readers to make more informed decisions about future actions.
- Demonstrating scale can help you to add context and visualisation to your posts.
3. How to use data after content creation
One great way to use data after creating your content is to look for content refreshing opportunities.
Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console come in handy for this because they can show you if posts have been consistently losing traffic over time and enable you to update or refresh them.
You can also identify the best-performing posts and repurpose them for other marketing channels.
Analyse audience engagement
There are loads of metrics that you can track after publishing a piece of content to see how your audience interacts or engages with it.
For example, you can use Google Analytics to check how long readers stay on specific posts and other tools to track your audience’s interaction when it comes to clicks and cursor movements on a webpage.
Conclusion
Even if you’ve never used data to create content before, the approaches mentioned above can be easy to follow and implement. There are also a number of tools that you can use to help you along the way and make data work for you.
