How can you use media analysis to identify new content ideas?

Leveraging media analysis for fresh content ideas begins with setting clear goals and criteria. Define what you aim to achieve - whether it's expanding your audience, addressing emerging trends, or showcasing expertise. Then, establish criteria for success, like engagement metrics or relevance. Media analysis helps you mine existing content landscapes, dissecting what resonates with your audience and identifying gaps to fill. By aligning your objectives and standards with this insight, you can uncover unique, data-driven content concepts that captivate and resonate with your audience, driving your content strategy forward.

More than anything, media analysis gives perspectives. Now, three major things to consider while you’re at it - It’s like going to the gym. So be consistent at it. - Conduct your own extensive secondary research to make your concept unique. - Along with numbers, care for the sentiments associated with a concept/copy. The tools give data - what is working and what isn’t, be it a concept, an endorsement, or a content format. So, make a pick backed by rational and science.

Your goals will help you drive the content forward. Mapping your goals to a particular content format will help you maximise the results you want to see. For example, - Videos work better than short-form for educational content. - Audio works well for simple and interesting content that can be conveyed without visual elements. - Short-form content works great for entertainment - Lists do well when you're recommending a product Your goals should be the first guiding metric to choose the right media for your content.

Content gaps: identify topics that are underrepresented in your industry. What questions are not being adequately addressed? Addressing content gaps can help you stand out as an authority or thought leader in your field.

You don't even need a fancy tool or budget to see what competitors are up to! Meta's Ad Library and LinkedIn's Ad section on the profile of company pages works wonders for quick analysis of what other brands are running. Also depending on the industry, you can often get retargeted from visiting their site or adding a product to your basket.

Let's take the example of a fitness club. The audience will love workout videos and links to fitness products. But they may not response well to long-form or short-form content. At the same time, users of a news portal will prefer long-form content to get as much details as possible.

Platforms like Canva work really well to design different formats of content, specialised to fit different platforms. They also have templates that can be used by beginners. It would be prudent to assess what kind of content works best in each platform. For example, pdfs, infographics, and informative videos work great in linkedin but may not work well in a social media platform like Instagram. Videos might be too heavy for email marketing but long-form text works well, with some visual elements. Also, give your experiments some time to truly work. Post consistently for 1 to 3 months before assessing results.

With Canva recently introducing new #AI enhanced functions, it is very easy to test new styles, forms and formats, or to iterate until you find what works the best for your audience.

There is always the option to mix and match your media type. A long educational video on YouTube can be trimmed for some shorter videos for LinkedIn. A blog post on your website could be linked to the YouTube video. The video itself could feature an infographic and a mix of static and animated content. The idea is to explore different content formats and understand how you can make each one work for you. Don't ever stick to just one media type.

One more option, not mentioned here - ask directly for feedback, either your colleagues for a test run or in your content your audience. Make a poll about what would they like or want to read or see. You might be surprised with the results.

Content Gaps - Identify topics that are underrepresented in your industry. What questions are not being adequately addressed? Addressing content gaps can help you stand out as an authority or thought leader in your field.

Ask ChatGPT for an evaluation or analysis. Assign it with different roles, a marketing expert, your ideal customer, etc., provide as much context as you can for best results, use plugins to allow it to access your posts and your content.

Media analysis will be more useful if you have the ability to write and publish content quickly in response to it. But if you have a painfully slow approval and publishing process, media analysis might not be all that useful.