As a content strategist, you need to research and analyze content quickly to understand your audience, competitors, and industry trends. But how do you do that without spending hours or days on each task? Here are some tips and tools to help you streamline your content research and analysis process.
Before you dive into any content research or analysis, you need to define your goals and questions. What are you trying to achieve with your content? Who are you targeting and what are their needs and pain points? What are the gaps and opportunities in your current content? What are the best practices and benchmarks in your niche? Having clear and specific goals and questions will help you focus your research and analysis on the most relevant and valuable information.
Top Tip: Invite all stakeholders to this conversation. As a marketer, you should not be setting these goals on your own AND you most likely can't answer those questions either! Involving C-suite execs in this process will help you identify the right goals right away!
In my experience, it is important to map out psychographic segmentation to fully understand your audience - undertaking this step will provide great inputs regarding your target audience which will then help you to design your content more effectively.
Once you have your goals and questions, you need to find reliable and relevant sources of information. Depending on your topic and industry, you may use different types of sources such as keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Moz, or SEMrush; content analysis tools like BuzzSumo, Ahrefs, or SimilarWeb; audience research tools such as Google Analytics, Google Trends, or SurveyMonkey; and industry research tools like Statista, Pew Research Center, or HubSpot Research. These sources can help you discover what your audience is searching for, how competitive the keywords are, what types of content are popular in your niche and how your competitors are performing, who your audience is and what they care about, as well as get insights into the latest trends in your field.
Once you have collected data from various sources, it is essential to filter and organize it to make sense of it. There are several methods and tools you can use for this purpose, such as spreadsheets like Google Sheets or Excel to store, sort, and analyze your data in tables, charts, and graphs. Mind maps like MindMeister or Coggle can be used to visualize and structure your data hierarchically and logically. Content audits like Screaming Frog or Content Analysis Tool are useful for evaluating and documenting the quality, performance, and relevance of your existing content. Additionally, content inventories like Airtable or Contentful can be used to catalog and manage your content assets in a centralized and searchable database.
Finally, it's important to synthesize and communicate your findings to yourself and others. To do this, you can use various formats and tools, like reports from Google Data Studio or Power BI, dashboards from Klipfolio or Tableau, stories from StoryChief or Loom, and templates from CoSchedule or HubSpot. This will help present your data in a clear, concise, and actionable way, as well as monitor and display key metrics and indicators in real time. Additionally, narrating and sharing your insights with these tools can be compelling and engaging. Finally, templates can document and standardize your content research and analysis process and results.