Guide: How to create endless content ideas for your data consultancy content strategy
Dylan Jones
Data consultancy growth accelerator ? myDataBrand Founder ? Creator: Data Quality and Data Governance Leadership Forum (21K+)
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In this article, you’re going to learn a range of techniques to help you defeat writer’s block and create an endless stream of value-packed content that consistently attracts your ideal client.
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Part 1: What is the most important requirement for creating magnetic content?
Before we start, let’s remind ourselves of the most critical goal of your content strategy:
To resolve the information needs of your most desirable audience.
Your Ideal Client Profile (ICP) has a problem they have (and don’t want) or an aspirational goal they want (and don’t have).
It is the job of your content to plug these?information gaps, helping you build?differentiated trust?in the mind of your ICP.
Your audience will see you as the most desirable solution provider, a firm with the capability and credibility necessary to solve their most pressing challenges.
And in a noisy marketplace of competing data firms – trust and differentiation are the keys to success.
Pains and gains
Your content needs to act as a stepping stone, helping your prospective clients take one step closer to their ultimate destination –?pain removal?or?goal attainment.
And if you run a data consultancy, a (small) percentage of your audience will reach out asking for your firm to help solve these challenges.
When your audience reaches a critical mass, these tiny percentages of prospect engagement soon become a consistent flow of new opportunities.
But only if you can deliver the right?content, at the right?consistency.
Example: Solving the pain of planning a data migration project
Long before the launch of?myDataBrand, I ran a data consultancy specialising in data quality, data migration and other enterprise data challenges.
Back in 2006, I created the first Data Migration blog –?Data Migration Pro,?one of the first data blogs in existence as most people were unaware of blogging at the time.
I needed a more repeatable and predictable method of lead generation so the goal was to build an audience and community that would attract a consistent pipeline of clients for my consultancy.
Plus, I hated cold calling ??
One day, I sat down and thought about the type of clients who need data migration expertise.
I realised that the ideal client was any organisation tasked with delivering an application data migration, but lacking expertise and internal resource.
But there was a great big juicy fly in the ointment…
How could I find these clients?
Unlike other disciplines, such as data analytics or data protection, there were no obvious roles or titles to search for on LinkedIn (which was tiny back then anyway).
Data migration projects were managed by project leaders or program directors assigned to a major transformation.
And they were invisible.
So, I figured the best way to find them was through the information needs they would be searching for via the web.
And what does every project leader search for? A checklist and planner to help shape their project plans and overall strategy.
This is the thought process of a typical migration leader:
Solving the information gaps of the typical migration project leader was precisely why I created the?Data Migration Checklist and Planner.
Fast forward, and this article still generates plenty of traffic, over 32k+ hits last year.
Data migration checklist and planner hits in 2021
That’s great, but page views didn’t put nappies on my kids back in 2006 so how did I convert this traffic into leads?
I achieved this by directly addressing the problem and aspiration of the target audience:
Problem: How do I create a plan for a data migration I’ve never done before?
Answer: With an article containing 50+ checklist question of all the main factors that influence a data migration planning exercise.
Aspiration: How can I make it appear like I’ve got my act together?
Answer: Provide a?spreadsheet?and?mindmap?to help you look like a leadership rockstar in that next planning meeting.
By ‘giving away the farm’ in the article, I send a clear signal to search engines this is quality content. If I’d gated the whole article in return for an email I would have had to pay for traffic (or earned it through social).
Using this great content + great lead magnet strategy resulted in this article appearing in the top three positions of Google for nearly a decade.
But why is this? Quite simply,?relevance and authority.
Why is the article relevant?
The article contains most of the keywords and phrases that Google expects to see related to this topic, as the image below illustrates:
Data migration content relevance
We know that people find the content engaging because they spend an average of 5 minutes on the page:
Data migration project checklist Google report - currently at spots 2 + 3.
How does Google measure content authority?
There are lots of authority indicators for search algorithms, but the most impactful is backlinks from trusted websites.
You can see below that this content has a healthy number of backlinks:
Backlink performance of the data migration checklist article
If we compare these results to an article ranked lower on Google (e.g. the Celonis article below) you can see that they only have?one referring backlink.
When you combine their weak backlink with their reduced word count and weaker content keyword relevance, it sheds deeper insight on their lower ranking.
Backlink Tips: If I was still actively searching for data migration clients (which I’m not), I would be looking to increase backlink volume and quality, primarily through guest appearances, e.g. guest articles, podcasts and webinar appearances – with the intention to get a link to this top-performing content.
It’s why I urge myDataBrand clients to consider guest content appearances ??
Getting over the fear of giving away free content
“But won’t our audience take our best ideas and do it themselves?” – I hear you cry.
Yes, occasionally that may happen, but here’s the thing…
But what about those people who value your content but never buy from you?
Your non-paying audience can become some of your biggest fans, a key ingredient for spreading your content and value proposition for years to come.
How effective is a great piece of content?
I’ve used the case study of the Data Migration Checklist as it’s a perfect example of ‘pillar content’.
This is high-quality content that directly plugs a gap in your prospects mind and drives opportunities for years to come.
Below?are the?daily?email registration stats resulting from the Data Migration Checklist article. You can see that this year (Q1 2022) it’s averaging over?20-25 registrations per day:
Example of subscriptions from pillar content-to-lead magnet 'upsell'
Pillar content gives you endless repurposing opportunities to drive social, search and email engagement because there are so many ways to ‘slice and dice’ the raw content.
And yes, you won’t always have the time to create this pillar content, but it’s the holy grail of data consultancy content marketing because it delivers 100x the returns for 3x the effort of an average, humdrum article.
Here’s the big takeaway:
If you’re going to create content, strive to make it the best on the internet.
You may not achieve that immediately, but that should always be your goal.
There’s just too much competition in the data sector to ship crappy 300-word articles that lack relevance and authority.
Part 2: Discovering the source of endless content ideas for your data consultancy
Ok, now I’ve whetted your appetite on the benefit of attracting clients from great content, let’s explore some of the best sources of ideas.
Source #1: Frustrations and questions directly from your ideal client profiles
“I want to create content, but every day I see all these data experts in my LinkedIn feed and I feel like a fraud. I’ve got a serious case of impostor syndrome I guess.”
These were the words shared to me by a prospective data consultancy founder on a?myDataBrand Discovery Call?back in 2019.
I recorded them in my Evernote ‘problem swipe file’ straight after the call.
And they eventually led to this: How to deal with 'Data Impostor Syndrome' (DIS)
Tip: The prospects who don’t convert will give you clues about the exact type of content you should be creating to increase sales conversions. Tune in to any objections, concerns or feedback they give you during the sales discovery process.
Leveraging forums, discussion groups and events
What are your ideal client profiles struggling with?
Chances are, there are forums, meetups and events that give the floor to your dream audience, allowing them to discuss the latest challenges they are wrestling with.
This need to gather the ‘voice of the customer’ was one of the reasons we set about creating what has become one of the most active data groups on LinkedIn -?The Data Quality and Data Governance Leadership Forum.
Every week, this community of over 13,600+ senior data leaders and practitioners share details around challenges they need guidance and feedback:
领英推荐
We created this group so that our other website (Data Quality Pro) would never run out of a steady flow of contributors, community and content ideas. The group provides hundreds of comments, questions and insights each month –?all from the target audience.
What are some of the popular communities within your data niche?
Go join them and tune into the questions presented by your ideal clients.
Webinars and virtual summits also offer a great source of topic ideas, particularly by tuning into the traditional Q&A session at the end.
Here is a great question from a recent?Data Governance webinar?– you’ll notice how specific the language is:
This webinar alone produced 10 questions – plenty of diverse topics that could be transformed into weeks of target content ideas.
How can you find webinars to harvest questions directly from your target audience?
Obviously, your own webinars are the best starting point, but barring this here are some other sources (searching for Digital Transformation as an example).
LinkedIn events:
Alternatively, there are various Webinar Aggregation services, such as:
Gathering problems and questions from client meetings and communication
Once your prospect has become a client, you or your team can expect a flood of questions relating to the implementation of your solution.
If you go back through your Inbox you can mine the different phases of the project to categorise questions accordingly.
e.g. Pre-Implementation Questions:
Implementation Questions:
…etc.
I decided years ago to use a coaching portal (hosted via?Basecamp) for the bulk of the?myDataBrand?client communication.
Using a central platform not only makes life easier for clients, but it also provides one source of Q&A across the 60+ data consultancy and software firms I’ve worked with.
Here’s a recent example:
The ‘Notebook Double-Act’ tip:
When you’re in client meetings, particularly in-person, it’s disrespectful to load up an app to make a note of great questions from your clients.
To solve this problem, have two notebooks in a client meeting.
Use one to collate all your meeting notes and action points and the other to jot down questions clients raise during the session, without appearing to be distracted on my laptop or smartphone.
Gathering content ideas from client and market research
You can gather a huge amount of content suggestions simply by researching past clients, current prospects, or anyone else who fits the target demographic for your services.
Research is generally quantitative or qualitative in nature, with both types of research offering great ideas for future content assets.
Quantitative research is based on the number and selection of survey responses, qualitative research tends to be more based on written or spoken narratives, hence qualitative research offers more insightful feedback and idea nuggets you can't always find just from data.
Carrying out regular research allows you to discover trends and insights that shed light on industry shifts and behaviours that other vendors may be missing.
Publishing research-based content is valuable because it’s more likely to generate backlinks to your website and boost your authority as it becomes cited and referenced.
For example, the?2017 Data Migration Research Study?that we carried out at Data Migration Pro (one of my media sites), in partnership with Experian, provided in-depth analysis on the state of the data migration sector.
We discovered that 64% of projects were still using hand-coded scripts to build the migration logic:
This was a great example of a quantitative insight that was surprising at the time, but there was also qualitative research that highlighted several ‘hidden’ insights:e:
Possible topics:
How can you test what impact your data migration will have on the quality of service when your new system goes live?
Possible topics:
Possible topics:
What questions should you be asking your data migration systems integrator?
One of the benefits of building an active community platform related to your data services is the speed and quality of research you can deliver, at zero cost.
The research above was carried out in less than two weeks, all by reaching out to our Data Migration Professionals Forum on LinkedIn and the email list at?Data Migration Pro.
More recently, we were able to get feedback from our LinkedIn group on the following topic:
Data Quality and Data Governance Leadership Survey
And because we own this group, we now have the ability to reach out individually to a sample of those people who took part in the poll to learn some deeper insights into their internal marketing/promotional challenges around DQ/DG.
This is the power of a community platform within your overall content system.
Getting feedback from your email list subscribers
This is an old tactic but one that works a treat to create a steady flow of content topics.
Whenever somebody registers for your email list, such as a newsletter subscription, create an automated sequence (autoresponder) message to reach out and ask them to share their biggest challenge and motivation for joining your list, for example…
Source #2: Gathering content ideas from internet search traffic
Once you’ve exhausted all forms of direct customer feedback, your next source of content ideas will come from internet search behaviour.
Discovering search keywords from your own website
If you or your business already have a website, especially a blog, then check out the search keywords that were used to find your existing content.
Tip: Be sure to?add Google Analytics and Google Search Console to your website.
Here are some of the recent stats from one of my websites:
We occasionally review the recent search keywords and look for any new article ideas.
For example, in the list above, over 1000 people searched for “What is Master Data Management?” and was served (by Google) our?Beginner’s Guide to Master Data Management (MDM)?article.
By creating a specific article on ‘What is Master Data Management?’ we could possibly attract an even bigger audience and higher search ranking.
But you'll find that the best topic ideas are actually in the long-tail keywords further down the list because this is where people get more specific e.g.
Creating content ideas from search analysis tools
Finally, perhaps one of the easiest sources of content comes from search analytics tools that are freely available (or at a modest fee).
Soovle:?https://www.soovle.com?
Soovle keyword analysis
Soovle is a simple tool that analyses a bunch of search sources (e.g. Google/Bing/YouTube etc.) based on a keyword of your choice.
The results are the most popular search terms for your keyword. In the ‘data mesh’ example above we can see that data mesh vs data fabric (or even data mesh vs data fabric vs data lake) could be a great topic to publish as it appears across several search sources.
Be sure to ‘mine’ deeper into keyword combinations by adding 3 and 4-word combinations:
Particularly if you’re trying to compete with established ‘big-hitters’ sitting at the top of Google, you’ll be best creating long-tail keywords to gradually build the domain authority of your website.
That said, in the?myDataBrand Lead Generation Accelerator?program?we start with helping data consultancies and software vendors to create ‘pillar guides’ and detailed case studies that fully address a high-level topic so that their website and social strategy have a powerful asset for driving engagement and conversions for years to come.
Next Steps - Need to accelerate client growth in 2022?
These are just a handful of content ideation strategies you can adopt to get creative with your content output.
The key is to create a blend of content so that you’re appealing not only to search engines but also to the more obscure and varied challenges your ideal clients present.
Critical to your entire content strategy is the need to fully understand your ideal client profile, and obsess over their information needs.
It's why I always focus on refining the positioning and packaging of myDataBrand clients first, to create a natural progression for your audience to move on from your problem-focused content and seek out your problem-solving services.
If you’re ready for help to build out an entire content-driven sales system for your data consultancy, simply book a?discovery call or learn more about our implementation program here:
We’ll discuss your challenges and walk you through the entire?myDataBrand system, explaining the seven-step process required for consistent client acquisition with your content marketing.
Book a discovery call today.
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3 年Very detailed and has a lot of good info. Thanks for sharing. Bookmarked for revisiting..