How can you identify gaps and opportunities in your content performance?

Firstly, identify and set out your SMART goals for your content. Are you trying to build awareness? Generate leads? Your SMART goals will influence your KPIs and how you analyze, track, and measure your results after some time. Secondly, you want to do a thorough competitor and audience research analysis. 1. Who is my target audience? 2. What are they interested in? 3. What are my competitors not doing? 4. How can I bridge the gap and create valuable content that engages, educates, and converts? Thirdly, map out a content strategy directed towards your target audience. You can have well-defined content pillars to guide you in the content to push out. Lastly, you can also get feedback from your audience on improving your content.

Content is a powerful tool. It helps you connect with your audience, but how can you tell if your content is doing its job? Well, let's break it down into four steps. Step one is all about understanding your goals. What are you trying to achieve with your content? Is it about getting your brand out there, getting more visitors, or maybe making sales? You need clear goals that match what your business wants, and you should have ways to measure how well you're doing. It's like having a roadmap to know if you're on the right track.

You know your content isn’t working when you haven’t paid attention to the fundamentals (and more than a few content creators do not.) Acronyms you’ve attached by rote that your readers may not understand? LMAO! Grammatical errors you haven’t bothered to proofread? There them is. Icons plunked in, just because ChatGPT thought a cute puppy might dress up your post? Bad! So many different ways to screw up your content that anyone with a trace-level of pride might avoid. After you’ve overcome those initial challenges is the time to start worrying about what comes next: traffic, leads, awareness, that stuff.

We should Identify the content that has performed exceptionally well. Look for articles and posts on social media that have generated the most traffic, engagement, and conversions. These is our content successes and we should start from it. Then, it would be great to determine what topics and keywords are relevant to our industry (for me it's employer brand field) or niche but are not adequately covered in our existing content.

Content is your most important asset to get eyeballs. More eyeballs = More leads Create valuable content to attract the attention of your potential audience.

Learn other creator's success. Their work leaves clues. Use it as your own advantage & go through everything they produce. Identify parts where they performed the best, try to understand the main reason WHY it worked the way it worked. Questioning & reflecting are the best ways to identify, learn & apply to your own work.

SEMrush has a very helpful "content opportunities" section where you can compare your site against a few competitors and it will highlight keywords that no one in that group is taking on. BrightEdge has a helpful "conversational keyword ideas" tool where you can find semantically related keywords to an idea so you can discover opportunities to expand upon or update existing content. Staying organized with a content library is key to auditing your content as well, and you can even do this with a spreadsheet if you don't have an additional tool. Make audits easier by organizing your content by title, publishing date, target keywords. Check that your content is fresh with accurate data on an annual basis.

Always repurpose your content and improve it. Nothing is unique on the web. Every piece of content is an inspiration from 2-3 content pieces.

We’re def doing all the above, but we’re also managing our content like any other asset. It includes a cost to serve and value that probably depreciates over time. How do we manage this? We are asking sales and finance teams to help us understand true ROI to the greatest extent possible. If you’re zero-clicking, you’re partnering even more closely w sales for insights. Helpful? Hit like to lmk!

Conducting regular audits of your existing content should be the backbone of any effective content strategy. Google Analytics - Connect your site to monitor performance metrics like pageviews, bounce rates, time on site, goal conversions. Focus on improving low-performing pages. Ahrefs - Use the site audit tool to identify broken links, opportunities to improve page speed, and issues impacting SEO. BuzzSumo - This tool reveals your most shared and engaging content. Look at trends over time. AnswerThePublic - Input your keywords to see the questions and phrases your audience is searching. Uncover content gaps. Hotjar - Add heatmaps and recordings to see how visitors navigate your site and where they struggle. Identify usability issues.

Yes to these tools — and don’t forget to just read, too. You want *people* to be convinced by your content, so you’re doing both-brained work of art + science. Two other tips here: 1. Ofc you want to avoid confirmation bias, but the gaps are usually just the questions you still have after reading competitor content. 2. Fast follows are fine. See something snazzy? Put your company’s spin on it. The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. 🙃 Make sense? Hit like to lmk!

Before creating any new content, it’s important to look at what other companies in your industry are doing. There's not always a need to reinvent the wheel! Here are some tips: Check out industry blogs, podcasts, forums, and social media. See what people are talking about and asking questions about. This helps you find ideas. Use Google and other search engines to see what content already exists about your products or services. Then you can create something new that hasn’t been covered yet. See what types of content other companies are creating, like videos, podcasts, or short tips. You can get ideas for formats to use. Try looking at when other companies publish content and how often.

A strategy is key to success in any chapter of life. Your content strategy can be based on different approaches, like SEO, product-driven, customer-driven, thought leadership, etc. But the most important thing to remember is to ensure that each piece has a purpose and a reason to be used again (repurposed). Don't waste time on one-time pieces that float into the abyss.

One of the most important aspects of successful content marketing strategies is identifying gaps and opportunities in content performance. Here are a few ways to act on gaps and opportunities for copy: 1. Analyze data and make adjustments. 2. Conduct audience surveys. 3. Regular reports for competitive analysis. 4. Seek feedback from your team or client. 5. Monitor for top industry trends. Once you have identified the gaps and opportunities in your content performance, you can develop a targeted action plan to address them. This may involve creating new content, optimizing existing content, leveraging new distribution channels, or adopting new storytelling techniques.

With a solid understanding of your goals, existing assets, competitors, and industry, you can now strategically plan and create content to fill your gaps and capitalize on opportunities. A few key tips: Organize ideas into a content calendar to map out creation and promotion. Use Trello or CoSchedule to manage the process. Set measurable key results for each piece of content that align with your goals. Track analytics to optimize. Vary formats like articles, videos, podcasts. Different mediums attract different audiences. Find your unique voice and perspective. Don't just mimic competitors. Provide value in a way only you can. Promote content across multiple channels to increase reach. Repurpose it for each platform.

Great content has an audience-first lens. What does being audience-first mean? It means making the content about the audience and speaking to them on a personal level. Remember the last headline that you clicked or make you stop scrolling? It piqued your curiosity. The author took the time to understand what is the reason you would to be interested? Why should you care? What is in it for you?To truly make your content resonate it must address a need, want or desire of your ideal target customer. Be careful not to fall into the trap of saying what you want to say. Your audience is also going to give you direct feedback on your content by reading it, sharing it or commenting on it. Use data insights to track what is resonating and adapt.

I measure the gaps in my content using two strategies. 1. What my audience need vs what I'm dishing out. I check if I am addressing the challenges and issues of my target audience. Sometimes, content writer say what they feel not considering the real issues of the target audience. 2. I use analytics. Sometimes, we(content writers) think we are talking to group A but our post address the need of group B. Sometimes, analytics show us the gap between our content and market audience.

Embrace word of mouth and remember content is a two-way street. Explore different Reddit communities, Facebook Groups, and comment sections to find questions people are asking. Questions on your owned channels signal you haven't answered a question yet, or that your audience is unclear on where to find your answer. The opportunity: create new content and optimize the pathway to finding it! This might mean replying to a comment with a helpful link, sharing a post, or pinning featured content. By creating content people want and sharing it with them where they are, you're creating a two-way street - one that passersby can also stumble upon. Such a strategy can be just as powerful as any user research or analytics tool out there.

Content can perform differently across different platforms. How your blog performs on Medium compared to Linkedin are very different. One unknown way to identify an opportunity in improving your content performance is competitor backlink analysis. if you can research your competitor's content and the sites its linking with, you may offer your valuable content to those sites too. This will not just boost the equity of your content, but establish authority too. Do not, I repeat, dont forget to format your content. We just read 5% of a content. Better make it visual and short. Hope this helps!

Rather than thinking of a piece of content as a singular entity for a particular audience, view it as a malleable construct that can be framed and formatted for multiple channels, platforms and audiences. Make your content work for you and see where it lands best, evaluate the key learnings and shape your content strategy and audience development plan accordingly.