A recurring image when thinking about the creative processes of great artists, such as Gabriel García Márquez or Pablo Picasso, is that of these solitary geniuses locked in their room waiting for a stroke of inspiration. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is known that the Colombian writer dedicated several hours of his daily routine to exhaustive research of multiple subjects that he developed in his books, such as the alchemy techniques used by José Arcadio Buendía in One hundred years of solitude or the home remedies that Simon Bolivar used to relieve his ailments in The general in his maze. For his part, the Spanish painter was a tireless worker, not otherwise it is explained that he managed to create the impressive figure of 26,075 pieces of art during his entire artistic life. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working, he said.
Something very similar should happen with the teams in charge of producing content for brands and/or companies. And we say “should”because according to our experience in the world of Content Marketing, A recurring practice that companies have when creating content is to do so through intangible methods such as “inspiration” or “smell”, instead of developing their Content Marketing strategies based on data, numbers and real facts.
But, “How can data help us create the most appropriate and engaging content for our audience?” “How should we integrate it into our Content Marketing strategies?”, some of the most frequently asked questions that brands ask us when taking this approach.
It sounds like a simple – even obvious – question, but in reality it is a decisive step when it comes to starting to develop content strategies, since the way in which brands approach it will depend, to a large extent, on their success or failure in this area.
As is the case in most cases, companies that begin to implement content strategies do so based on “guessing” or “smelling”, to determine what kind of topics their audiences like best. This may work for the first few months, but as time goes on, imagination inevitably falls short, generating frustration in marketing teams, who begin to fall into the common pitfalls: repetition of themes, creation of content that does not engage with the audience, adoption of a much more advertising style, and – in the worst case scenario – believing that the Content Marketing it’s no good.
On the contrary, brands that decide to use data know what content most engages their audiences, allowing them to radically improve their results.
To achieve this, there are data-based tools such as True Content®, that allow brands to know exactly which topics, subtopics and content most engage their audiences, and thus guide their Content Marketing strategy accordingly.
About that, True Content® has a module of Brainstorm Topics (brainstorming) that allows to identify not only the topics that usually consume the audiences through the Internet, but, even, the most specific and/or relevant aspects of those contents.
For example, if the target audience is bank presidents and vice presidents, thanks to models such as Brainstorm TopicsIf you are reading about financial technology, a Fintech company can find out if they are reading about financial technology and also know precisely what kind of articles are generating the most engagement and/or interest in this target group; if those talking about collective financing networks such as crowdfunding or, conversely, those addressing the blockchain phenomenon and its impact on the financial sector globally.
This information is as accurate as it is valuable will allow editorial teams to optimize available resources to meet established goals; because the time they used to spend thinking or imagining what to write about, they can now spend on developing the best possible content, based on the preferences, interests and real needs of the target audience.
Additionally, the Brainstorm Topics gives information on audience behavior in traditional media -as press- by identifying which are the most successful contents within the brand category.
But it’s not just a matter of knowing what the audiences are doing. You also have to know what the competition is doing. That’s why tools like True Content® have a Content Monitor (content monitor), which allows you to know how your competitors communicate and relate to the audience you also want to impact (such as companies and decision makers) in order to optimize your content strategies to make them more attractive, relevant and effective.
Once brands identify possible topics to develop – based on the real interests of their audiences – the next step is to know how to develop them. And, to begin with, first you have to decide on who will write them.
In that scenario, data based tools and Artificial Intelligence, such as True Content® allow brands to identify the members of their editorial teams (internal or third party) who best fit the characteristics of the selected content, based on their style and way of writing.
Therefore, once the possible issues to be addressed have been identified, True Content® profiles each editor according to their characteristics and style, and then identifies those who have similar characteristics to the best content in the world for the audience. match between the audience to be written to and the writer.
That way, tools like True Content® help reduce the levels of uncertainty in the planning and content creation processes by accurately targeting both the content that is most attractive to your audience and the profiles best suited to develop it.
Through the power of the Artificial Intelligence, now brands can know whether or not the content they developed is in the real interests of their audience even before it is published. An example of this is the function of Content analyzer (Content Analyzer) of True Content® which allows members of the editorial teams to identify the main elements of which their articles are composed, to determine
Keywords (to detect if you have the keywords with which the brand wants to position the content)
This Content Analyzer also offers brands the opportunity to determine the Content Placement Score; an index that shows how likely it is that the article analyzed will resemble the best articles published for that audience in the world. So, if there is a high probability of similarity, it suggests to the marketing teams to perform actions of amplification (distribution) of the content as investing in pattern; placing it in the header as the main headline of your blog; or include it within the newsletter company, or deliver it directly to the sales force to send it directly to prospects and customers.
In the not too distant future, when people will be asking themselves about the creative processes of the artists of the Content Marketing, The image they will surely have in their heads will no longer be that of solitary geniuses waiting for a stroke of inspiration, but, on the contrary, that of these curious and restless “content scientists” who dig through the data to find their “muse”.
Inspiration in Content Marketing exists. Of course it does! You just have to know how to look for it in the data.
