Resources
Content marketing, how to out create the content of your competitors. It is the new game that all businesses with a pulse are trying to accomplish.
I was meeting with a client just last month. This client was in the home roofing business. He informed me that there was only so much you can write about one subject, and he had already written it all.
So I made him a deal, I told him to give me two weeks and his top 5 competitors. I would review each one and I bet him that I could come up with at least 5 things he has not written about his industry. If I won the bet, he would have to pay me to take over writing his content. Of course he didn’t believe me.
Why was I so confident? There are two things that a business needs to successfully come up with continuous new ideas for content.
1. A fully determined customer persona/personas.
2. A competitive content gap analysis
We have already written an article on the importance of the customer persona. Check out this link for a refresh: The Importance of the Buyer Persona
After you have fully flushed out your Customer Personas, we get into the Competitive Content Gap Analysis. As a business you have a service/services or a product/products. The vast majority of businesses have a long list of competition trying to take their piece of the market share. Since this is a competition to see who can get the biggest market share, “knowing thy enemy” is important.
The Competitive Content Gap analysis will show you what your competition is doing and show you where your businesses own gaps are in their content marketing.
The analysis should never be done on less than 3 competitors. It can be on as many above 3 as you feel necessary.
There are 3 basic steps to doing this analysis properly.
1. Stalk your competitors content. All your competitors
2. Evaluate the content you have now found for each of your competitors
3. Organize and find gaps
Let’s break down each step individually.
STALK YOUR COMPETITORS CONTENT
Each one of your competitors will have their own type of content and you will need to do your best to find all of it. Here are bullet points for you to look for.
Blog posts
Ebooks, whitepapers, testimonials, case studies, etc
Digital and printed presentations
Email Marketing, newsletters, etc
Video content
Podcasts or audio content
Webinars, courses, etc
Social media posts
This step alone will probably give you many ideas for new content for your own brand, it can also expose a lack of dedication to your own content marketing. I am giving you this warning now.
EVALUATE THE CONTENT
Content needs to be consistent, but it also has to be engaging and cover the topics that will educate your audience.
This will allow you to see what the competition is doing and how well they are doing it.
Is your business matching the amount, scheduling, quality, etc. This step should also give you many new ideas for content.
ORGANIZE AND FIND GAPS
Once you have done the above. You will need to analyze the topics that are being communicated and how much of the content is about each individual topic.
What you are going to find is how much each company is talking about each subject and will even find subjects they are not talking about at all. Which will open up opportunities for your own business.
Once all of this information is compiled, you know exactly what content your business needs to concentrate on and create.
You can then schedule out a full content marketing strategy and schedule out each piece accordingly without trying to figure out a new subject every time you go to write a blog.
I hope you have found this article helpful. Please follow any of our social media accounts or subscribe to our blog to continue to get great articles like this one.
