What is Content Research?
Is going to Google and searching for the information you need content?
Or going to social media and seeing the content of other people and creating similar content yourself is content research?
For your information, let me tell you that content research is not done in the way you just read.
Content Research is an important part of your Online Marketing Strategy under which you analyze the already available online content, understand its relevance according to your business, identify topics that your audience likes, and finally create your content with proper planning.
While doing content research, you have to keep in mind that you only pick content that both Search Engine & Users can understand.
In such a situation, the question arises that how to do content research? Will some content research tools be required for this? Or how is content research done effectively?
So let us know the answers to all these questions in today’s blog, in which we will understand Content Research Definition or Meaning in simple and straight words and know how to do Content Research.
What is content research meaning? – What is content research
Content Research Definition: Content Research is a process in which popular and relevant content ideas are found through online tools and platforms (Google, YouTube, Facebook, Quora, Reddit, etc.) which are liked by your target audience.
After brainstorming content ideas, a winning content strategy is designed and delivered to your potential customers.
Content Research may sound easy but in reality it is not that easy.
It has been seen that some people go to Google and open the first 5 or 10 results and study their content and say that they have done content research.
But, do you think this is the meaning of content research?
No. You have to find different types of topic ideas, use tools and techniques and implement some best practices to produce good content. Keep one thing in mind – Content Research does not mean finding such topics that will bring traffic to our website, but you have to find such content ideas that can make you a good brand.
To make Content Research (Content Research Kaise Kare) more effective, these factors also have to be taken care of:
Relevancy: This means how relevant the content you are looking for is to your business. You also have to see whether your target customers are interested in that kind of content or topics.
Topic Popularity: See how many people like your selected topics or say whether that topic is popular?
Keywords Selection: Selection of the right keywords is also important to make your content effective and rank it on search engines like Google.
Competitors: Who are your competitors and what kind of content strategy are they using?
Content Formats: In which formats would you like to create content on your selected topics?
Seasonality: When does your audience do more research on those topics?
Hopefully, after knowing all these factors, you have understood what is content research, how to generate content ideas, and what is the actual meaning of content research.
Let us now move ahead and understand how to do content research or how to do content research effectively.
Why is content research important – Content Research Importance
Before understanding how to do content research, it is important to know why content research is important.
You must have heard the saying – Content Is King, but, content will become king for you only when you do the right content research and deliver it to the right people at the right time.
Due to the easy availability of the Internet, this work has become easy today.
According to a poll, 49% of B2B buyers say that they still consider it important to do content research before taking their purchasing decision.
Also, Content Usage has increased by 207% during and after the pandemic.
Therefore, Content Research becomes important. There are some big reasons behind the importance of content research:
Effective Content tells us that,
Which is the most suitable & beneficial content for the target audience
Can you tell what kind of content your target customers like to consume without doing content research?
No, it is not possible. And, unless you create the right content, you will not be able to attract them.
And when you do not create beneficial content for your audience, you will not have relevant traffic or maybe you will have traffic that you do not need.
Which content is in high demand in the market
Content research gives you an idea of the latest industry trends, market developments and new emerging topics.
You get to know which type of content is in high demand and how you can use it for your business.
In this way, you can create & produce trending content timely and stay ahead in the race of competition.
How to create a Content Marketing Strategy for your company
The first step of Content Marketing Strategy is Good Content Creation, followed by Content Publishing & Distribution.
Excellent Content Research is also necessary to create good content, so that you have a proper plan of when, what and what kind of content to prepare.
In this way, Content Research helps in making your Content Marketing Strategy even better.
How to implement SEO Strategy
Searching relevant keywords, understanding trends, finding Ever Green Topics and understanding your user intent and creating better content for Search Engines & Users is possible only when you perform Content Research well.
By ranking on the right keywords and providing valuable information on your website, you can increase the visibility, reach and traffic of your business.
Hope you understand what is the meaning of Content Research and why it is important.
Let us now talk about how to do content research or do content research?
7 Important Steps In Content Research
A proper content research decides the difference between you and your competitor. With this, you are able to implement your content marketing strategies efficiently.
Let’s understand how to do content research through some 7 best steps.
- Understanding the Business Objective
There is a purpose behind every work which can be carried forward only after finding or identifying it.
Similarly, Content Research also has an objective in which you should know the following things:
Why do you want to do research?
What is the objective of your research?
What do you want to find from the research or what kind of data do you want to collect?
What kind of data should be there in the information you need to create your Content Strategy – do you need some statistics, case study, expert opinion or any book or journal?
By defining your objectives in this way, you will be able to make your Content Research process more effective and organized.
- Understanding the Target Audience
The next step in How to Do Content Research Effectively is to understand your target audience.
Understanding the target audience is a very important step in your content research strategy. Every business has some target customers whose needs are kept in mind while designing products and services.
You have to identify these people only. For this, it is most important that you create your buyer persona.
To create a buyer persona, you have to gather the following information:
- Their Age, Gender and Geographical Location
- Their Education Qualification and Professional Work Experience
- Their Needs, Wants, Goals and Interests
- Their Problems, Pain Points and Challenges
- In which kind of topics they show more interest
- On which platforms they spend more time
When you collect all these things about them, you will get a filtered group of audience for whom you can do content research, plan and create.
This way your content strategy will also improve and you will be able to attract more and more people with the help of effective content.
- Finding your business relevant keywords & questions
To make your content research process effective, you need targeted research.
In targeted research, instead of copying someone else, you do deep research yourself and find such questions or queries (keywords) which your audience often searches online.
For this, you can use many content research tools, but the best and free tool is Google itself.
Google is the largest search engine in today’s time on which more than 90% of the world’s searches are done.
You can take the help of Google’s Autosuggest, People Also Ask, Related Search Feature or you can also take the help of online question hubs like Quora & Reddit.
Apart from this, you can also join Facebook groups related to your business where you will find people who are talking about the same topics which are related to your business.
Similarly, apart from Google, you can also use other Keyword Research Tools to find Relevant & Popular Keywords, such as – Answer the Public, SemRush, Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, BuzzSumo, Etc.
Through these tools, you have to do Keyword Research in which you have to search those Keywords & Questions according to Popularity, Intent and Search Volume, whose answers your audience wants.
Hope you have understood the meaning of Content Research and also understood how to do Content Research or how to generate Content Ideas.
Read this blog to know what is Keyword Research and why it is important.
- Analyzing the Content Strategy of Competitors
The next step is to analyze the content strategy of the competitors, which will give you a better understanding of what is the meaning of content research and how to do content research.
Sometimes there are some learnings that can be gained by looking at your competitors, because it is possible that they are following some such strategies that you may not even know about.
In such a situation, you get awareness. Therefore, you should keep checking out and analyzing your competitors from time to time and analyze their strategy.
Look at their content strategy, understand it and think how you can do better than them. If their content research is good and they are getting better results from it, then you can also try to take some inspiration from them.
Look at their targeted topics, keywords, content format, etc. and understand how they are increasing engagement.
By doing this type of analysis, not only your content strategy will improve but your ranking on search engines will also be strengthened, which will increase your visibility and reputation.
Know how to do analysis in marketing in this blog.
- Search for trending and seasonal topics in your industry
Just like a person has to change himself according to the trends, similarly we also have to identify new trends in our content research so that we can connect well with our audience.
Seasonal & Trending Topics means such topics whose search often increases for a few days in a year. Everyone is creating content on such topics and often influencers also get involved.
To find such topics, you can take the help of Google Trends on which you can find out what people are searching for in which season, at which place and how you can implement that content in your strategy.
6.Understand Content Types and Format
How to do Content Research or how to generate Content Ideas – We have seen this in the above 5 points. But, it is also very important to have an understanding of Content Types & Format.
It is often seen that many times we focus too much on such Content Formats which our Target Audience does not like much.
By doing this, our time is wasted and we do not get any good result from the content.
While doing research of Content Format, you have to see which format people are liking more or are getting engaged with.
Are they liking Social Media Posts, are they liking Reels, are they getting more engaged on Shorts & Videos, or are they liking Textual Content more?
For this, you can look at your competitors or ask questions to ChatGPT or Google Bard according to your Target Audience and Business Model.
Only if you have the right Content Type & Format, you will get good Reach & Engagement.
- Take help of online tools
Google Baba knows everything – you must have always heard this saying. That is why you have to first take the help of Google.
After this, it is also important to use some of Google’s free tools such as Google Trends, Keyword Planner, Google Analytics, etc. From these tools, you have to get an idea of which topics are being discussed more and whether that topic is trending.
Similarly, you can also use other popular content research tools, some of the major ones are: BuzzSumo, AnswerThePublic, Medium, Ahrefs, SemRush, etc.
With the help of all these content research tools, you have to see which type of content is getting more engagement or people are liking it and which keywords are gaining more popularity.
Similarly, you can also use Q & A platforms like Google Question Hub, Quora and Reddit to find questions.
There are over 400,000 topics available on Quora alone, giving you a great opportunity to find questions your target customers have.
Conclusion
Content Research is a very important step that helps you move to the next stage of your marketing.
Content Research is not limited to Google only, but it also takes the help of Google and Other Online Content Research Tools.
I hope that through today’s blog you have got the Content Research Definition clear and understood that Content Research Kya Hai and Content Research Kaise Karte Hain.
By effectively implementing Content Research, you are able to improve your Digital Marketing Strategy.
To improve Digital Marketing, it is important that you understand all its concepts.
