Things You Can Learn About Content from Your Competition

Lessons in business can be learnt in many places

Being creative and original is a big advantage in the business world, but being original and creative does not mean that you cannot learn from other people. This is especially true when it comes to content marketing and online traffic. You need to be up-to-date with your competition’s successes and failures so that you can be sure that you are getting the best possible results out of your content marketing efforts. Let’s explore some things you can learn from your competition.

Content That Works

Creating content is meaningless if you are not reaching your target audience effectively. Check out the competition in your market and see which posts and what types of content are having the most success and consumer engagement. Tools like Google Analytics can help give you the metrics on your own posts.

Plan

Creating quality content takes time and planning. If you can create a calendar for when you will need certain posts or content you can allocate your resources more effectively. According to a poll done by the Content Marketing Institute firms that have a documented content strategy in place are more likely to feel like their efforts are effective.

Mix-Up the Curation of Content

While articles and written blogs still make for great content, there are also a ton of other options that you can pursue. The important thing is to determine what type of media is best for the content you want to release. Checking out the types of media your competition is releasing and what is working for them will help you in this effort. Popular content types in today’s content marketing landscape are videos, podcasts, e-books, and images.

Take Part in the Trending News

Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook will let you know the things that the most people are talking about at any given time. Being able to produce content around topics or events that have a lot of interest already is not only a great way to get more views and engagement out of your target audience but it is also a great way to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

Create Relevant News

This does not mean make things up, but tools like Google Consumer Survey make it easy and affordable to create your own surveys and get results. Creating content around the things you learn from these surveys, for example, is a great way to position your brand and company as a thought leader and even contribute knowledge to the industry.

Visuals 

Look at the type of content that is really working for your competition. In almost all cases, there are probably visual components to them. Even if the content is a blog post or article, coupling text with compelling info-graphics or photos makes for more successful content.

Video

This is closely related to the visual aspect we just explored. Cisco did a study and found that 55 percent of Internet traffic in 2016 was video traffic. Video is important, and good video content goes a long way. Take a look at your most successful competitor. They probably use the power of video in their content marketing strategy.

Reuse Content 

Do not simply re-post old copy. This is a big no-no and it could even hurt your SEO efforts. Instead, if you have a great article or blog post, maybe you use the information and content and turn it into a guide, e-book, or info-graphic. Creating great content takes time. Look at your competitors and they probably reuse their great content in imaginative ways.

Quality Above all Else

The one major aspect of content marketing that should be focused on the most is overall quality. There is so much stuff on the Internet if you want to stand out from your competition you need to make sure that everything you post has value and is of a high-quality.