Next month, Google will enforce stricter rules for businesses and groups that send large volumes of email to Gmail accounts.
Initially announced in October, these new policies are intended to reduce spam and make email more secure.
New Standards For Bulk Email
Any entity that sends more than 5,000 emails per day to Gmail addresses must now follow specific guidelines.
First, bulk email senders must authenticate their messages using protocols like SPF, DKIM, or DMARC. This validates that the emails come from the claimed sender and establishes trustworthiness.
Additionally, Gmail now requires that high-volume emailers give recipients an easy, one-click option to unsubscribe. Senders have to honor unsubscribe requests within two business days.
Finally, bulk senders must stay under a clear spam threshold set by Google to avoid having their emails marked as spam. Those who go over the limit risk having their emails filtered out as spam.
Preparing For February Deadline
Google thinks most reputable companies already follow good email practices, or “email hygiene.” But for any businesses that need help putting these into action, here is some guidance:
Use a trusted email-sending service.
Keep your email list updated, removing people who are inactive or not engaged.
Separate your list into different segments so emails can be more targeted and relevant.
Make the content of emails more personalized to improve engagement and reduce spam reports.
Allow easy unsubscribing from emails.
Companies with over 5,000 subscribers on their email list must follow the new requirements and make any needed changes by February. However, those with smaller email lists can benefit from following the new standards, as it can improve email deliverability.
Looking Ahead
Google’s new requirements are not a perfect solution, but the company believes they’ll help reduce spam and abuse.
The key takeaway is that email marketers who follow the new rules can keep reaching their subscribers.
In February 2024, content marketers can produce articles and videos about pizza, marriage, evolution, wine, and the rarest of birthdates.
Content marketing is the act of curating or creating content to attract, engage, or acquire customers. What follows are five content marketing topics your business can use in February 2024.
1. Pizza Day
Pizza Day is an opportunity for content marketers to tap into something most folks like.
February 9, 2024, is National Pizza Day in the United States. While the pseudo-holiday’s origins are unclear, pizzeria owners and pizza enthusiasts presumably don’t need much of an excuse to celebrate and enjoy a good pie.
The task for ecommerce content marketers is connecting that pizza enthusiasm to their products. While the most obvious fit is merchants selling kitchen-related items, pizza is a broad enough topic for different kinds of shops.
Here are a few examples.
A travel brand such as Away, which sells luggage, could publish a “Pizza Tour Guide” for major cities like New York or Chicago.
Party City and similar shops might publish a pizza-party-planning post.
Plant and seed sellers such as Woodies Garden Goods might produce a “how to plant the perfect pizza garden” article or video.
Content for National Pizza Day could include social media posts to attract shoppers. Or it could be featured in an editorial email newsletter to engage loyal subscribers.
2. World Marriage Day
Wedding Day could interest couples, wedding planners, or folks looking to improve their relationships.
World Marriage Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in February each year. In 2024, it falls on February 11. This special day is dedicated to honoring the beauty of marriage and the importance of strong, loving, and committed relationships. It’s an occasion to celebrate and reflect on the significance of marriage in our lives.
For ecommerce content marketers, World Marriage Day provides an excellent opportunity to create content that resonates with couples, those planning to get married, and anyone interested in strengthening relationships.
The content might include gift guides, dating ideas, book reviews, couples wellness, or wedding planning, perhaps including a subscription or product bundle offer.
3. International Darwin Day
Charles Darwin is a celebrated researcher. His birthday is an opportunity for marketers interested in science and evolution.
International Darwin Day occurs annually on February 12, commemorating the birth of Charles Darwin, the famous English naturalist, biologist, and author of “On the Origin of Species.”
Darwin Day is dedicated to promoting science, popular reason, and the contributions of Charles Darwin to our understanding of evolution and the natural world.
For an ecommerce content marketer, International Darwin Day is an opportunity to create engaging content aligning with science, evolution, and intellectual curiosity.
Here are a few possibilities.
STEM toy store: “Darwin’s Discoveries: Toys Showcasing the Wonders of Evolution.”
Christian book shop: “Books That Challenge Evolutionary Theories.”
A home decor retailer: “Evolutionary Home Decor Trends for a Stylish Space.”
4. National Drink Wine Day
Wine is a popular and celebrated beverage worldwide. Its production is an art form.
National Drink Wine Day is observed on February 18 each year. The occasion celebrates the enjoyment of wine in various forms and flavors. It’s a fun and engaging opportunity for content marketers, particularly those in the wine and beverage industry, to connect with their audience while recognizing the importance of responsible drinking.
As with every idea on this list, content for Drink Wine Day should help, inform, or entertain customers and prospects to drive sales. Hence be sure to connect that content with the products your shop sells.
For example, a woodworking retailer could publish a tutorial for building a wine cabinet using an associated kit for sale. The tutorial article and videos demonstrate how to build a great-looking cabinet, while the kit, which can be ordered online, provides the materials and tools.
5. Leap Year Day
February 29 is an opportunity to celebrate and profile individuals born on that date.
February 29, Leap Year Day, occurs once every four years to sync calendars with Earth’s orbit around the sun. It’s a rare date and thus a special occasion for those born on that day. It’s also a good content marketing opportunity.
Ecommerce marketers can identify related celebrities, innovators, or leaders with February 29 birthdays.
An example for music stores is Gioachino Rossini — the Italian opera composer of “The Barber of Seville” and “William Tell “— who was born on Leap Year Day. A music shop could publish a Rossini profile and offer related products.
A content brief is a summary of what to include in an article. It provides info for search engine optimization, such as primary and secondary keywords and questions and answers. Briefs help writers and editors ensure an article addresses essential components.
Generative AI streamlines the making of content briefs and enhances the SEO benefits by using data from Google’s organic search results and elsewhere.
Here are three AI tools to consider.
Keyword Insights
Keyword Insights uses AI to discover and cluster keywords, optimize for intent, and generate content, including briefs.
To create a brief, provide your target keyword and language. The tool then scrapes headings from Google’s top 20 ranking pages, “People also ask” boxes, Reddit, and Quora.
For every competing article, click “Extract all key points” for a detailed outline and inclusion in a brief. For every brief, generate the article’s title and meta description.
Review the analysis and choose the subheadings. Then write an original article — don’t direct the tool to generate it.
Keyword Insights offers a four-day trial for $1. After that, it’s $58 per month.
Keyword Insights scrapes headings from the top 20 ranking pages, “People also ask” boxes, Reddit, and Quora. Click image to enlarge.
MarketingBlocks
MarketingBlocks is a comprehensive, AI-powered content suite. To create a brief, enter a keyword and target country. The tool then pulls info from multiple sources (similar to Keyword Insights), including:
Google’s search results — an overview of each ranking article with its heading and subheadings,
Questions from “People also ask,”
Reddit and Quora discussions.
Select headings and subheadings from the tool’s output to form the brief. (Users cannot work on multiple briefs simultaneously, however. I would have pulled headings from one brief to start another for a separate article.)
With a completed outline, MarketingBlocks will generate a title, meta description, and even content for each section, although, again, original writing from humans is best.
The tool offers a five-day free trial, credit-card required. Paid plans start at $47 per month.
MarketingBlocks pulls info from multiple sources, including Reddit. Click image to enlarge.
Swiftbrief
Swiftbrief specializes in content briefs. To start, provide a target audience — I used “small business owners” — and a topic following from the tool’s suggestions:
Be specific. A one-word topic will lead to little benefit. Three to five words is best.
Use question modifiers such as: “how,” “what,” “who,” “when,” “where,” and “why.”
Swiftbrief accesses Google search-result pages and creates the entire brief automatically without requiring the manual selection of subheadings. It lists additional info to consider — sources, the goal, requirements for internal and external links — and allows exporting the entire brief to Google Docs.
Swiftbrief offers a seven-day free trial, no credit card required. After that, plans start at $64 a month.
Swiftbrief accesses Google SERPs and creates the entire brief automatically. Click image to enlarge.
The success or failure of your content strategy is very subjective.
It can be nuanced and multifaceted due to many factors – varied objectives, long-term impact, changing goals, complex data interpretation, content attribution, and many other external factors.
But then I’ve heard many business owners and marketing managers complaining about not seeing results despite publishing 12-20 blogs a month, aggressive social media promotions, and segmented email drip campaigns.
It could be because the content strategy itself is flawed, which can cause it to fail in achieving its intended results.
And because there can be many flaws in a content strategy, I would like to highlight the critical ones that most commonly cause your strategy to fail.
1. Not Sticking To Your Target Audience
The most common yet highly critical reason behind the failed content strategy is deviating from your target audience.
While we have worked with many IT companies, we have seen this as a major issue. They usually have some of these target audiences:
Tech Business Owners.
Non-tech Business Owners.
CTO or Project Managers.
Developers.
But most IT companies follow the trends their competitors have chosen, irrespective of what their sales team wants.
They want to sell Flutter development if their competitors start delivering that.
If their competitors have started doing it, they want to shift to staff augmentation from custom end-to-end development.
They want to start writing technical blogs if their competitors have written them.
It’s not their fault because they are trying to follow trends in the IT industry. But in following the trend, they unknowingly mix up all their audiences.
Deviating from your target audience can happen unintentionally due to shifts in business goals or strategies, inadequate or outdated audience research, customer base expansion, data misinterpretation, changes in industry dynamics, and more.
However, this is problematic for content strategy, because it results in content that is misaligned, inefficient, and ineffective in reaching and engaging the right people.
Why? Because:
You create irrelevant content for other sets of audiences.
You waste time, effort, and budget.
This results in inconsistent brand messaging.
You may attract the wrong type of leads or lower conversion rates.
With all these, you cannot measure the effectiveness.
And hence, the ROI is never justified.
A successful content strategy should be laser-focused on addressing the intended audience’s needs, building a strong connection with them, and ultimately driving meaningful outcomes for the business.
2. Missing Out On The Purpose Of Creating The Content
When planning content topics, you must know why you want to create this content. Because until you know the purpose, you can’t define its success metrics.
And when you don’t know the success metrics, your content remains orphan, cannibalized, or unhelpful.
With more such content, you only keep investing where there are no returns.
And never stick to the below as the only purpose of your content:
Because competitors have written them.
Because we want rankings.
Because we want all of our blogs to generate sales qualified leads (SQLs).
Because wethink such topics would be helpful to our audience.
Because our product team wants to focus on that
Because our sales team wants to target this list of features to be promoted across a particular geography.
Where are the audience’s needs here?
Consider what the audience wants to read or consume while buying your products or services.
Your purpose should be divided into two:
What do readers expect out of this content?
What will we achieve when the user consumes this content and is happy about it?
I hope that’s clear to ensure your content strategy doesn’t fail.
3. Not Setting Up Each Content’s KPIs And Its Timeline
We know the purpose of creating content, but what if we don’t know how to measure whether the purpose was fulfilled?
That also will lead to the failure.
Most content calendars include the following basic things:
Content topics.
Content types.
Target audience.
Team involved.
Publication timelines.
Keywords data.
Word count.
Graphics requirements.
References.
But people don’t talk enough about what each piece of content has to deliver. We never used to add any content metrics in our SEO content strategy.
Content KPIs can vary depending on the content’s purpose and your overall content strategy.
Image created by author, November 2023
But just defining the KPIs is not enough; setting up their timelines ensures they are achieved.
Let me share what happens to your content strategy if you haven’t set the content KPIs and their timelines to achieve:
Directionless content creation – You publish a blog post without clear KPIs or timelines. The content covers a general industry topic but doesn’t tie into specific business goals. As a result, it doesn’t drive relevant traffic or contribute to lead generation.
Ineffective resource allocation – You invest significant resources in creating a series of YouTube videos without defining KPIs. The videos receive views, but without KPIs, it’s unclear whether they contribute to brand awareness, customer engagement, or sales growth.
Measurement challenges – You regularly publish email newsletters to a subscriber list without establishing KPIs and timelines. You observe that the open rates and click-through rates vary across different newsletters. Still, without predefined KPIs, you are uncertain whether the content needs improvement or the variance is within the normal range.
Missed opportunities – If you’re into the ecommerce or D2C segment and fail to define the KPIs and the timeline for your holiday-themed content, you miss out on capitalizing on the season for maximum visibility or sales. After all, there’s no point in me sharing Black Friday marketing hacks for marketers when Black Friday has already been and gone.
Inconsistent performance – When you’re writing different types of blogs without the defined KPIs and timelines, some pieces might perform well. In contrast, others underperform, and there’s no basis for comparison or improvement. This inconsistency makes it challenging to identify what types of content work best.
Difficulty in adaptation – While creating a content strategy for a software review site doesn’t have a timeline for updating the articles during significant software releases, it can drastically lose rankings and website traffic. Without defined KPIs and timelines, it’s harder to identify when adjustments are needed. You may not notice content that’s not meeting expectations until much later.
ROI uncertainty – The absence of KPIs and timelines makes it challenging to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for your content efforts. You won’t know if the resources invested in content creation yield the desired results.
Demotivation for teams – Content creators and marketers may become demotivated when they don’t see clear objectives or results associated with their work. This can lead to a lack of enthusiasm and dedication to following the content strategy.
Inability to learn and improve – The lack of defined KPIs and timelines makes it challenging to learn which of your blogs are supposed to drive marketing qualified leads (MQLs), newsletter sign-ups, embedded video clicks, move to landing pages, SQLs, and more. So, you won’t have data-driven insights to make informed decisions and refine your strategy over time.
To avoid all the above pitfalls, let’s have a structured approach so that your content efforts are purposeful, measurable, and adaptable, leading to a more effective and results-driven content strategy.
4. Measuring Leads/Conversions As The Only KPI
We just finished discussing that KPIs are important – but all KPIs are important, not just lead generation or conversions.
However, because the top management of startups and ecommerce business owners have strict timelines for reaching the goals of specific annual recurring revenue (ARR) and turnovers, they ask their marketing teams to focus on strategizing content for generating leads or business.
But here are a few very critical reasons why your content strategy fails if you only focus on leads or conversions:
Narrowed Focus
Relying solely on leads or conversions as KPIs can create a narrow focus on the end of the sales funnel.
While these metrics are important, they don’t account for the full customer journey.
Content should address various stages of the customer lifecycle, from awareness to consideration and retention.
We got an inquiry last month from someone who was into the home lifestyle industry in the US, and they were just starting in this highly competitive market.
We took days to build a strategy for them on how to showcase them as one of the emerging brands, and they just wanted to focus on whether our strategy would sell out their extensive inventory before a year.
Being in a B2C industry, one must know that 66% of consumers are now allocating additional time to research and validate their purchases due to the cost-of-living crisis, as per the report by Akeneo.
So, if you’re not present at every stage of their research, you’ll lose them forever.
Misalignment With Content Types
Different types of content serve various purposes within the marketing funnel.
For instance, blog posts are typically better suited for creating awareness, while in-depth whitepapers may be more effective for B2B lead generation.
If lead generation is the sole KPI, the strategy may not leverage the full potential of diverse content types.
This means that even if your sole focus is driving more whitepaper downloads, you would need the below content types to support:
Landing page content to encourage visitors to download.
Blog posts to introduce the topics covered in the whitepapers and links to the respective landing pages.
Email content to promote your whitepapers to your subscriber list and guide them to the landing pages.
Social media posts to highlight the whitepapers’ benefits and encourage followers to access them.
Guest posts or articles in industry publications to reach a broader audience and direct readers to your whitepaper downloads.
Compelling ad copy for paid campaigns, such as pay-per-click (PPC) or social media ads, to drive traffic to the whitepaper landing pages.
No matter what content type you choose to drive conversions, you need support of other kinds for maximized output.
Higher Customer Acquisition Costs
Not all visitors arriving at your site are ready to purchase or provide their contact information.
Many are in the early stages of the buying process, gathering information and evaluating their options.
But when the sole purpose is to drive conversions, the content strategy must consider paid advertising and email outreach. Paid advertising may directly bring you instant conversions but may be more costly in the long run.
Similarly, suppose you’re in the early stages of your business.
In that case, email outreach doesn’t always bring faster results, as your prospects might feel a lack of brand authority due to the lack of other content types on different channels for their research.
This ultimately results in higher customer acquisition rates, which cannot help you sustain for long.
A successful content strategy should not focus solely on immediate lead generation.
It should be balanced with content designed for brand awareness and consideration, essential for attracting organic, social, and referral traffic, building trust, and nurturing long-term customer relationships.
5. Not Emphasizing The User And Their Content Experience
User experience – we know that it matters for your marketing success.
But what’s content experience?
Content experience refers to how users interact with and perceive content on various digital platforms, such as websites, mobile apps, social media, and other digital channels.
It encompasses the overall impression, engagement, and satisfaction that content creates for the user.
Various elements, including design, usability, interactivity, and the quality of the content itself, shape the content experience.
In short, content experience is nothing but all about fulfilling the user’s expectations from content, such as:
Relevance – Your users interact or engage with your content only if they find it relevant to their needs and interests.
Quality – Your users want to consume content that’s accurate, well-researched, and well-crafted to meet their needs.
Consistency – Whether you’ve consistently added such quality content for their queries also defines whether your content meets their expectations.
Clarity – Users seek clear and easily understandable content using plain language, structured layouts, and concise explanations.
Interactivity – Be it compelling storytelling or media, your users should find your content interesting.
Trustworthiness – Users need to trust the source. Transparent sourcing, evidence-based claims, and consistent brand messaging establish trust.
Accessibility – Users with disabilities expect content to be accessible. Compliance with accessibility standards ensures a broader audience can consume content.
User-centric design – Users anticipate user-friendly content and navigation. Prioritizing user experience (UX) design and responsive layouts fulfills this expectation.
Personalization – Users look for tailored content experiences. Using data to deliver personalized content based on user preferences meets this expectation.
Emotional connection – Users desire content that resonates emotionally. Creating content with relatable stories, empathy, and emotional appeal fulfills this expectation.
Solving problems – Users expect content to address their problems. This is achieved by providing practical solutions and actionable advice.
So, if we don’t ensure that every content created from your content strategy fulfills the users’ expectations, they will never contribute to the marketing’s success.
After all, winning marketing is all about UX – delivering a fantastic user experience and fulfilling users’ expectations from the content they’re consuming.
Image created by author, November 2023
6. Unable To Understand The User Behavior On The Page
Content strategy is not only for new topics. Hence, an inability to understand user behavior on a page reflects a lack of critical insights and data for optimizing content and achieving your strategic goals.
Hence, any content we create for our website needs to be monitored not just using GA4 or any analytics plugin, but also using heatmaps and session recordings.
Screenshot from Microsoft Clarity [for one of our clients], November 2023
Let’s talk about a few insights you only get when you monitor the heatmaps and recordings to understand the user behavior on the page:
Incomplete forms – If your landing pages include lead generation forms, but users rarely submit them, an inability to understand user behavior means you won’t know where users are dropping off in the form-filling process. This can hinder lead generation efforts.
Neglected content sections – On a blog post, you may have sections with important information. Still, if users rarely scroll down to read them, you’re missing out on engagement and conveying valuable insights. Without user behavior insights, your content strategy may not address this issue.
High cart abandonment – An ecommerce site might notice that many users add items to their shopping cart but abandon it before completing the purchase. By monitoring user behavior, you can identify that users often drop off at the shipping cost calculation step. This insight allows you to make necessary adjustments, such as offering free shipping above a certain purchase amount, to reduce cart abandonment and improve the content of the shipping cost explanation.
Unoptimized landing pages – Suppose your landing page for a webinar registration isn’t performing well, with low sign-up rates. User behavior tracking shows that most visitors leave the page without scrolling down to view the registration form. This data indicates that the content at the top of the page is not engaging.
GA4 gives you data, but the heatmaps and session recordings give you the reason behind that data. If you have high bounce rates, you can find out why you have them.
And when you have those insights, you can create content strategies that hardly fail.
7. Investing A Lot In Product/Brand Content
Like the sole purpose of lead generation, we understand the reason behind building the brand or product-focused content, which we call bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFu) content.
But investing a lot in such content can bring the below challenges:
It can overwhelm the audience with sales-oriented messaging, leading to disengagement and alienation.
It can lead to content saturation as you won’t find different topics to create content on.
When users encounter the same messaging repeatedly, they may become desensitized to it.
It can limit diversity and creativity in content creation.
Branded content is not always searched for, so it may never drive better SEO results.
Consistently putting out product-focused or branded content will make users build a perception about your brand and may never engage, even when you create educational content.
While product/branded content is essential for sales and conversions, an excessive focus on this type of content can lead to a content strategy failure by limiting audience engagement, diversity, and trust and missing opportunities to attract and nurture leads effectively.
So, even if you have targets for conversions, think of a balanced content strategy to make sure you don’t lose your audience for life.
8. Compromising On Quality Over Quantity (Especially After AI/ChatGPT)
You must have seen a lot of posts on LinkedIn or X/Twitter on how AI content or SEO has given them steady, hockey-stick growth.
Screenshot from YouTube, November 2023
Just publish one content per day, and voila, you’ve got 365 posts in a year with a whopping 5x organic growth.
That’s not as easy as it sounds!
Suppose you also start following this process as is.
In that case, your content strategy may fail miserably, as your industry, business, audience, and more differ from the ones who share such experiences and learnings, and not just that, it also impacts your overall brand reputation.
So, no, I’m not saying they are bluffing.
Still, a lot goes into identifying that one content topic, writing, proofreading, editing, publishing, and optimizing, such as adding keywords, avoiding keyword cannibalization, graphics, and more.
If that’s what you are supposed to do, do it, but it’s not a one-day task.
The people sharing those case studies should also have a strong content strategy in place, emphasizing both quality and quantity, despite using AI/ChatGPT.
9. No Guidance/Brief To The Writers On How To Approach The Content
Yes, content strategy is a plan, and without the right execution, it cannot succeed.
When creating the content strategy, it becomes important to share insights on what content creators should do.
Here, too, you should do it for every content topic, not just for one (or overall).
I always say that not all content creators are subject matter experts; hence, they are not supposed to be always on-point about something.
As the strategist, marketing/product manager, or business owner, you must provide those details, which can be compiled in MS Excel, Word, Google Spreadsheet, Docs, Loom, or Notion.
Screenshot from author, November 2023
Such data compilation for the writers are called content briefs, and you need to share them in detail and make sure they understand what you want in the content.
Sometimes, we are not happy with what competitors have written on a topic; in such cases, we also provide the complete outline to the writers.
This makes it completely clear what they need to write, where, and how.
10. Having Miscommunication Or Misunderstanding Between Strategists And Writers
I want to say this loud and clear: Communication gaps and understanding glitches can lead to content strategy failure.
Let me give you an example of a real-time breakup with our client, which they didn’t plan and we didn’t expect.
However, due to the long-term process of making that hub content rank on other relevant but competitive queries, we were not convinced as SEO pros and couldn’t deliver as they expected.
Because it’s a difficult and time-consuming process to rank hub content with highly competitive queries, we were not convinced as SEO pros to accept that change.
If we could get a clear communication behind the purpose of this requirement, the situation would have been different today.
A successful content strategy relies on effective collaboration and clear communication between these key roles to ensure that the content created aligns with strategic goals, resonates with the audience, and delivers the desired results.
11. Unaccelerated Distribution Plan
Yes! This does happen –and happens a lot – with SEO pros.
Has your SEO team ever faced any or all of the below issues?
You published a lot of pages, but Google is not indexing them.
You feel some pieces of content on your website took a lot of time, effort, and resources to create, and now, they hardly receive any traffic.
You’ve been doing SEO for a long time, and you hardly have any keywords driving traffic to your website.
In any of the cases, it’s because your content strategy lacks distribution.
Our B2B clients have their marketing managers as our point of contact (PoCs) for our SEO services. It becomes frustrating sometimes for us to keep convincing some of them to share our traffic-focused content on their social media and email channels.
They believe that the content we have written or planned should be picked up by Google algorithms straightaway.
Screenshot from Search Engine Journal, November 2023
It was October 2022 when I recommended SEO pros focus on remarketing SEO, which mentioned how other marketing channels can contribute to SEO success. It’s high time now that you use it to your advantage.
Without an accelerated distribution plan, it can undermine your SEO efforts by limiting the visibility, engagement, and authority of your content in the eyes of search engines.
Image created by author, November 2023
And when you don’t care to reach your content to your target audience on search engines, why should search engines either?
Revisit Your Content Strategy To Avoid The Above Pitfalls
Revisiting your content strategy is a dynamic and ongoing process to ensure content strategies are not set in stone.
They should be flexible, data-driven, and focused on delivering value to the audience. Identifying and rectifying these flaws can help ensure your content strategy’s success.
By continually assessing and adapting your strategy, you can maintain its effectiveness and deliver content that resonates with your audience while driving your business toward its desired outcomes.
Content marketing reaches consumers throughout their buying journey, assisting merchants in making the first sale and developing loyal buyers afterward.
Content helps ecommerce sellers attract, engage, and retain customers
Road Runner Sports, an online running shoe retailer, publishes an “Expert Advice” section to help runners. This image is from an article comparing two types of shoes.
Consider organic search traffic, which is the lifeblood of many successful businesses. Ranking in the top 10 on a Google search engine results page for a product category or even a specific item is increasingly difficult, especially for smaller companies.
A product category such as “running shoes,” for example, has a keyword difficulty score of 95 — very hard to rank for — according to Semrush. The competition for the top search-result slots includes Nike, Amazon, Adidas, and The New York Times. All of these sites are likely to have much higher domain authority scores than a typical retail SMB.
Here is where content marketing comes in. An article about the “best running shoes for knee pain” would face significantly less search engine competition, as the phrase has a keyword difficulty score of just 49.
A running shoe shop could publish the article, giving honest, helpful advice about running shoe selection. The store’s marketing team could interview doctors or pay for a doctor’s consultation to get quotes. Finally, the article could link to the recommended shoes, potentially driving sales.
The authoritative article attracts new shoppers while boosting the site’s domain authority.
Take the same article and make a video for YouTube or a Reel for Instagram, and just like that, you are also fueling social media marketing.
Content marketing can attract shoppers.
Engage shoppers
It is not enough to attract shoppers; ecommerce merchants must engage them.
In the example running shoe and knee pain article described above, getting quotes and advice from a medical doctor can make the article more trustworthy and thus more helpful.
When she derives real value from an online store’s content, a shopper may engage with the content. Engagement might mean sharing a link to the article on social media, writing a review on Google Reviews, or — the best — subscribing to an email newsletter or agreeing to receive text notifications.
The goal of just about all ecommerce content marketers is to encourage newsletter or text message subscriptions.
Customers or prospects who agree to receive communications provide opportunities for engagement, including a sale.
When it publishes a helpful editorial newsletter each week, an online store is building a relationship with recipient customers. Each edition gives readers more reasons to like and trust the shop.
Since the newsletter content leads back to the store’s website, a frequent reader could become a regular customer.
Measurement
Here is an experiment. Compare two cohorts of customers: those who subscribe to the newsletter and those who don’t. Which group buys the most products or services?
The odds are that folks on the email list spend the most. And getting more shoppers to the list is part of what content marketing does best.
Whether your company’s content marketing goals are focused on attracting shoppers with SEO, engaging them, or building a long-term relationship, you must develop a measurement framework.
Marketer Jay Baer of Convince & Convert emphasizes four metrics for measuring the impact of content marketing.
Sales. Track which content — including email newsletters and text-based article notifications — leads to sales within an attribution window.
Subscriptions. Monitor which articles and blog posts result in the most newsletter signups.
Content consumption. Tally the bounce rate, page views, return visits, and video views to learn which content is the most used.
Sharing. Know how often a given bit of content is shared and how that sharing impacts other metrics.
You will likely need to collect this data from several sources and gather it into a business intelligence tool.
Content marketers seeking December article and video topics could consider Santa’s List Day, AI-generated suggestions, looking back and ahead, and self-gifting guides.
Content marketing is one of the most potent ways to boost search traffic, engage shoppers, and keep customers coming back.
Thus, content marketing — creating, publishing, and promoting articles, podcasts, or videos — fuels everything from search engine optimization and lifecycle (email) marketing to social media campaigns. But coming up with new topics can feel a little like running on a hamster wheel. So, what follows are five content marketing ideas you can use in December 2023.
1. Santa’s List Day
Santa’s List Day on December 4, 2023, is an opportunity to create articles, videos, or similar content.
December 4, 2023, is International Santa’s List Day. Allegedly, this is the day when the mythical Claus sits down with a warm cup of spiked hot chocolate and composes his two lists — one for all the nice children and a second for the naughty ones.
Your company’s content marketing could celebrate Santa’s List Day in a few ways.
There could be a historical approach. Create several entertaining articles about the origin of the Santa Claus stories. Here are a few example titles.
“Ho Ho How It All Began: The Humorous Origins of Santa Claus”
“Red Nose, Red Suit, Revolutionary”
“Coal, Candy, and Chronicles: The History Behind Santa Claus”
If you need more ideas for these sorts of articles, try prompting a generative AI platform with something like “Make a list of article titles about the origin of the Santa Claus stories. The articles should be entertaining and funny.”
A second approach could be to develop your own lists. One idea is “Santa’s List of Last Minute Gift Ideas” featuring your store’s final holiday offers.
2. ‘AI Made This’
Websites that specialize in attracting readers — think BuzzFeed, for example — have started to publish what might be called “AI Made This” articles, perhaps meant to take advantage of the present interest in generative AI.
AI-generated content is still new and interesting enough that you can publish articles about it. Source: BuzzFeed.
Here are a few examples around a common theme.
Your company could take other AI approaches. For example, an online store that introduced a new product could ask an AI to help design an alternative version and then compare it with the actual item.
The article might be something like, “We Asked AI to Design the Perfect Fishing Rod for Dads. Here Is What We Built.”
3. Product Retrospectives
December is a fitting time to produce retrospective content. Consider a product or category retrospective to build a case for your current inventory.
A retrospective fashion article could start in the decade of the 1950s and work up to promoting your store’s current lines. (AI made this image.)
Here is an example. Say a women’s clothing shop published an article titled “The Most Influential Women’s Fashion Trends: 1950 to Now.”
In each decades-long section, the article could address how materials, printing, and assembly have improved. By the time she gets to the modern items in the “now” section of the article, the reader is excited about purchasing an item.
4. Look Ahead
Gaze out on the 2024 horizon and produce content about the coming trends.
The opposite of a retrospective article could be a “look ahead” feature.
In this case, think of December not just as the end of the year but rather as a vantage point to look at 2024.
A kettlebell store could publish “The Fitness Regimens Shaping 2024: What the Experts Are Doing.”
A consumer electronics shop might create “The Tech Innovations You’ll Want in 2024: A Peek into the Future of Gadgets.”
A kitchen supply company could release “The Food Revolution: What Will Be on Your Plate in 2024?”
In each case, focus on the trends that impact the products your company sells.
5. ‘Treat Yourself’ Guides
Self-gifting is a significant part of holiday sales.
Some retail industry surveys have suggested that about 25% of all American shoppers and as much as 60% of women buy themselves a gift during the Christmas holiday season or soon after.
These folks will be searching for the right item to treat themselves in much the same way as gifts for family and friends.
Content marketers can produce articles or videos that recommend products and assuage fears of self-indulgence.
Here are a few “treat yourself” article titles for examples.
“Treat Yo’ Elf. The Ultimate after-Christmas Self-gifting Guide.”
“Santa Didn’t Deliver? The Ultimate Guide to Self-gifting after the Holidays.”
“Be Your Own Santa: 21 Christmas Gifts to Give Yourself.”
Remember the days when social media was a “maybe” or a nice-to-have for businesses? When the brands most active on social media were early adopters and trailblazers?
Your social profiles are often the first touchpoint customers have with your organization – and as such, social media is a potent branding tool that affects brand perception, sentiment, authority, and trust.
But social media branding doesn’t just happen by accident; it takes careful consideration, consistency, and long-term commitment.
In this comprehensive guide, we will examine what social media branding is, why it matters, and how it’s done before sharing useful tips for improving your social media branding.
What Is Social Media Branding?
As always, let’s start with the foundational question: What exactly is social media branding?
The term is somewhat self-explanatory. It is the practice of using social media to convey your brand’s identity, mission, and messaging to existing and potential customers.
Just as you have an overarching branding strategy for your organization, you should also have one for your social media brand.
It should function as a component of your company’s larger brand strategy – and an extension of it – but will inevitably differ in some areas based on factors exclusive to social media.
Some of the most important elements of your social media branding strategy include:
Brand Identity: How your brand shows up across social media platforms. Visual elements include logos, color palettes, fonts, and an overarching visual approach.
Brand Voice: Your tone of voice should align with your brand values and messaging, and speak to your target audience. You should tailor it based on the social platform, but the heart of your brand voice should feel consistent and recognizable.
Content Strategy: The content you share on social media plays an important role in your branding. Developing a content strategy will help you define what content types, formats, and topics make the most sense for your voice, tone, and message.
Audience Engagement: Good social branding is multi-faceted and includes engaging with your audience. You should be interacting with them to nurture an emotional connection – and making sure to do so in your brand tone and voice.
Above all, consistency is key when it comes to social media branding.
From your visual identity, voice, and tone to how you interact with your followers and the stories you tell, it’s vital that you build a cohesive brand presence that your audience can recognize and trust.
Think of how often you have come across a brand for the first time on social media and “done some digging” on its profiles before deciding whether to follow or visit its website.
Your social media presence can have a major impact on shaping perceptions and sentiment toward your brand, attracting and converting new customers, building brand loyalty, recruiting new employees, and ultimately boosting your bottom line.
But it’s also a super competitive landscape, and standing out requires getting your branding right.
Your customers (and prospects) should be able to understand who your brand is, what your values are, what your message is, and why they should trust you – and this can be achieved through social media branding.
Good, consistent social media branding is among the most powerful tools for fostering brand recognition and awareness – which can be the difference between somebody choosing to buy with your brand or your competitors.
It’s key to an effective social strategy and also supports your larger marketing efforts.
How To Build Your Brand On Social Media
Building your brand on social media is a multi-layered effort that requires you to take many things into account.
Here are some of the basic steps to building a brand on social:
Know Your Audience
It may seem obvious, but knowing the ins and outs of who you’re speaking to is foundational to building a brand on social media.
You should strive to understand their demographics, interests, desires, and problems, as this will help inform how you connect with them and the type of content you should create.
Outline Your Brand Identity
As we have discussed, you should have a clear and consistent visual identity on social media. Look to your existing brand materials to help build this, but feel free to make changes where necessary.
Your social branding should be tailored to the platforms themselves and the behaviors and preferences of social media users. It will also inform what content you make and how it comes to life.
Find The Right Tone Of Voice
How does your brand communicate with those around it? Is it friendly and casual? Is its tone more professional or formal?
Does your brand use snark? Does it crack jokes? Is it focused more on entertaining customers, or keeping them informed and educated?
These are all questions you should ask yourself when defining your brand’s tone of voice on social media.
Once you’ve landed on your ideal brand tone of voice, make sure you’re infusing it in everything you do on social media – from your content to your comments.
Choose Your Platforms Wisely
It’s unlikely your audience will be active on every single social media platform, especially considering how many are out there in this day and age.
Be thoughtful about which platforms you want to leverage for your social media presence.
Once you know where your audience is most active, ask yourself whether the platform itself aligns with your brand values, story, identity, and tone of voice.
Craft A Content Strategy
Working from what you know about your audience’s interests and pain points, along with your brand identity and voice, develop a plan for the types of content you will make.
Ensure that each piece of content you create reflects the branding decisions and parameters you have set out for yourself.
I recommend experimenting with a variety of content types and formats to keep things fresh and see what resonates with your audience.
Monitor And Adjust
Speaking of resonating with your audience, building a brand on social media is a continuous process, so make sure you monitor your performance and how people react to your social media presence.
Continually analyze metrics like engagement rate, along with more qualitative indicators such as audience comments, and adjust your approach accordingly.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that a particular type of storytelling is engaging your audience best, or that one of your brand fonts isn’t legible enough on social.
Be sure to optimize your branding based on what’s working best.
8 Tips To Improve Your Social Media Branding
Now that we’ve covered the essentials, let’s dive into some tips for improving your social media branding.
1. Stay On Top Of Trends
Keeping up-to-date with the latest trends, formats, and features is key to effective social media branding.
Make sure you’re aware of the latest algorithm changes and what social audiences are focused on at any given time.
By tapping into what’s trending on social media, you can show audiences that your brand is trustworthy, authoritative, and in the know.
And by understanding how the algorithm works, you’ll ensure that people actually see your content – and engage with your brand.
2. Be Human
Here’s another suggestion that might sound obvious but is all too often overlooked: Lean into humanizing your brand.
Social is a noisy place with plenty of competition, and users aren’t interested in having their experience disrupted by unrelatable brands trying to sell them things.
By showing the human side of your brand, you’ll make it easier for your customers to build an authentic connection with you.
Some ways you can do this include commenting on trending topics, celebrating employee stories, showing behind-the-scenes content on social media, or even adjusting your tone of voice to be more conversational and natural.
3. Create A Style Guide
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: When it comes to social media branding, consistency is key – and that goes for everything from your visuals to your copy to your tone.
One incredibly helpful method for ensuring consistency across your team is by creating a social media style guide.
In your style guide, you can outline all the important need-to-knows about what you do and don’t do on social. Examples of items you might include are preferred brand fonts, brand color palette and how you should use it, words or terms you do and do not use, etc.
Once you have the first version, share it with the relevant team members so everyone is up to speed. Make sure to continue viewing it as a living document that is updated based on learnings and pivots in your branding strategy.
4. Actively Engage Your Network
The most charismatic people are those who engage those around them, ask questions, and nurture relationships – and the same is true for brands.
Start with your audience, customers, and prospects. Respond to their comments and questions, and proactively engage with their content where relevant.
Similarly, identify influencers in your industry or niche that are well-aligned with your brand’s values, and start engaging with them.
You can also do this with other brands for some fun social interaction – though I don’t typically encourage engaging too much with your competitors.
5. Focus On Unique Storytelling
Great social media content, like all great marketing content, is all about storytelling. So, to enhance your social media branding, focus on telling unique stories that only your brand can tell.
Try sharing content highlighting the backstory of your company, its mission and values, or the real people behind the brand.
Make sure the stories are authentic, as that’s what will resonate most with social audiences.
6. Optimize By Platform
As we discussed earlier, you likely won’t be on every single social platform – and each platform has its own audience demographics and expectations, content types, and nuances.
By honing in on what works on each platform and optimizing your strategy accordingly, you’ll naturally upgrade your social media branding.
Perhaps you lean into telling more employee or company stories on LinkedIn, sharing educational carousels or eye-catching images on Instagram, and focusing your video storytelling efforts on TikTok.
Whatever you decide to do, make sure you’re putting the platform and its audience first, and success will follow.
7. Leverage UGC
Sometimes, the most powerful branding moments don’t come from your brand.
User-generated content (UGC) has become extremely popular with brands on social media for a very good reason: It’s often more influential than your own branding. At the very least, it’s a forceful companion.
If your customers are creating content about your company and its products or services, you should consider amplifying it – especially if what they’re saying is strongly aligned with your values and messaging.
8. Revisit The Data
It always comes back to the data.
If you want to improve your social media branding, you must absolutely take time to gauge where you are at now, what’s working, and what isn’t.
You should be monitoring your performance on a regular basis, but perhaps you need to take a little more time to pause and do a deeper dive.
Consider A/B testing different visual or messaging approaches to see what really works, and then ask yourself whether you need to reassess your branding and tone of voice.
It’s crucial you get this right, so don’t be afraid to take the time to ask the right questions.
In Conclusion
Social media branding is a vital component of any marketing strategy – and it’s not just about the content you post, but so much more than that.
Just like your brand, your social media branding strategy should be constantly evolving to match your audience, and the current landscape of your industry.
By leveraging some of the tips we have talked about – remaining focused on your audience, maintaining a well-defined brand identity and voice, and prioritizing consistency – you can supercharge your social media branding and drive long-term success for your business.
Driving interest in your brand to enable growth is a challenge – one that is becoming even more apparent, as budgets have become tighter and buyer scrutiny is at an all-time high.
In this competitive environment, companies have capitalized on trends and messaging to drive lead interest in their offerings, mostly through a memorable brand experience.
This is a positive approach for lead nurturing. However, executing this strategy is more complex than it seems.
In this article, I present what I and fellow demand strategists have leveraged to improve lead nurturing efforts for B2B – starting with the essential step of collecting demand intelligence to drive demand for your services.
Next, I share tips on perfecting and futureproofing your lead nurturing to ensure that your strategies will be as effective in the years to come as they are now.
Collect And Analyze Demand Intelligence
The foundation for lead nurturing is intelligence.
Intelligence in this context means data on your leads’ behavior, their demographic/firmographic/technographic attributes, and your industry to drive effective demand strategies.
Below, I detail the demand intelligence process we follow at INFUSE to engage Ideal Client Profile (ICP) leads – aligned with your buyer personas – and how to collect data to enable lead nurturing processes:
Collect And Integrate Data
Firstly, you must establish avenues for generating lead nurturing data while also compiling the data you already have. This means analyzing your current tech stack, starting with your client relationship management (CRM) system.
Gather data on the leads in your pipeline from a lead nurturing perspective (i.e., the touchpoints they engage with and the pain points/challenges they relate to).
This will help you form an overview of the evolving challenges of your leads across the sales cycle and what content engages them the most.
Once you have finalized this process, you can then proceed to the next step.
Keep in mind, however, that at this point, you only have a hypothesis of what generates demand for your organization, which must be tested to inform future lead nurturing strategies.
Launch A Test Campaign Based On Your First Demand Intelligence Dataset
With your first demand intelligence dataset ready, you must create a test campaign to evaluate if you have gleaned the correct insights on the evolving pain points of your leads (and the right ways to address them).
Therefore, develop a test campaign for a specific ICP (or buyer persona) and determine a timeline (preferably quarterly) to track engagement, conversions, and your return on investment (ROI).
This is when you can test different assets, messaging, and channels to measure performance to inform your next lead nurturing campaigns.
Glean Insights And Develop Best Practices For Future Campaigns
Once your trial campaign has been finalized, create a demand intelligence report, which details:
The touchpoints leads engaged with the most – their themes, assets, and messaging.
When prospective clients entered, got “stuck” in the sales funnel (disengaged with your brand), or dropped out of the funnel entirely (unsubscribed, shared their disinterest to a salesperson, etc.).
KPIs to measure performance, particularly conversion rates, cost per lead (CPL), lead qualification (marketing or sales qualified – MQL/MQA, SQL/SQA), and sales bookings.
It is best at this phase to share this demand intelligence information with stakeholders across marketing, sales, and client success.
This alignment will help you glean further insights from each department at your organization for refining your demand intelligence and enabling better lead nurturing flows in the future.
Once you have gained a clear understanding of your leads and how to nurture them, you can then move to the next phase of establishing personalized nurturing flows for better engagement.
Establish Multiple, Personalized Lead Nurturing Flows Based On Demand Intelligence
With your demand intelligence from your first test, move forward with planning sophisticated and personalized nurturing flows for your ICPs.
How To Plan Your Lead Nurturing Flows
Most likely, you focused on engaging one ICP with your test campaign.
Now you can develop multiple personalized nurturing flows for other ICPs or fine-tune your nurturing for your primary buyer persona to create separate tracks per pain point or other market segmentation criteria (such as industry size or technographics).
Another option, if you are pursuing account-based marketing (ABM), is to adopt an account-based experience (ABX) approach, which enriches account-focused outreach and lead nurturing with user and client experience (UX and CX) best practices.
No matter which route you pursue, below are three steps to plan your lead nurturing flows for success:
Map evolving pain points per ICP (or buyer persona) and develop multiple touchpoints to engage them.
Determine who is accountable for tracking lead nurturing engagement and ensuring continuous brand interest (such as pivoting messaging if required to address different lead demands).
Enrich lead nurturing with UX and CX best practices for a user-friendly and seamless brand experience (including, if beneficial, ABX).
How To Analyze Lead Nurturing Performance
With your lead nurturing flows in action, it becomes paramount to track performance to ensure you are truly engaging your prospective clients to drive the results you expect. After all, lead nurturing requires a substantial team effort and resources from your organization.
Below are three ways to measure the performance of your lead nurturing flows:
Establish Cross-departmental KPIs And Accountability
Determine a set of KPIs that are comprehensive enough to track engagement and ROI of your lead nurturing flows yet not cumbersome to the point of overcomplicating your reporting processes.
I recommend selecting five KPIs and finessing them as you pivot future lead nurturing campaigns as needed.
Example KPIs: CPL, conversion rate (per touchpoint), marketing-influenced revenue, sales bookings, and client lifetime value (CLTV).
Collect Sales Feedback
Your salespeople are interacting with nurtured leads and can share valuable insight on the effectiveness of marketing materials in piquing their interest and driving sales conversations.
Meeting with sales midway through the campaign is beneficial for considering a pivot if needed or what to do for more success in the next campaign.
Implement Lead Scoring And Lead Qualification Processes
Scoring leads during lead nurturing flows is essential to determine if the process is generating qualified leads, as well as help sales and marketing teams prioritize prospects in their outreach.
This should be paired with qualification methods (such as determining criteria for leads to be marketing, MQL, or sales qualified, SQL) to help track the number of leads being nurtured into qualified prospects for the organization.
How To Optimize And Pivot Lead Nurturing Flows
Recognizing the optimal timeframe to adjust your lead nurturing processes is crucial for conserving both time and resources. This entails enhancing your nurturing approach to better cater to your target audience.
Ideally, it is best to wait for the end of a cycle (such as a quarter) to consider optimizations or lead nurturing campaign pivots.
However, if the budget is an issue, consider pivoting an ongoing program to ensure the best ROI and avoid wasting marketing dollars.
The key is to identify the signs of nurturing success/failure early on.
Since lead nurturing is a collaborative effort, all optimizations and pivots must be actioned across teams in the organization to ensure their implementation and effectiveness.
Signs that warrant optimizations or pivots include:
Most touchpoints are ignored.
Prospective clients mention different pain points than those explored in your nurturing flows.
Leads disengage when contacted by a salesperson.
There are other potential signs – however, these are core indicators that your lead nurturing flows are most likely targeting the wrong leads, or require more aligned messaging with their demands.
In some cases, you can simply action a “quick fix” optimization to your nurture, such as updating the messaging of your touchpoints.
However, depending on the response from your leads, it is best to action a pivot for a brand-new lead nurturing strategy.
Five steps to pivot your lead nurturing:
Prioritize a lead nurturing flow and pause it. Analyze engagement, then relaunch when all issues have been resolved. Continue until all underperforming nurtures have been addressed.
Track performance closely for the initial three touchpoints to evaluate if engagement has improved.
Continue if engagement has improved. If not, revisit your initial touchpoints and update their messaging and which pain points they address.
Update remaining touchpoints accordingly if the performance of the initial three touches is satisfactory.
Monitor your pivoted campaign and glean insights from sales of their conversations with leads to optimize future campaigns.
Futureproof Your Lead Nurturing
To ensure that your lead nurturing strategy is futureproofed, you must regularly collect demand intelligence, analyze campaign performance, and keep track of evolving trends in the market and changing buyer behavior.
Lead nurturing is about building relationships through relevance, and keeping an eye on changes in your industry is the best way to position your brand as timely and valuable.
Inspire Yourself With Thought Leadership To Anticipate Evolving Demands
Following key voices in your space can help you anticipate evolving demands from your buyers, as well as themes to explore in your lead nurturing assets and touchpoints.
Leveraging social listening tools, tracking hashtags, as well as following notable C-Suite leaders at competitors and major enterprises in your niche is a way to discover key information for futureproofing your lead nurturing efforts.
If possible, make sure your marketing and sales team members also follow these online conversations.
Leverage Intent Data For Timely Insights On Lead Behavior
When utilized correctly (and contextually), intent data can track evolving buyer needs and their interest in resolving challenges (which can subsequently be related to your brand and its offerings).
That being said, sadly, intent data is often misinterpreted as “ready-to-buy” signals, which they are not.
Intent data signals interest, which means prospective buyers who demonstrate intent should be nurtured more closely with touchpoints that further increase their interest in your offerings.
If anything, consider intent data as a way to prioritize lead nurturing efforts on leads who, if engaged correctly, could move on quicker to a sales conversation compared to the rest.
Utilize Surveys And Deep Knowledge Of Your Buyers
Surveying your audience is a way to gain knowledge of future problems they will face as buyers and collect data on their current challenges.
Surveys are important to inform marketing and sales efforts.
When it comes to relevance to lead nurturing, questions on media consumption preferences, future goals, and industry challenges can inform themes for touchpoints as well as the vocabulary to use in your messaging.
Key Takeaways
When crafting your lead nurturing strategy, keep these takeaways in mind to ensure you are on the right path:
Collect And Leverage Demand Intelligence
Make sure that your lead nurturing strategy is supported by comprehensive demand intelligence, as well as insights from intent data and sales outreach that will enable successful campaigns in the future.
Personalize At Scale With Unique Nurturing Flows Per ICP
Leverage user experience best practices (such as UX, CX, and ABX) to enrich lead nurturing flows per ICP (or buyer persona). Engage your buyers with touchpoints that stand out and encourage active engagement.
Futureproof Your Lead Nurturing With Methods That Will Inform Your Demand Intelligence
Follow thought leaders in your space and leverage social listening to track the evolving needs of your leads to inform future lead nurturing efforts.
As platforms evolve, so should our strategies. No one knows that better than Brian Kearney, a prominent content creator who gained over 100k Instagram followers in about a year.
Brian joined me on the SEJShow to dig into his viral success and what it’s taught him about discoverability, co-branding with authenticity, and how a unique background can make for some of the best content.
From harnessing the ever-evolving algorithms of digital channels to leveraging the nuance of relatable humor, Brian shared how his journey has culminated in an unparalleled ability to craft resonant content — and how it can be applied to your strategic success.
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Connect with Brian Kearney:
Based in Boston, Brian Kearney started as a registered nurse, later transitioning into the healthcare and startup sectors. He also ventured into politics and volunteered for local initiatives. As a content creator on Instagram and TikTok, Brian is known for his relatable humor and consistent content quality. His diverse experiences highlight his adaptability and passion-driven journey.
Google Trends is a Google tool that offers a wealth of information that is useful for SEO and content creation.
From real-time search trends to related queries and category insights, Google Trends offers marketers plenty of opportunities to hone their strategy and optimize for better performance.
This article will act as an in-depth guide to Google Trends, covering everything you need to know to leverage it for SEO and content marketing.
You’ll learn what it is, how it’s different from other keyword tools, and what methods you can use to get the most out of Google Trends, so you can grow your traffic and get ahead.
Let’s get started.
What Is Google Trends?
Google Trends is a tool for analyzing search queries that shows search trends over a period of time, depicted in a graph.
It offers the ability to compare up to five keyword search terms and to tune the results by geographic location, topic, time period, and search surface (image, news, shopping, and video).
There are four selectable ways to customize the keyword data:
Geographic location (by individual country or worldwide).
Topic categories (25 categories plus all categories simultaneously).
Four different search surfaces (image, news, shopping, YouTube).
Time.
Time-Based Data
Keyword search trends can further be segmented by the following eight time settings:
The past hour.
Past four hours.
Past day.
Past seven days.
Past 30 days.
Past 90 days.
Past five years.
2004 – present.
How Is Google Trends Data Different From Keyword Search Volumes?
Google Trends is different from third-party keyword research tools in that it lacks keyword search volume data.
It shows the number of search queries made in percentages on a scale of 0 to 100.
Third-party paid SEO tools do show keyword volumes, but they are only estimates.
Generally, third-party reporting tools purchase data from other providers and then create statistical estimates based on that data. The data providers tend to be software companies that collect anonymous search data from their users.
Google Trends data is derived from a sampling of Google’s actual search data, making it the most accurate keyword search data available. Google Trends uses sampling because the actual volume of data numbers is in the billions and is too much to process.
However, Google reassures that the sampling is representative of actual search volume.
“While only a sample of Google searches are used in Google Trends, this is sufficient because we handle billions of searches per day.
Providing access to the entire data set would be too large to process quickly.
By sampling data, we can look at a dataset representative of all Google searches, while finding insights that can be processed within minutes of an event happening in the real world.”
Although Google Trends doesn’t provide keyword volume data, the tool does provide keyword volume data expressed as a percentage, with 100% representing the highest amount of traffic for the given period of time.
Known search volumes can be obtained by selecting keyword phrases from Google’s trending searches report, which can itself be tuned to specific geographic areas.
Thus, comparing keywords from the trending searches report against those with unknown search volumes will show an accurate representation of actual keyword volume.
How Do I Find Trending Items On Google Trends?
There are two ways to identify trending searches: through Google’s “trending now” webpage and through the Google Trends Explore tool.
Trending Now
Trending now shows the top twenty daily search trends for the current day.
One can click a navigation button to see realtime search trends:
Screenshot from Google Trends, August 2023
Next, one can select the appropriate country:
Screenshot from Google Trends, August 2023
Then select the appropriate category:
Screenshot from Google Trends, August 2023
The available categories to choose from are:
Business.
Entertainment.
Health.
Sci/Tech.
Sports.
Top Stories.
Trending now shows actual top trending keywords. The keywords that are displayed are selected by the Google Trends algorithm.
Explore Google Trends By Time
The second way to find trending keywords is to use the Explore Google Trends tool and set the time period to something relatively recent.
The best time periods to select in order to explore trending searches are:
The past hour.
Past four hours.
Past day.
Past seven days.
Screenshot from Google Trends, August 2023
Something to keep in mind with this second method is that one has to select keywords to explore.
This method will show whether or not those keywords are trending.
How To Use Google Trends For SEO & Marketing
There are many ways to manipulate the various filters to extract actionable search query data.
One can even use Google Trends to discover new keyword phrases to target.
1. Use Google Trends Search Operators
Google Trends responds to search operators, which change the data that is shown.
There are four search operators:
Quotation marks: ” ” Usage: “keyword1 keyword2” This shows keyword data for exact match of the keywords in the same order included within the quotation marks. The above example shows data exclusively for keyword1 keyword2.
Plus sign: + Usage: keyword1 + keyword2 This shows keyword data for search phrases with one or the other keyword. The above example will show data for keyword1 or keyword2.
Minus sign: – Usage: keyword1 -keyword2 This shows searches for keyword phrases that include the given keyword, but exclude phrases containing the keyword indicated with the minus sign. The above example will show results for all keyword phrases that include the word keyword1 but do not contain keyword2.
No Search Operators Usage: keyword1 keyword2 Using no search operators shows search interest in keyword phrases that contain the given keywords in any order.
There are two general ways to look at the keyword data: stretched across over longer periods of time and viewing search interest by shorter time periods.
Long Period Trends
You can set Google Trends to show you the traffic trends stretching back to 2004. This is valuable for showing you the audience trends.
Upward long-term trends: If a trend is consistently going up, this means you need to focus energy on creating content for this trend.
Downward long-term trends: If the trend line is steadily moving down, it may signal that audience content consumption is changing.
Spikes that vary with regularity: Spikes in searches that come in regular intervals may indicate seasonal patterns to search queries.
For example, review this five-year trend for WordPress the search term, WordPress the software, and WordPress.org:
Screenshot from Google Trends, August 2023
There’s a clear downward trend for WordPress in two variations, while the third keyword, WordPress.org, has low search volume overall.
The downward trend is more pronounced when viewed from a longer period than five years:
Screenshot from Google Trends, August 2023
The downward trend extends to related phrases such as:
WordPress themes.
WordPress plugin.
WordPress hosting.
There are many reasons why search trends go down. It can be that people have lost interest, the interest went somewhere else, or the trend is obsolete.
The digital camera product category is a good example of a downward spiral caused by a product losing search interest because another product disrupted demand.
The digital camera caused the downturn in searches for traditional analog cameras.
The iPhone started the downward spiral of the digital camera.
Knowing which way the wind is blowing could help a content marketer or publisher understand when it’s time to bail on a topic or product category and to pivot to upward-trending ones.
Google Trends has two great features, one called “related topics” and the other called “related queries.”
Topics
Related topics show up when investigating one keyword phrase. It doesn’t show when comparing multiple keyword phrases.
Screenshot from Google Trends, August 2023
Related topics are search queries that share a concept.
Identifying related topics that are trending upwards is useful for learning how an audience or consumer demand is shifting.
This information can, in turn, provide ideas for content generation or new product selections.
According to Google:
“Related Topics
Users searching for your term also searched for these topics.
You Can View by the Following Metrics
Top – The most popular topics. Scoring is on a relative scale where a value of 100 is the most commonly searched topic and a value of 50 is a topic searched half as often as the most popular term, and so on.
Rising – Related topics with the biggest increase in search frequency since the last time period.
Results marked “Breakout” had a tremendous increase, probably because these topics are new and had few (if any) prior searches.”
Related Queries
The description of related queries is similar to that of the related topics.
Top queries are generally the most popular searches. Rising queries are queries that are becoming popular.
Screenshot from Google Trends, September 2022
The data from rising queries are great for staying ahead of the competition.
4. Short-Term Trends Can Bring Massive Traffic
Viewing keyword trends in the short view, such as the 90-day or even 30-day view, can reveal valuable insights for capitalizing on rapidly changing search trends.
There is a ton of traffic in Google Discover as well as in Google News.
Google Discover shows websites on topics related to user interests. This tends to show recently published sites, but it also shows evergreen content, too.
Google News is of the moment in terms of current events.
Sites that target either of those traffic channels benefit from knowing what the short-term trends are.
A benefit of viewing short-term trends (30 days and 90 days) is that certain days of the week stand out when those searches are popular.
Knowing which days of the week interest spikes for a given topic can help in planning when to publish certain kinds of topics, so the content is right there when the audience is searching for it.
5. Keywords By Category
Google Trends has the functionality to narrow keyword search query inventory according to category topics.
Screenshot from Google Trends, August 2023
This provides more accurate keyword data.
The Categories tab is important because it refines your keyword research to the correct context.
If your keyword context is automobiles, then it makes sense to appropriately refine Google Trends to show just the data for the context of auto.
The category to choose for the topic of automobiles could either be Shopping or Autos & Vehicles.
By narrowing the Google Trends data by category, you will be able to find more accurate information related to the topics you are researching for content within the correct context.
6. Identify Keyword Data By Geography
Google Trends keyword information by geographic location can be used for determining what areas are the best to outreach to for site promotion or for tailoring the content to specific regions.
For example, if certain kinds of products are popular in Washington D.C. and Texas, it makes sense to aim promotional activity and localized content to those areas.
In fact, it might be useful to focus link building promotional activities in those areas first since the interest is higher in those parts of the country.
Keyword popularity information by region is valuable for link building, content creation, content promotion, and pay-per-click.
Localizing content (and promoting that content) can make it more relevant to the people interested in that content (or product).
Google ranks pages according to who it’s most relevant, so incorporating geographic nuance into your content can help it rank for the most people.
7. Target Search Intents With Search Types
Google Trends allows you to further refine the keyword data by segmenting it by the type of search the data comes from – the search type.
Refining your Google Trends research by the type of search allows you to remove the “noise” that might be making your keyword research fuzzy and help it become more accurate and meaningful.
Google Trends data can be refined by:
Google Shopping.
Image search.
News search.
Web search.
YouTube search.
Screenshot from Google Trends, August 2023
YouTube search is a fantastic way to identify search trends for content with the word “how” because many people search on YouTube using phrases with the words “how” in them.
Although these are searches conducted on YouTube, the trends data is useful because it shows what users are looking for.
A Google Trends search for how, what, where, when, why, and who shows that search queries beginning with the word “how” are by far the most popular on YouTube.
Keyword “How” Is Popular On YouTube
Screenshot from Google Trends, August 2023
Drilling down a bit, I did the same search with a little change to see what that “how” keyword is about.
I swapped out the keyword “how” for the exact match keyword of “how to,” which will show the number of users searching with phrases containing the keywords “how to” in that exact order.
Keyword “How To” Is Popular On YouTube
Screenshot from Google Trends, August 2023
The search trend patterns in Google News are significantly different from those on YouTube.
Audiences, when searching, want to know the “what” and “how” types of information in Google News.
Keyword “What” Is Popular On Google News Search
Knowing that the words “what” or “who” are most relevant to a topic can be useful for crafting an article.
These are examples of how to dig around in Google Trends to find insights, and it doesn’t mean that every news article should be about “what” or “how.”
There are many hidden insights about how people search that can be discovered by selecting the search type and the category from the drop-down menus.
For example, I have found that YouTube search shows more relevant “related topics” and “related queries” data than researching with web search selected.
Give the search type selections a try because the information provided may be more accurate and actionable than the potentially more noisy web search version.
Unlock The Power Of Google Trends For SEO
Google Trends offers many insights about how users search that are useful for SEO and content planning purposes.
There’s a small learning curve to using it, but it’s not that hard to learn and become an expert.
Give Google Trends a try and learn more about how audiences are searching.
