Content marketing, as its name implies, is a marketing form that creates, publishes and shares valuable free content for online target audiences to attract and transform potential customers. In short, it is to attract specific customers with high-quality content.

The first thing we need to make clear is - to whom do we write articles, that is, who is the audience of our products?

Only when we know who our audience is can we give the right medicine. Understand what the customer likes, what the customer focuses on, and what the customer questions about the product.

After determining the audience of the product, we can find the right topic for the audience. Through my own work experience, I have summarized the following practical methods to share with you:

1. Search engine

There are tens of billions of searches in the world every day, and millions of people go to Google or other search engines to find answers every day if they have questions. If you want to know what people care about most about products, just go to the search engine and have a look

2. Keyword research

Keyword search data, to a large extent, can reflect the user's search intention, as well as the problems faced. Through the research of keywords, we can know the interests of customers and the problems. Here we recommend that you use kwfinder, Google keyword planner, and ubersuggest to research keywords and topics.

3. Production and sales personnel

The production personnel are the people who know the product best, while the less accepting personnel are the people who know the user's needs best. From them, you can learn about the most concerned topics of customers in the production and sales process, and they will also provide the most comprehensive and professional answers. They are not only good sources of topics, but also good producers of content.

4. Q & a platform (quora, Yahoo answer, reddit...)

Quora and Yahoo answer, similar to Zhihu in China, are a question and answer platform. It's a collection of people's questions about all kinds of things from all over the world. Where you can easily understand the customer's concerns about your industry and products.

5. Relevant industry forums

Forum is an ancient way of communication in the Internet world, but it still plays an important role. People will share all kinds of news, videos, pictures and information. The relevant niche industry forums gather relevant people in the industry, and what they talk about is also closely related to the products. Forums are definitely a good place to find topics.

Google search: [your industry] forum you can find the industry forum, eg: [food] Forum

6. Research competitors: F & Q

Learning from competitors is undoubtedly one of the simplest and most effective ways. Usually, competitors' websites will have FAQ part F & Q. by studying this part of the questions of top competitors in the industry, you can easily find topics. The next thing you need to do is try to sort out more detailed and professional answers than competitors.

7. Industry publications: hot topics, titles, comments

Find the authoritative professional magazines, newspapers and news websites in the industry, learn the latest industry information above, as well as the articles with the highest participation, and see what topics and titles they are looking for. Also note the comments below.

8. Industry historical statistics

Make full use of the company's accumulated industry and customer data, through data analysis, understand customer needs. Of course, this needs to be done with sufficient data. We can clearly tell our customers that "80% of customers choose XX products." although these data are anonymous, they are really valuable for customers.

9. Social media: fans, groups, hashtag, comments

When it comes to topic research, the most important thing is social media. As the saying goes, "where there are people, there will be Jianghu". Of course, as far as social media is concerned, where there are people, there will be topics. There are billions of people on Facebook, twitter, instagram and Youtube. What they talk about every day is the source of your topic.

10. Brainstorming + data support