The digital landscape is evolving at an unprecedented rate. In 2023, a robust content marketing campaign is every brand’s golden ticket to maintaining a stellar online presence.
However, creating relevant, engaging, value-added, and exciting content that meets your audience’s expectations and requirements isn’t exactly a walk in the park. At some point, you’ll feel like there’s no more ground to cover.
This isn’t necessarily true. Once you start identifying and filling content gaps like a seasoned pro, you’ll give your audience the content it wants and improve your SERP rankings. It’s like feeding two birds with one scone.
In this blog, we’ll walk you through the right way to identify and fill content gaps in 2023. Let’s begin!
Start with a Content Audit
In order to identify content gaps, you must have a good understanding of the content you’ve already created. A content audit is a great way to check this box off the list. It’s a comprehensive review of all your existing content. You’ll be able to determine what’s missing and what needs to be updated.
To conduct a content audit, create a spreadsheet or document that lists all your existing content, including blogs, social media posts, videos, and any other type of content. Follow this up by analysing each piece of content to determine its effectiveness, relevance, and usefulness. You can also use tools like Google Analytics to gather data on your content’s performance.
Once the audit is complete, you’ll have a clear understanding of the content that’s already up on your site, the gaps that need to be filled, and the content that needs to be revised/refreshed. This information will help you fine-tune your upcoming content marketing strategy and bring new ideas to the table that haven’t been covered before.
Recommended Read: 5 Guaranteed Ways to Find New Content Ideas for Your Industry
Analyse Your Audience
You can’t create compelling content without understanding your audience to a tee, including their requirements, pain points, goals, and interests. This information can be collected from your website analytics, social media, and customer feedback. Once you’re on the right track, you’ll be able to create content that meets their expectations and answers their questions.
To analyse your audience, start by creating buyer personas (fictional representations of your ideal customers). This approach will help you understand their behaviour patterns and pain points. You can create buyer personas using information from customer surveys, website analytics, and social media insights.
Once the buyer personas are ready, use them to structure your content creation strategy. Your content should address your target audience’s preferences. At the same time, keep your audience’s dislikes in mind. This will help you create content that resonates with your audience, keeps them engaged, and prompts positive action. When people enjoy what they read, they’re more likely to buy from you. The outcome? Impressive conversions.
Conduct Keyword Research
If you want to identify content gaps, keyword research is non-negotiable. It involves researching the words and phrases people use when searching for information about your business. By identifying the keywords relevant to your business, you can create content that targets these specific search terms and attracts more traffic to your website.
To conduct keyword research, brainstorm a list of keywords relevant to your business. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner to determine the search volume and competition for each keyword. Google Keyword Planner is a great starting point. However, it lacks the comprehensiveness and robustness of a professional keyword research tool.
At TocToc, we use a cutting-edge program to fetch the highest-ranking keywords for your local industry. We also take trends, news, pop culture references, holidays, events, and other happenings into consideration. This helps us craft a power-packed keyword research plan that elevates your rankings to the top Google SERPs.
Once you have a keyword list ready to go, start brainstorming topics around the keywords. The more specific you get, the better. This is why comprehensiveness is the most important box you need to check off the list when performing keyword research. If you have a long keyword list in front of you, you’ll have more to work with. Come up with exciting ideas, think outside the box, and wow your audience!
Recommended Read: How to Create Evergreen Content & Improve Your SERP Rankings
Analyse Your Competition
Make sure you have a good grasp of what your competitors are up to. This information can be gathered from their website, social media, and other marketing channels. By analysing your competition, you can create content that fills the gaps in their strategy and positions your business as a leader in your industry.
To analyse your competition:
- Start by creating a list of your top competitors.
- Visit their website and social media profiles to gather information about their content strategy.
- Look for gaps in their content and identify areas where you can provide better, more comprehensive information.
- Once you’ve identified the gaps in your competition’s content, use that information to create a content plan.
- Write content that fills said gaps and provides greater value to your audience.
Create a Content Calendar
A content calendar is a schedule that specifies the topics, formats, and publishing dates for your content. Creating a content calendar is an excellent way to stay organised and consistently create content that meets your audience’s requirements.
Start by identifying the topics and formats that are most relevant to your audience. Use the data from your content audit, audience analysis, and keyword research to stay on track.
Once you’ve identified your topics and formats, create a publishing schedule that outlines when each piece of content will be published. Use a tool like Google Sheets to manage your content calendar and track deadlines.
A content calendar will help you create high-quality content every time. This is a great way to attract more traffic to your website, generate leads, and position your business as a leader in your industry.
Recommended Read: What Is Content Freshness & Why Is It So Important for Your Rankings?
Monitor and Measure the Results
You cannot identify content gaps without understanding which content performs well and which doesn’t. This information will help you tweak your content creation strategy and fill any gaps in your content.
To monitor and measure your content marketing results, use tools like Google Analytics and social media analytics to gather engagement, traffic, and conversion data for your content. Use this data to identify patterns and trends in your content’s performance.
Stay Up to Date with Industry Trends
You must be aware of what’s happening in your industry and what your audience is interested in at all times. To stay up to date with industry trends, follow industry publications, attend conferences and webinars, and participate in industry forums and social media groups. This will help you identify content gaps and create content that meets the evolving needs of your audience.
Build a Power-Packed Content Marketing Campaign with TocToc
If you want to identify and fill content gaps like a seasoned pro, turn to the pros themselves! At TocToc, we craft actionable content marketing campaigns for clients across Sydney and Canberra. We specialise in article writing, blog writing, eBook writing, and web copywriting.
Our services also include search engine optimisation (SEO), email marketing, app development, and web design and development. Contact us to get started!
