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How to Identify the Knowledge Gap in Your Niche and Use It to Boost Your ROI
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SEPTEMBER 2017
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Have you identified your content niche? As we were showing in a previous post, niche content marketing is a great way to stand out from your competitors, justify your rates, and simplify your work. However, it may no longer be enough, especially if your niche is highly competitive. This brings us to one of the best-kept content marketing secrets: how you can take the lead of your niche, win over your target audience, and maximize your return on investment. The solution is simple: find the knowledge gap in your niche, and exploit it.
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How to Identify the Knowledge Gap in Your Niche
What methods have you used to create your content strategy so far: have you monitored your competitors’ activity, organized surveys, and analyzed your audience’s feedback? These are old but effective content marketing secrets and will provide you with all the information you need. For example, by monitoring your competition, you can find out not only what topics they cover and what they are best at, but also what topics they neglect.
By monitoring your audience’s feedback, you can find out what your readers are interested in, what they like and don’t like, and which topics received the most attention, both on your website and on the social media. You can then create other posts on the same topics but from different angles, or bring your old posts up to date and support them with new, more conclusive data.
By working closely with your customer service, you can find out what questions buyers ask and provide answers through your posts. You can also use tools and websites like Buzzsumo to find out what others are posting on specific topics and, implicitly, which topics remain uncovered.
None of the methods above is infallible, but, used together, they can all help you come up with new, valuable topics, meant to fill the knowledge gap in your niche. Now that you have a general idea on what type of content your audience needs and appreciates, you need to learn to create it, and this means uncovering new content marketing secrets.
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How to Exploit the Knowledge Gap in Your Niche
Knowing the topics to cover in your posts is not enough. You still need to deliver unique valuable content, in a catchy form, and turn readers into buyers. Here are three simple steps you should follow in order to succeed:
1. Approach Uncovered or Less Covered Topics from a New, Unique Angle
As Neil Patel and Kathryn Aragon point out in the 5th Chapter of their Advanced Content Marketing Guide, you need to find a unique angle, a point (the major idea related to your topic), and a slant (your specific point of view, the difference your post makes). This way, even if your competitors cover the same topics, you can still provide unique, interesting ideas that will attract and win over your readers.
For example, if you were selling a vacuum cleaner, a general topic would be how vacuum cleaners work. A great point could be that vacuum cleaners can be used for more than cleaning one’s home or commercial space. The slant could give away the other unusual purposes a vacuum cleaner could serve, or even focus on one purpose and teach the audience how to pursue it.
2. Write Data-Driven, Unique, Unforgettable Content
Remember that the attention your posts will receive depends a great deal on how well-written they are. As we explained in a previous post on the basics of building creative, compelling, impactful content, your goals should be to stir interest, draw attention with stunning visuals, and provide value by presenting useful information in a simple language.
You can stir interest and even convince people to redistribute your post with catchy, emotional headlines. This KissMetrics post should teach you how to create them. By embedding photos, videos, and graphics in your posts, you will draw your audience’s attention. By using bullets, numbered lists, and catchy subheadings, you will convince your audience to keep reading ‘till the end.
Keep in mind, though, that getting people to read your posts ‘till the end is not everything. The final impression your posts leave, whether or not they convince your audience to return, browse, and buy your products or services matters just as much, or even more. In fact, writing captivating content that converts is one of the best-kept content marketing secrets.
You could keep people on your page with jokes, for example, but your sense of humor will not be enough to convince them to trust you with their money. If you want their money, you need to show them you are a professional, better than everyone else in your line of business, committed to product/service quality and customer satisfaction.
Only data-driven content can offer that. As Neil Pateil emphasizes on his blog, the key to writing data-driven content is to do thorough research, and use the findings of your research strategically. It is important to find out relevant facts for the topic you wish to cover, but you can’t just stuff your posts with data.
You need to follow the point and slant we were talking about above, and only use relevant data to prove your point. This will show your audience that you are serious about your work, you learn from the best, you know what you are doing, and you do not mind proving your point, rather than expecting everyone to take it for granted.
Finally, you need to guide your audience to the actions you want them to take with convincing calls to action. We’ve already provided useful and easy to follow tips on how to insert your sales message into your content in a previous post.
3. Never Stop Learning and Uncovering New Content Marketing Secrets
As you’ve probably learnt on your own by now, the way to success is long and filled with obstacles. The way down, however, is really short and straightforward. If you fail to live up to your audience’s expectations on one occasion, they turn their back on you, most of the times forever.
This means you cannot afford to lose track of your goals and sleep on your success. You need to learn, learn, and learn, and prove yourself again and again. Times change, businesses change, and unless you bring something new to the table periodically, both in terms of products/services and in terms of content, you won’t survive.
Challenges to Identifying the Knowledge Gap in Your Niche and Filling It
Unfortunately, learning, applying what you’ve learned, and improving your products and/or services takes a lot of time and attention, too much to allow you to write the data-driven, impactful content that will cover the knowledge gap in your niche. However, without such content, you cannot build and engage an audience, your target audience won’t know you exist, and your sales will never skyrocket. What can you do? Outsource!
At Iris Content, we have writers with experience in most industries and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. One of them will surely be able to write the data-driven, impactful content that will fill the knowledge gap in your niche. Contact us now, and let us use the best-kept content marketing secrets to help you maximize your ROI!
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Want to learn more how to leverage your online content for better results? Our newest eBook has the answers. Learn how to become a content superhero with just a few smart tricks from this imaginative collection of content marketing tips. Order one content piece today and get the eBook for free.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_divider color=”#cc4315″ show_divider=”on” divider_style=”groove” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”on” /][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Blog post main Section” fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off” transparent_background=”off” background_color=”FDF3E7″ allow_player_pause=”off” inner_shadow=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” padding_mobile=”off” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” make_equal=”off” use_custom_gutter=”off”][et_pb_row make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” padding_mobile=”off” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][et_pb_image src=”https://iriscontent.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/aNNIE-dm.jpg” show_in_lightbox=”off” url_new_window=”off” use_overlay=”off” sticky=”off” align=”right” force_fullwidth=”off” always_center_on_mobile=”on” border_style=”solid” _builder_version=”3.0.67″ /][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_team_member name=”Annie Ianko” position=”Chief Content Officer” animation=”off” background_layout=”light” facebook_url=”https://www.facebook.com/IrisWebContent/” twitter_url=”https://twitter.com/Iris_Content” border_style=”solid” custom_css_main_element=”box-shadow: 0 0 20px rgba(0,0,0,.1);||” _builder_version=”3.0.67″]
Annie has 20 years of experience as an editor and content creator and manager. With work in television and written media, she has dedicated her past 10 years to learning the ropes of online content creation, from writing to editing, from SEO to content management.
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