How To Tell What Readers Want & Give It To Them

Image generated by AI via ideogram.ai

Originally published for new and learning content marketers in Search Engine Journal on April 15, 2021, but still very much holds true today.

The O’Jays 1975 hit single “Give The People What They Want!” should be the theme song and guiding mantra of every dedicated content marketer. After all, the primary focus of content marketing done right, and SEO for that matter, is creating comprehensive answers to the questions consumers are asking to fulfill their every want and need. Just as the main goal and promise of search engines is to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time when a search is conducted. This is why you’ve likely read search engines, like Google, are continually honing their algorithms and leveraging sophisticated artificial intelligence to better interpret and understand searcher intent and to deliver on their promise.

So, naturally, the question for many content marketers becomes “How can I tell what readers want and give it to them?” The foundation for identifying what content to create starts with keyword research as keywords remain the backbone of content, but there are several effective methods for determining what your readers want. Here are a few tips, tactics and tools to consider adding to your arsenal.

Validate Who and Where Your Readers Are

Before you begin figuring out what readers want, you have to make sure you recognize who they are and what makes them tick. One method of audience identification is persona development. Personas are important as they can help to ensure you are creating content tailor to the specific needs of your human audience. Create detailed profiles of your target readers, perhaps based on a few existing readers you can readily identify. Give them names, faces and personalities. Include demographic and psychographic information. Look to identify their key buying motivations, challenges and basic needs. By creating personas, you can start to tailor content based on in-depth assumptions about what topics, tone and types of content will appeal to your readers at different stages of their buying journey.

Personas can also help you figure out where your readers consume content and when the best times are to serve content they are more likely to engage with. Having identified where your readers are and before you share too much content, you will want to spend time establishing and building a trusted audience. “If you build it, they will come,” does not necessarily apply to online content. Rather, an online audience needs to be developed over time. A good place to start is following and liking/sharing relevant content from other authoritative content authors and influencers in hopes of reciprocity for your own relevant, high quality content over time.

You can create your own persona templates for each of your audience members in a simple doc or spreadsheet. There are also several good online tools and templates available, like Xtensio, Lucidspark or Miro to help guide you.

Ask Them What They Want

Another common sense way to determine what content your audience wants is to simply ask them. Assuming you’ve established a level of trust with your readers and they see you as having some authority on the topics you wish to address with them, you can certainly poll your audience to find out what specific topics or information they would be most interested in consuming. Reach out to your audience via email or social media with short reader surveys and questions on the following:

• what key topics would you like to learn more about
• what is your preferred content format — text, video, audio
• when are you most like to consume content
• what is your preferred channel for receiving and consuming content
• how often do you want to hear from us

Consumers are being inundated with content on a daily basis, so taking the time to ask them what they want and then tailoring your content and timing accordingly will more likely result in an engaged audience.

Again, a simple survey can be delivered as a document or via email, but there are several excellent online survey tools available, many of which offer marketing specific templates.

Review Your Website Visitor and Search Data

Website analytics can be another excellent source for validating your customer profiles and understanding what content and topics are most popular with your readers.

Demographics

Google Analytics, for example, provides a basic demographic breakdown of your website visitors against which you can compare and/or enrich the personas you’ve developed. However, keep in mind these demographics may only apply to a subsection of your visitors based on how and where Google is able to collect this data.

Image source (https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2799357?hl=en)

These demographics are used to generate seven standard reports, which can likewise be used to validate your readership assumptions:

• Demographics Overview: The distribution of Sessions (or other key metrics) on your property by age group and gender. Sessions is the default key metric. You can also use % New Sessions, Avg. Session Duration, Bounce Rate, or Pages per Session.
• Age: Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions metrics broken down by age group. When you drill into an age group, you see the breakdown by gender, then by interest. Ages below 18 are not included in the data.
• Gender: Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions metrics broken down by gender. When you drill into a gender, you see the breakdown by age group, then by interest.
• Interests Overview: The distribution of Sessions (or other key metrics) on your property by the top-10 interests in Affinity Categories, In-Market Segments, and Other Categories.
• Affinity Categories (reach): Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions metrics broken down by Affinity Categories.
• In-Market Segments: Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions metrics broken down by In-Market Segments.
• Other Categories: Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions metrics broken down by Other Categories.

These demographic dimensions can also be used to create custom segments and reports for the ongoing monitoring of specific groups within your audience.

Engagement with Existing Content

The other obvious analytics data useful to understanding your readers’ preferences is specific landing page views and engagement metrics like time on page, scroll depth and bounce rate.

In Google Analytics Behaviour Reports you can quickly see which are your most popular pages. Identifying which specific pages and content types on your website are the most viewed and/or your viewers spend the most time on can help signal trends in topic and format preferences. Further, you can monitor visitor paths to see which pages influence others or your readers are drawn to. Look to create complementary content pages with more detailed answers to questions your audience may have, which should in turn link to or from your existing content to further build your authority on a specific topic.

Google Search Console Queries

Google Search Console Queries found under Performance is an invaluable resource for understanding what keywords your website has received impressions and/or click throughs for.

Specifically, this report details impressions, clicks, average position and click through rate tied to keywords your readers have searched for. You will want to pay attention for any keywords and phrases in line with your target topics, as well as any which represent gaps in the content you’ve created or have planned.

Internal Search Data

If your website offers a search function, you should regularly mine its usage data to see what content your visitors are looking for upon reaching your site. Specifically, note any question-based searches and ensure you have comprehensive content to answer those questions. Many internal search tools or third-party add-ons provide content analytics, which enable you to quickly identify gaps, content rankings and deliver the right content to the right readers at the right time just as any good search engine should.

Conduct External Research

Beyond looking at your existing audience and content, there are many excellent content research tools available, such as Buzzsumo, Ahrefs and Semrush, which crawl and index the entire Web for keywords and content. You can leverage these to identify content trends, suggested topics and even the specific questions people are asking tied to specific keywords, domains or online influencers. With this information in hand you can craft content in line with those trends and suggestions or in-depth answers to the questions being posed. Most of these platforms offer free trials through which you can quickly determine how significant your content opportunities and/or challenges may be and then decide what value they can deliver over the long term.

What Content Is Your Competition Giving Them

Assuming you’ve identified who your online competition is (i.e. those competitors who consistently create quality content, which ranks for target keywords you’ve chosen) and they have done their research, you should review and analyze what content they’ve created, where they’ve distributed it and what, if any, engagement it’s received.

You can begin by grouping the content items you discover under topical groups and then determining what if any content gaps exist, which you can take advantage of.

Take stock of which content types they share on which channels and how often. One of the benefits of publicly accessible social media is the ability to see likes, shares and comments associated with content your competitors have published.

Always Be Listening

Speaking of social media, social listening tools can likewise provide a wealth of content information and guidance on your own strategy. You can use tools like Brandwatch, Meltwater or Agorapulse to monitor your target keywords for social mentions and content suggestions. As with competitors’ content, you can gauge the level of engagement each type and piece of content garners to determine relevance and value. Relevant discovered content items can be curated and/or expanded upon.

Ask for Engagement and Feedback

If you firmly believe, as you should, you are creating high value content for a mass audience, don’t be afraid to ask your readers for feedback and validation via comments and sharing. To this end, also be sure to make it easy for your readers to share by including sharing mechanisms (i.e. share buttons or “Click to Tweet” links) and calls to action within your content. This will both help to validate how engaging your content is and enhance your authority.

Measure and React

With each piece of content you create and distribute, circle back to your social media and website analytics to validate its relevance and relative value to your readers. Again, pay specific attention to which types, topics and channels receive the most engagement. Further, note which, if any, links have been clicked and/or calls to action have been taken to signal where your readers are interested in getting more. And then yes, by all means, give it to them!