Content marketing is one of the most reliable ways to generate organic traffic and leads, all the while elevating your brand as a source of authority in your sector – and promoting growth overall.
Brands wanting to engage communities of interest need to understand how people’s interests and purposes are accomplished. A broadcast/generalised approach can never do this. However, a collective/niched strategy might be prone to producing bad content. So how can organisations maintain social presence in multiple related niches without having research trials for all the varieties of social practices that people engage with? The key word here is ‘collective’. The same set of activities or practices – such as recommending new music to friends, cooking, or taking pictures of food – may have different values and meanings for different practitioners. The meanings or truths of these practices are thus not fixed at the community level. Individuals still have the freedom to personalise and adopt certain practices. Brands wanting to cater to communities of interest need to understand the how and why of people’s needs and challenges – to best serve the needs and practices of these communities. Following the best and wrong approaches to social media engagement has far-reaching consequences at an organisational level So, brands wanting to engage communities of interest have to comprehend the reasons why people share content. However, research into practices opens the door to thinking collectively, allowing for production of targeted content for niched markets. Brands see tremendous opportunity in managers’ pursuit of Twitter followers and Instagram influencers in spirits marketing. But these strategies are misguided and broken.
Focus on your audience’s problems
Nische markets require a deep understanding of your audience’s challenges and pain points, and how to solve them; this can come from either customer-led content creation or data-based research. It’s also useful to know what your competition is doing since you can better uncover holes in what you’re writing. If you’ve written an ebook about how to create lead magnets, you might notice a surge in your ranking in Google Analytics but, after a while, traffic generally settles at a lower volume than when you originally published. Your competitors might be producing similar work and capturing more traffic. How can you potentially create something with more value? Know the people who might benefit from reading it. But also address the gaps in your own written work. Regularly visiting industry reports and whitepapers, going to webinars, and listening to customers are also ways to keep up to speed with their problems. Once, a skincare brand learned from the following of their text that their customers were increasingly concerned with the natural origin of ingredients and if the animals had been subjected to tests. The brand created content about these, which attracted more engagement and thus sales.
Leverage data to support your case
Niche markets allow you to produce content that will appeal to this target audience. If you know what makes your target audience tick and what exactly drives them, you can create engaging posts that will draw potential prospects into your web, increase brand loyalty and engagement. Record and track engagement rates, website traffic and conversions of your content via analytics tool for better decision-making based on the insights gained (ie, your niche business ideas for an online marketplace) and to identify opportunities for improvement. You need to cross-post, so people who are fans of yours on social media or those on your email newsletter have an opportunity to read your stories. Perhaps you consider podcasting, or posting a Live webinar. One company I worked with was really successful when they started promoting their blogs on Instagram and then producing a series of podcasts, as that community is so engaged and it helped them solidify their thought leadership while creating a big new tribe.
Engage with your audience
Conducting proper audience research will ensure that you have a thorough understanding about what your niche marketnot the masseswants and needs from you. Then you can create targeted content that conveys your knowledge of their pain points, and offers solutions. Your niche audience wants to know what’s going on in their industry, so placing articles in publications they’re likely to read – whether that’s guest posts or being featured in an industry publication – can be a cost-effective way to create brand awareness. Niche brands can respond to trends by creating tailored content and educational resources, eg, sustainable fashion brands sharing blog posts that compared the eco-friendliness of organic cotton, bamboo and hemp textiles.
Create interactive content
Engagement content creation also allows brands to cultivate a relationship with tiny target audiences, and shows them that you ‘get’ and will speak to their interests, pain points and challenges – which builds brand credit and affinity. Content strategies (whether blog posts, YouTube videos or sponsored tweets) aimed at relatively narrow audiences might be tied to trends or keywords, for example – Google Trends and similar tools will expose some latent demand that can be taken into account for content strategies, and feedback loops might aid in the fine-tuning of the content – it should remain as interesting as possible, also in the long-term. Addressing audiences in their preferred format – video, infographics and podcasts are good ways to do this – but using images or video that show products in action or provide behind-the-scenes footage can also improve engagement levels. Developing an appropriate balance between jargon and ordinary language will further improve engagement while also establishing the business as an authoritative voice.
Utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning
The key to niche market (the niche is the content) is to consistently supply your outlets with good articles that will build your brand while forging relationships with your audience, which perhaps much further down the road will translate into more business for your company. If you are telling stories in your copy, you can create compelling narratives that emotionally connect with your audience – be it actual customer experiences, personal stories or that of your company. Use forums, social media communities and community events to engage with your audience for feedback on content so you can develop additional related topics and elicit greater participation. At the same time, measure how content is doing by reviewing performance data, so you can identify what posts are leading to more signups and conversions.
