Build Content off of Unique Data
Objective: Earn backlinks, press coverage and traffic to your content.
How: Investing big on content won't necessarily get you results right away. In the same vein, not committing enough is likely to yield much. That's why focusing your efforts on bigger plays can be a better strategy to follow.
If you're looking to earn mentions in top publications and generate all the traffic that comes with that, sourcing original data is one of your best bets. Journalists love original data, especially if it can be used to tell a wider story. Add to that the right timing and you're onto a winner.
Here's a nice example of a campaign that I worked on that did just this...
The above chart shows the traffic over a two-week period for a single piece of content that we launched, producing over 100,000 unique pageviews. Not only that, but it also netted over 500 backlinks from over 300 different domains. This includes the likes of TheNextWeb, Inc, Android Authority, Games Radar and Capterra.
This was all through creating a piece of content based off of data. It makes getting attention from journalists and big sites so much easier, and the boost in traffic and links has a huge knock-on effect across your whole site.
Contrary to popular belief, this doesn't need to cost huge amounts and it isn't just for big brands - trust me, I've done this for brand new startups and big brands alike.
Here's my typical process:
- Figure out a topic relevant to your buyer persona/offering. I'm not going to dive too much into this but the main takeaway is to try and keep your idea relevant in some way to your business.
- Find a specific question you're going to answer within that topic, using data. To us the above example, "How much revenue does the Pokemon Go app generate?"
- Figure out the data points you will need to answer the question.
- Map out how to gather this data. Will you need to do some secondary research (i.e., you'll be patching existing data together to make it more valuable cumulatively) or do you need to conduct primary research (e.g., running surveys through services like PollFish)?
- How can you add credibility to the data? One good way to do this is by getting sector experts to give a quote around your findings. A nice way to do this is to search the New Releases section of Amazon to find recently published authors and reach out to them for a quote (having a quote from a published author goes a long way with journalists). Thanks to Kirsty Hulse for that tip.
- Visualize the data. Try not to overthink this part. Don't just create some crazy interactive piece because you think it's 'cool'. Format the content into something that will make the takeaways easy to digest, and in a way that the target reader will find easiest to consume.
- Reach out to the press with some exclusives on the data before you go live. You can use a tool like Lumanu or JustReachOut.io to find influencers/journalists to reach out to.
Here are a few great examples of data-backed content that have performed really well:
- Today's Teens are Better than You and We Can Prove it
- How Much Does a Website Cost?
- SaaS DNA Project
- Two Centuries of US Immigration
- Population Healthier
I spoke with Kirsty Hulse, of Manyminds Digital, and asked her what she'd found to work well from her experience in producing data-backed content. Here's what she said:
"It's no secret that if you have data, you have news, and if you have news, you have links. Though getting access to statistically significant, not outrageously expensive survey data can be incredibly difficult. The good thing about working on the internet, however, is that there are pockets of weirdos interested in everything. And I mean everything. For example, here is an active forum for Pest Control Experts in the UK or these having a conversation about chamber music or these absolute lads enjoying "tarmac chat". 5,557 posts in general tarmac chat. Sure.
The point is, whatever your niche, whatever your brand, there is a community of people actively interested and engaged in it. These are the people you should be sending your surveys to. (I found these simply by Googling [thing] + forum). A few weeks ago I also discovered Pollfish and they literally revolutionized my life (that's the kind of life I lead). It's a survey and market research service, but it's fast, it's affordable and has lots of different question formats and demographic and screening options."