7 Ways to Improve Content Strategy with Data

Content strategy is a game-changing part of marketing. 

But it can be incredibly time-consuming to plan months of content in advance—not to mention the background work, like detailed persona research, content auditing, and evaluating competitors. And many marketers struggle with this process.

Maybe that’s why, according to Content Marketing Institute, only 33% of B2C marketers and 41% of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. However, strategizing is a consistent indicator of success: Over the last three years, the highest-performing B2B content marketers also have a documented strategy.

Content strategy is a worthwhile endeavor, but all of that work could be wasted if you don’t back your decisions with meaningful metrics. Good data gives us the best possible means to make predictions and sound plans. And it can reveal surprising truths about your audience and the content they want.

The best part? It’s everywhere. We collect tons of data on our website visitors and customers, even though we’re not always well-equipped to assess it all. And there are always opportunities to collect more, as long as you’re offering something meaningful in return.

Not sure how to weave data into your content strategy? We have some ideas for you. 

Use Data in Your Content Strategy by Doing These Things

1. Learn from Google Analytics.

This may seem obvious, but Google Analytics is a treasure trove of information. Start by viewing the blog posts that earn the most pageviews, and consider how you can update them or build upon those topics for future content. Once you get started in Google Analytics, you’ll find more interesting trends and insights than we could fit on this list. 

Best of all, artificial intelligence tools can make this job much simpler. AI has the capacity to analyze tons of data and pull meaningful insights from it—insights that can inform your content strategy.

2. Dig into social media.

What tools are you using for social media, and what kinds of data do they provide? Do they use AI to aggregate recommendations based on engagement? AI can analyze your posts at scale, understand what’s being said in them, then extract insights based on that information.

With this data, it should be simple for you to see how your content promotion performs—and get ideas for future content that will do well on social.

3. See which content was shared the most.

Use a tool like BuzzSumo to determine which pieces of content have gained the most traction on other people’s networks, not just your own. The most-shared content is probably a safe bet for informing strategy going forward. 

Noticing trends in who shares your (or your competitors’) content most? It could be a good opportunity to weave influencer marketing into your content strategy. Good news: AI can assist with identifying influencer opportunities through data analysis.

4. Analyze your newsletters.

If you use a smart newsletter tool like rasa.io, you’ll have automated insights into which topics are getting the most clicks. That valuable data can be a huge boost to your content strategy.

The content that most frequently takes subscribers from their inbox to your blog is a great consideration for a pillar page topic. 

5. Do big-time keyword research. 

This is nothing new for SEO-savvy marketers, but there is a modern twist for today’s content strategies: Many content tools use machine learning and other forms of AI to uncover keywords that drive engagement, topics that can support high-performing content clusters, and exact terms that will help your brand compete.

6. Review your content tags. 

Check out the number of posts you’ve attributed to each tag on your blog. Are there holes? Topics that are sorely underrepresented, but show promise? Or maybe there’s too much to review manually—that’s where AI can make a huge contribution. 

AI tools that use natural language processing can understand content type, tags, and metadata, then make recommendations automatically. You should see plenty of opportunities for more representation in certain topics. Add more posts to your editorial calendar that can help fill these gaps.

7. Check out your gated content. 

Dig into your landing pages and forms. Which gated content garners the most form fills? Which landing pages have the highest bounce rates? Is it because the content isn’t compelling enough to exchange personal information? These questions could spur helpful brainstorming discussions with your content planning team. 

Depending on the content hosting platform you use, you may have access to AI tools that garner many of these data-driven insights for you, automatically. 

Take Your Content Strategy to the Next Level

Have you figured out how you’ll promote all of the smart content you develop with your strategy? One method is the email newsletter. 

But we’re not talking about your grandpa’s email newsletter. Today, you can use rasa.io to send highly personalized, automated email newsletters that your contacts actually want to read. Because the newsletters use AI to become customized down to the individual level, they are extremely valuable to your audience.