The content marketing creation and distribution landscape are changing by the day. Popular platforms such as YouTube and Facebook have become instantaneously accessible to billions around the world. Whether you operate in startup mode or work as a marketing expert for an international company, big data is certainly worth looking into.
Implementing big data into content marketing isn’t a novel idea but it can turn things around for your brand and public perception. With that in mind, let’s take a look at several ways in which you can use big data in your everyday content marketing workflow for better customer engagement down the line.
What does Big Data stand for?
Big data typically refers to a mass of user-generated data created in a certain digital eco-system. For example, each click, share, comment or interaction on Facebook or Instagram amounts to a large sum of big data. Big data started its digital tenure as a cryptocurrency transaction ledger before becoming an integral part of the corporate market.
It’s hard to grasp the fact that we have generated over 90% of world’s data in the past two years alone, with US citizens using over 2 million gigabytes of internet bandwidth on a daily basis. A fact worth pointing out is that marketing departments need to wait for the launch of their campaigns to get feedback about how well their content did compared to other brands in the industry.
Big data can be used to better understand how B2C and B2B stakeholders think, their habits, brand or product preferences and so forth. This allows for a plethora of benefits for one’s company, which is exactly what we will cover in the upcoming points of discussion.
Better Goal-Setting
The implementation of big data in content marketing starts at very early stages of planning. You can use big data to set better goals and KPIs for your upcoming content calendar through audience research.
This will allow you to bypass potential bottlenecks, uninteresting content types or topics as well as plan your delivery times more carefully. Good goal-setting can make or break your entire content marketing campaign cycle, so make sure to take time and explore your possibilities before going forward.
Accurate Customer Targeting
Audience segmentation and customer targeting are also some of the most important elements to consider before content creation begins. Who is your intended audience and what kind of lifestyle choices or professional background do they possess?
Different audience profiles will respond differently to certain content types, especially when there are large age gaps or social status discrepancies between two potential customer groups. Don’t misalign your audience segmentation and make good use of big data before proceeding to the content creation part of your campaign.
Streamlined Content Creation Processes
Big data can be a great substitute for traditional market research depending on the scale of your business. You can rely on big data repositories to find out which topics are trending in your industry, what keywords to target and what emotional triggers to use to entice engagement. This type of content creation streamlining is akin to SEO research but instead of relying on tools such as Google Analytics, you will have access to audience response and interaction patterns instead.
In terms of reliability, most marketing experts would argue that big data provides more tangible data in terms of audience research than what works or doesn’t work in terms of SEO. No matter how you put it, big data is likely to increase your overall content creation productivity and maximize your marketing output, leaving a lot of resources available for other creative or research endeavours.
Social Proof & Metrics Showcase
Depending on the industry your company operates in, you can use big data to showcase interesting and useful social proof metrics. For example, your sales numbers, review aggregates, and overall customer engagement rates can be great additions to your content marketing.
However, it’s worth noting that you should only rely on data that concerns your company or the industry at large and not resort to counter-marketing tactics against other competitive brands. Always work toward long-term gain and brand loyalty without resorting to short-term gain efforts, especially if it can affect your company’s reputation.
While “fair play” isn’t a word often used to refer to content marketing, big data implementation in public marketing content should be respectful and professional in nature. It can elevate your brand significantly and bring new stakeholders to your fold if you choose the right data and metrics to showcase through your marketing content, especially in social media platforms.
Content Tracking & Analytical Possibilities
Once your content is published under big data’s umbrella, it will be far easier to track its performance and engagement rates going forward. You can track your content for its appeal, engage with the audience who share or comment on your published posts and learn about their behaviour patterns in more detail. This will allow you to iterate on your content marketing strategies and create new, innovative ways to approach familiar territories.
Differentiating your content from the competitors’ is one of the key principles brought on by the big data revolution in marketing. Don’t settle for using big data in the initial research phases of your content creation and look for ways to rely on the tech indefinitely.
In Summary
Constant iteration and breakthroughs in content marketing creation are some of the core elements of what big data has to offer. However, it can be overwhelming to go through the plethora of information available to you at every corner.
Make sure to create a shortlist of filters, KPIs and targets for your upcoming campaign before you approach big data. Compare your initial goals with what big data has to offer in those regards and work your way forward from there.
Even though big data’s information is conclusive with audience’s digital and behavioural patterns, you should still use human logic to make definitive marketing decisions. Find smart ways to incorporate big data repositories into your pipeline and your marketing processes will flourish as a result.