There is no shortage of blogs, guides, how-to articles and ebooks about marketing to millennials, but what about marketing to baby boomers? Even though millennials (defined as people who in the mid-2010s were between the ages of 20 and 36) are now the largest generation in the U.S. at over 72 million members, the baby boomer generation is still a considerable force at over 71 million strong. A little research and insight can show you to how to market to baby boomers effectively.

 

What Are Baby Boomers?

The term “baby boomer” refers to a person born in the years just following the Second World War, when there was a temporary spike in birth rates. Currently, boomers make up nearly 20% of the American public and a substantial amount of the entire global population. They have been around to witness the incredible leaps and bounds of technology: from the landing on the moon to the development of virtual reality and AI assistants. They have seen a lot during their lifetimes and are prepared to see even more global advancements in the years to come.

 

What Age Group Are Baby Boomers?

The baby boomer age group is defined by people born between 1946 and 1964. This would put the baby boomers ranging from 56 to 74 years of age. Do you fit into this age group, or do you know someone who does? Chances are that you have more than a few baby boomer associates, which means marketing to baby boomers can be a realistic target market for your company.

 

Where Do Baby Boomers Spend Their Money?

Baby boomers are a large and diverse group with individual needs. Just like any generation, they are seeking businesses and services that can help them. But here’s the catch; they’re actually spending more money than the younger groups that many companies are scrambling to target with their advertising. In fact, many are using the internet more than ever to make purchases, so now is the time to market to baby boomers online.

Because of the size of the generation and the amount of buying power they have, it’s crucial that companies find a way to reach this group and target content and marketing to baby boomers in a way that’s authentic.

 

How To Market to Baby Boomers

The foundation of any successful marketing strategy is to connect with your target market. Those who see your ads, find your website or learn about your services need to feel like you have their needs in mind. This is where content marketing to baby boomers can really come into play.

Content marketing is the link between businesses and potential customers. The articles, social media posts and landing pages you create inform, persuade and build brand image. The content you create should be catchy and informative, while personally reaching your target market. When marketing to baby boomers, you can use content marketing to help them realize how their services can help them.

Not sure where to start? Here are some insights into what the baby boomer generation wants and how you can speak to them through your marketing content.

 

1. Understand Their Financial Needs and Concerns

The first way to market to baby boomers is by understanding what kinds of things they are looking for. The baby boomer label covers a wide range of ages and lifestyles, but many of the people in this group are retired or are approaching retirement age. By 2030, every baby boomer will be at least 65. Other statistics show that this generation is more frugal when it comes to entertainment, though more of them may be supporting an adult child than previous generations.

According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, baby boomer spending on food, clothing and furnishings fell by large amounts from 1990 to 2010. Spending on food and restaurants saw the smallest decline with an 18% and 20% drop for 45-54-year olds and 55-64-year olds, respectively. The largest decrease in spending was seen for clothing purchases by 55-64-year-olds. This group’s clothing spending decreased by 70%. If these are the types of products you offer, it’s important to find creative ways to market to baby boomers.

However, none of these statistics mean that baby boomers don’t want to spend money or can’t spend money. As mentioned above, they have more disposable income than any other demographic group. Still, with retirement saving and adult children to think about, they may need to be more selective how they spend their money, which means your content marketing has to work twice as hard to convince them that what you’re selling is worth it.

Marketing to baby boomers includes focusing on how your product or service offering can make their lives better, more fulfilling or easier, and highlight the value that they receive when they choose to spend their hard-earned and hard-saved money on your services.

 

2. Don’t Be Patronizing to Baby Boomers

Growing older isn’t something to dread, it’s just another upgrade in life. People in their 50s and 60s have a lot of living under their belts, and they are by no means done learning new things, having new experiences and finding more ways to enrich their life. Don’t talk down to baby boomers or diminish them by thinking of them as old and obsolete.

Though this group is starting to age physically, they are interested in finding ways to continue the things they enjoy and learn how to embrace their later years gracefully and safely. When marketing to baby boomers, help them see how your products will benefit them in their journey. Even with the less glamorous parts of aging, look for ways to present your products in an attractive, persuasive way.

As people near retirement, they may also be more interested in services and products that make life more convenient, such as home delivery of products, easy-to-use tools, or all-expense-paid trips. Although these types of services can be appealing to anyone, market to baby boomers with their interests in mind. Create content that shows how the added convenience of something is worth the extra money.

People in the baby boomer age group are vibrant members of society, and your content and marketing should reflect that you understand that by showing them how your products and services can help them keep living their own individual lives and achieving their goals. Relate with them, offer solutions and use content marketing to baby boomers as your biggest marketing weapon.

 

3. Reach Baby Boomers Through the Internet​

While baby boomers might not be as likely to use social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and Reddit as younger groups, they still heavily interact online. The internet offers plenty of resources and channels of entertainment, not to mention the chance to stay in touch with friends, family and coworkers. According to the Pew Center, 83 % of younger baby boomers and 76 % of older baby boomers are also internet users. This isn’t as high as millennials, (97 %) but it’s still a large majority.

In addition, the internet is the most common way baby boomers research information on a topic, meaning you need to be ready with outstanding content to inform them about your company. Marketing to baby boomers includes using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to improve your digital strategy. Rank for keywords that potential customers may use, and don’t forget to create quality content that answers questions and encourages readers to act.

Like most groups, baby boomers like to be entertained online. They use social media and conduct research on the internet. Remember this as you create engaging content and media for baby boomers.

 

4. Don’t Forget About Traditional Methods When Marketing to Baby Boomers

Although baby boomers are quite digitally savvy, more old-fashioned tactics like direct mail still work on them. Consider as an example, the popularity of the AARP Magazine, which had over 23 million subscribers as of a couple years ago. If you have products or services that can benefit baby boomers, delivering persuasive content right to their doorstep can be an effective strategy.

Just make sure that the materials you send are targeted at their interests and needs. There aren’t many people in any age group that actually like receiving junk mail. When marketing to baby boomers, use attractive pictures, keep the format simple and consider offering coupons or discounted services.

 

5. Don’t Make Them Work Too Hard

For baby boomers (and really for people of all ages) you need to create content that’s easy to access and engage with. Always provide a simple way for readers to take further action such as purchasing from your company. People have packed schedules these days, and if you make them jump through too many hoops in terms of poor website speed or user experience, they might find that it’s not worth the effort and leave your brand for another competitor.

While boomers are active internet users, they might not have as much patience with confusing or hard-to-use websites. Ensure your content is easy to find and consume on all devices, from laptops to smartphones to tablets. Here are a few ways to make this happen:

• Make fonts a comfortable size for reading
• Keep CTAs simple
• Use bullet points, headers and shorter paragraphs
• Utilize white space
• Stick to one or two fonts
• Include images, videos and infographics

Effective marketing to baby boomers takes work. Try to be as convincing as you can with your content by incorporating both quality design and text.

If you really want to get the attention of your target market, your content needs to be seen on search rankings. Getting on the first page isn’t a guessing game, carefully used SEO practices can improve your rankings. With keywords, meta information and quality content, Google can start ranking your content higher when baby boomers search related keywords.

 

6. Remember Baby Boomers Are a Diverse Group

Are you exactly like everyone else in your age group? Of course not. With any marketing content you create, it’s important to keep in mind that baby boomers aren’t a homogenous group. They have different wants, needs and concerns, and what works on one group of baby boomers might not work on another.

If you really want to understand and market to baby boomers online, survey them. Everyone likes to be appreciated, and a survey on baby boomer preferences is a way to show that you’re interested in really understanding their wants and needs so you can provide content and services tailored to them.

The more accurate you are when you market to baby boomers, the more results you’ll get. Be thorough with your research, and always strive to improve. Who knows how the future will continue to mold and shape the needs of baby boomers?

 

Marketing to Baby Boomers Can Be Done!

Baby boomers aren’t simply another faceless consumer group. They’re a mix of working professionals, retirees, athletes, artists, grandparents, couples and other individuals who all want to be able to enjoy their lives. Spend as much time and thought creating content and marketing to baby boomers as you would for any other demographic. Before long, you’ll see the rewards when baby boomers start responding to your marketing content, identifying with your brand and buying your products and services.

To be fair, there are a lot of similarities between donuts and content… Say what?  Maybe it’s just because it’s lunchtime (or because I’ve seen about a thousand pictures of delectable donuts going around the interwebs in honor of National Donut Day), but donuts are on the mind.  Either way, I’ve put together a few surefire tips to follow when it comes to creating delicious, cream-filled content that your customers will devour.

So without further ado-nut (sorry), here are some of the do’s and donut’s of content creation.

1. Do Your Dough Diligence

Just like how all of the really tasty donuts come from good dough, all great content starts with great topics. Topic generation often takes some work and the really good ideas need time to rise.  Don’t skip this step!  Working in the content creation industry, I can tell you that this step is usually the most vital part of the entire process. Try to think outside the box, put yourself in your customer’s shoes, ask yourself how your products and services fill a need, and look at examples of how other companies have established themselves as thought leaders. Throw your ideas into an excel doc, bounce them off of coworkers, and knead them until they’re ready to be built out. Need help with topic generation?  Who doesn’t!  I recently wrote a post on that very subject. Once you’ve got some topic ideas ironed out, you’ll have to make the decision on whether the content will be written by you, a member of your staff, or a trusted content provider.

 

2. Donut Let Your Research Crumble

When it comes time to actually create a post, make sure you have all of your ducks in a row.  People are looking for well-thought out, well-researched content and they usually won’t settle for anything less.  With over 27,000,000 pieces of content  being shared every day (this a low estimate – this stat is a year old), it’s important to stand out! Not only that, potential customers tend to trust brands that put out engaging custom content. Did you know that “interesting content” is a top 3 reason people follow brands on social media?  In regards to this article, most of my research came in the form of eating an unhealthy amount of bearclaws, maple bars, and bismarks.

3. Do Add a Twist

This “Do” can be understood a couple of different ways:

• First, do all that you can to make outstanding content that grabs a reader’s attention.  A recent blog by Neil Patel does a great job of explaining how to do this.  Draw readers in, make an interesting analogy (donuts, anyone?), hook them with a statistic, level with them and then blow their minds with a controversial topic.
• Second, try curating content.  Just because someone else came up with the story doesn’t mean you can’t put your own twist on it. Curating trending topics is a great way to find relevant, news-worthy content and portray it in a light that your customers will understand and appreciate.

4. Donut Leave Holes in Your Content

Even though many of your favorite donuts likely have holes in them, you should make sure that your content does not. Don’t leave your customers wanting when it comes to the flow of the article, the formatting of the content, and the meat of the message. A piece of content without proper organization, or that doesn’t deliver on the promise of the title, can be frustrating to those who read it, or worse, not be read at all. Make sure your content flows smoothly from the introduction to the conclusion. This will help you to avoid making your content seem hollow or empty.  Poorly put together content can end up hurting your brand more than helping it.

5. Do Sprinkle in Some SEO

While the sprinkles on a donut don’t typically add much to the overall taste of the pastry, they can do wonders for its presentation.  The same goes with the relationship between superb content and SEO.  SEO practices shouldn’t take away from readability of the article, but rather they should help it to be found by those that would benefit from it and take action.  Headers, keywords, formatting, Alt-tags, and links are just a few ways to improve the SEO value of your piece without deterring from its overall message.

 

6. Donut Forget the Glaze

Nobody likes a plain donut without any frosting.  The same goes for your content!  Always make sure to put in the finishing touches before you submit it to be posted.  Edit it for grammar or spelling errors and ensure that you are putting off the right image with the post.  Add some extra flair to the post by adding images, videos, quizzes, questions and bullet points to make the piece really stand out. This doesn’t take a lot of time but can do wonders for its shareability. Statistics show that articles with images get almost 94% more views than those that do not.

7. Do Make Your Competitors Jelly (Jealous)

Last of all, the only way to create authority is to share your work and let everyone else know that you know what you’re talking about.  Utilize social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google +, Instagram, Twitter, and get as much exposure as possible.  Be savvy, however, and make sure you do your research to find the best times to post your content to get the most interaction.  For instance, here’s a great post on how to best utilize LinkedIn for content shares.

What are You Waiting For? Go Eat a Donut!

Now that you’re salivating over the thought of content creation, head to your nearest Dunkin Donuts and do yourself (and the office) a big favor and visualize your next blog post over a nice apple fritter – for free, might I add.  Happy National Donut Day!

Oh and I’m curious… What’s your favorite donut?

It is hard to create content that people read and share…

But over the last 3 years I have studied and tested that art of creating shareable articles to figure out one thing: why do people share content and why do people ignore content? In short, I have figured it out…

You see, sometimes an article can catch viral-fire and spread awareness for your brand — but that’s not common. In fact, more than 2 million articles are published every single day, and the majority are never read.

The reason most articles fall flat is simple:

Most articles don’t follow time-tested practices that have been proven to compel people to read and share content. With that in mind, there’s a reason why content marketing leaders experience 7.8 times more traffic than their competitors… and to everyone’s luck, it has nothing to do with extraordinary talent. Rather, it is just a matter of knowing what works and what doesn’t — and in this article I am going to show you 5 hacks that you need to know to get your content read and shared.

1. Give Publicity to Influencers and Collaborate

Influencers have the power of attention. This attention is so valuable that if you manage to just get one influencer to share your article, it will increase overall shares by 31.8%. Even more impressive, when five influencers share your article it will quadruple the amount of social shares you get according to Buzzsumo.

Compare my own social media post’s performance to the performance of an influencer post:

Versus…

Here are the best ways to get an influencer to share your content:

A) Collaborate – Ask several influencers to add a quote to your article. When an influencer get’s publicity (including being featured on your blog), your chance of receiving a share is basically 100%.

B) Outreach – It only takes 5-10 minutes to send a polite email to an influencer. If you create a piece of content that is valuable to a specific influencer’s audience — send them an email and let them know.

C) Link to an article – Backlinks are valuable. Google weighs them heavily when deciding on the ranking position of a website. Link to an influencer’s article and let them know why you think their content is valuable (and why you included it in your article).

D) Make First Contact – To improve your chances of success, you can first initiate contact through blog commenting and Twitter. Introduce yourself and add value to them by sharing and giving thoughtful comments to their content. After some time (I prefer to invest 3 weeks to a month), make the ask.

2. Use Branded Images to Create Trust

Social media is a powerful tool. 87% of marketers integrate social media into their marketing to deliver and spread content. The reason why is simple: it’s one of the most cost-effective methods for creating brand awareness. To create content people share on social, you need to use branded images.

Here’s why:

• Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets (Buffer)
• Eye-studies show that users spend a significant amount of time looking at images versus text (Nielsen Norman Group)
• Branded images cost time and money to create which is an instant indicator of effort and trust

3. Make Your Content Skimmable

There are two types of groups who will find your content:

The first group are content distributors. Distributors are desperately trying to find content worth sharing, but they don’t want to share something unless it is valuable to their audience. By creating skimmable content, you make the life of a distributor much easier because they can quickly scan your content to judge its value.

This also has a multiplier effect. The more distributors that share your article, the more “automatic trust” it will receive. Imagine that there is a ladder of distributors who judge a content’s worthiness by how high up the ladder the content will go. The higher you go, the more viral power your content will receive.

The second group is your audience. These are the people who find value when reading your content. More than 60% of these people are going to be skimmers. If you don’t create content people can skim — you risk alienating 60% of your audience.

Here is a perfect example of skimmable content performing well:

Here are some simple tips to create skimmable content:

• Use Italics and Bolding. These typography choices allow you to highlight important points, questions, and sections of your article.
• Use bucket-brigades. These short-sentences allow you to show people what’s important to read. The phrase up above, “Here are some simple tips to create skimmable content” is a bucket-brigade. Bucket-brigades are always followed be either a colon or a “…”
• Use grease-slide lists. These are lists that allow users to skim. Also, if they want to learn more — they can read the explanations. What you are reading right now is a grease-slide list.

4. Some Types of Content are More Popular than Others

Infographics, how to articles, and listicles are statistically popular. As well, in more competitive niches, longer articles are known to rank higher and are more likely to be emailed to coworkers and friends than shorter articles.

Of course, you need to consider your audience and their needs before deciding on the best type of content to create — but knowing which types of content can gain traction will give you an advantage when trying to build a readership.

5. The Perfect Introduction

To be clear, an article is making a big ask. We are asking readers to give us their time — and we need to give something in exchange for that time. Think of the introduction as a mini sales letter. A reader won’t know how valuable your article is until they read the mini sales letter. Your introduction is where you sell the reader on exchanging their time…

Here is a simple formula by Brian Dean from Backlinko which is easy to implement.

The Agree, Preview and Promise Formula (APP):

Agree – Start your introduction with one short sentence your reader will obviously agree with. For example, “It’s hard to convert cold-traffic into email subscribers” or “Everyone hates going to the DMV”.

Preview – This is where you preview a possible solution that the user might be interested in. If your article is about converting traffic, then show people how you have converted traffic before.

Promise – At the end of your article, you want to promise something to the reader. They are about to invest time so make sure they know EXACTLY why they are reading your article and what they will receive.

Conclusion

Some articles go viral and some don’t. Some articles attract an audience and some never reach a human reader. But, if you apply the techniques above, you increase the chance of gaining a gradual amount of traffic over time. And, if you are lucky and promote like a madman, some of your articles will hit viral status.

If you apply these hacks to your content — remember one thing… your content must contain real value. If your content doesn’t give a reader actionable and trustworthy information — the above tactics don’t matter. First create something valuable, then make the tweaks you need to increase its chance of spreading.

Did this article help you find new ways to create content that is more shareable? If so, please share it on social media, it means a lot!

You successfully used SEO to bring people to your website. Now what? Attracting people to your website is step one of making content marketing work for your business. It’s great to get more eyes on your content and more shares on your share counter, but you want to create content that can do so much more than that. Ideally, it should help you reach your business goals.

How can content do all that exactly? That’s a valid question. Truthfully, there is some disagreement over whether content marketing actually works. (Just do a quick Google search for “content marketing doesn’t work” and you’ll see for yourself.)

One thing content marketing definitely isn’t—is magic. Just because you crafted a great piece, it doesn’t mean that it will suddenly go “viral,” millions of people will see it and thousands of those people will buy from you. That would be nice if it were the case, but unfortunately, that’s not the way the world works. The internet is home to some truly great content. Phenomenal content, even! But beyond the quality of the writing, you need to be able to optimize your content for more and better conversions.

Ideally, you will be able to produce content that answers a key question or problem of your target market, whether they’re nearly ready to buy or just starting to explore options.

Write for Your Ideal Buyer, Not Just for More Pageviews

Pageviews, shares, comments, there’s nothing wrong with any of these elements. They can be signs of content success and they definitely give you a bit of a warm, fuzzy feeling when you see them increasing. But for all of that traffic, a surprisingly small number of those people actually fit your target demographic. And an even smaller group will make the choice to become a customer.

Think about the people that you want to purchase your product or service. What do they want or need? Do they even know that what you offer could be the solution they’re looking for? Do they even know that they need a solution? The blog posts you write should be helping them figure out the answers to those questions.

The Buyer’s Journey

One way of tackling this problem is to consider the three stages of the Buyer’s Journey: Awareness, Consideration, Decision. This describes the way in which people become aware that they have a problem that needs to be solved, research and explore possible solutions to that problem, and then ultimately make a purchase decision. Quality content writing should be guided by these three phases, and the messages and format will be different depending on which phase a buyer is in. Max Traylor writes on Content Marketer’s Blueprint about the different types of content buyers want and need at different key points. A good tip is to consider what questions you would be asking at each different stage if you were the buyer.

Create Content for Buyers of All Types

Because you can’t always know what stage your buyers will be in when they find your website or content, it’s good to have all your bases covered by creating content for any level of buyer and including prominent CTAs that can help to lead them to the next step of the Buyer’s Journey.

Not every stage in the Buyer’s Journey ends with a purchase, so not all of your content should be focused on getting the buyer to make a purchase. Sometimes people just want information and aren’t quite ready to buy. Hubspot, a leader in the inbound marketing sphere, does a fantastic job of practicing what they preach when it comes to content. They offer a wide variety of useful, quality content writing on marketing and sales-related topics, and often, their calls to action are to check out a piece of gated content to further your knowledge on the subject.

The exact content you create and the process buyers go through might differ slightly depending on the nature and organization of your business, but the basic stages of the journey will often hold true.

Quick Tip: It can help to include popups on blog posts that appear after readers reach a certain location in the page or stay on a page for a certain amount of time. Make sure to use these sparingly and wait for a generous amount of time before displaying them so that your readers don’t get annoyed.

Summing it All Up

When you start producing quality content with a plan and a purpose, you’ll find that it performs better. If you are consistently the brand that answers your buyer’s questions and provides them with the information they need to solve problems and issues, you will stand out ahead of competitors as a resource in their minds. In the end, this tactic works out for just about everybody involved. You get more loyal customers, and your customers get the answers and the solutions that they need.

Whether your business is relatively new or it’s been around for awhile it’s imperative that you find the time to focus on your digital marketing strategies. Every second that you spend improving your content counts. If you are trying to increase your success while expanding your business’ online profile then you can’t afford to neglect your content strategy.

There is a huge demand for content. Consumers and decision makers at businesses look for resources to provide them with information to strengthen their buying decisions. According to Demand Gen Report, there was a big increase in the use of presentations and inforgraphics last year. Consumer use of video content to drive their purchasing decisions also rose from eight percent to 58 percent.

Consistency Matters

You need to get out of the habit of treating your blogs and content like they don’t matter, because they do. They are so important that you need to develop a sense of urgency with them and update them regularly. Set aside time each day, week or month to devote to your content. Don’t just choose some random time either. Basically you are setting deadlines for yourself, and if you can abide by them, you’ll see a bigger payoff than if you continue to do things in a random manner.

Narrow Your Focus

While your goal may be to increase traffic, you have to be realistic about the kind of traffic your blogs and websites are getting. All traffic is not good traffic and it is certainly not created equally. People who are not genuinely interested in what you are offering are very unlikely to become followers, let alone customers. Think about what your target niche is and focus more of your marketing efforts there. By developing content that directly pertains to your niche, you can increase exposure, gain more followers and convert more visitors.

Upgrade Your Credibility

While you are in the process of narrowing your focus, take some time to establish yourself as an expert. As more consumers look for content to influence their buying decisions, you need a way to gain their attention without coming across as every other marketer and business owner that’s out there. Consumers want information that is not watered down and easily available. They want information that can be backed by expert testimony, online reviews and fact. They want products and services that others have used and had good experiences with.

A study by Search Engine Land revealed that many consumers rely heavily on online reviews to influence their shopping behavior.

Marketers who continue to deliver information, lack good reviews and who are not very knowledgeable about the services and products they offer run the risk of being seen as opportunists and untrustworthy.

Know Your Visitors Needs

Pay attention to the type of visitors your blogs attract. Invest heavily into keyword research and create content that uses them. Have you ever wondered why some people make purchases and others don’t? The answer lies in you being able to understand your visitors’ needs. It doesn’t matter how much of an expert you are, how well your content is written or how hot your products and services are, everyone who reads your content is not going to bite. There are plenty of reasons why they are not pulling the trigger and getting out their wallets. Regardless of what those reasons are, you need to remember that your visitors have different needs and they may not all be at the same part of the buying cycle. By developing content that caters to different stages of the buying cycle, you can capture more of your audience and encourage them more effectively to purchase and become loyal customers.

Developing an effective content marketing strategy takes a lot of research and hard work. However, as long as you develop an effective and consistent approach, the traffic will come so you can reap the benefits.

The world of online marketing is evolving at a mind-dizzying rate, and the standard advertisement is quickly becoming a dinosaur. In fact, 7 out of every 10 customers now report that they would rather learn about a company through an engaging piece of content than through an advertisement. The trick is to produce better content that people actually want to read.

So, how do you create content that draws people in? Here are three effective methods you can use to create better content that will get you noticed.

1. Follow Hot Topics and Put Your Spin on Them

Most people love to stay up-to-date on hot topics, so incorporating current trends into your content is a great way to make it stand out. There are many different resources you can rely on for popular topics and ideas. Try perusing Reddit for the latest SEO news that you can pounce on, or pay attention to trending topics on Twitter and other social media sites.

When you find a topic that you can incorporate into your content, be sure to put your own spin on it so that readers will be intrigued and will want to learn more. Take the trending topic of Google’s recent SERP display change, for example. An SEO marketer could put a spin on this topic by discussing how the resulting increase in PPC costs makes it even more important to produce quality content that will bring organic traffic to your site. Figure out what topics your target audience is currently following, then come up with interesting ways to create helpful and authoritative content around those topics.

2. Track and Analyze Your Brand Exposure 

It can be hard to improve your content if you don’t analyze what’s already working well for you and what isn’t. Here are a few suggestions for tracking and analyzing your content:

• Stalk social media (in a non-creepy way, of course) to find out which posts are getting the most social shares.
• Study which emails are being opened, and pay attention to their click-through-rate.
• Follow traffic to determine which types of content bring the most traffic to your website.

Some of these methods involve simple observance, while others require the assistance of a content analysis tool. If you are not currently taking the time to measure and track your brand exposure, you are missing out on some very revealing information that will help you improve your content.

3. Learn From the Best

You have probably noticed competitors who seem to have the content thing down to an art. Rather than trying to stand out by being completely different from them, why not learn from them?  Chances are they simply have a really great handle on who their audience is, and they follow steps 1 and 2 very deliberately. Shopify is just one example of a company who wins at marketing by constantly taking advantage of trending topics and turning them into helpful and informative articles and blog posts.

Conclusion

Like anything, trying to produce better content takes thought, time and effort. If your content is currently falling flat, try following hot topics, tracking your brand exposure and learning from the best. Do you have any additional tips for producing better content that have worked for your business? Let us know below!