Finding your Audience through Article Marketing Research
Posted by Beth Hrusch on Tue, Jan 12, 2010
A small amount of article marketing research at the outset of your article marketing campaign can go a long way. This involves researching not only your market but the media that's most effective in your space.
Understand your Audience
You probably have a certain idea of who your audience is and where their concerns and interests lay. When thinking of your own article marketing research, you probably have some ideal examples in mind. Review as many of their posts as possible and try to see what trends emerge.
- What types of subjects do they discuss?
- How long are the pieces?
- What's the basic tone: professional, casual, edgy, even controversial?
- Based on comments or re-Tweets, for example, which articles seem to be the most popular?
- Which articles seem to be the most controversial or, at least, open for discussion?
- Do authors in your field tend to cite industry experts? If so, which? And, do the experts link back?
Research your Research
It will also help to do some article marketing research on the types of background data and sources that are popular in articles in your field. With the internet and any industry-specific publications that you use, you probably won't have a shortage of sources from which you can draw information worth incorporating into your articles.
Rather, the challenge is to determine which sources are most legitimate, unique
and respected in your field. Also, particularly if you're going to cite sources, consider which sources offer the best online linkages to your website. Mutual linking, for example, can help boost your ranking in online searches. So, you might not want to link to the most popular thinkers in your field, but to those that are most accessible to your own website.