The Simplest Way to Produce Popular Content

Have you noticed that no matter how well-written your content is, it’s hard to get views?

Or even if you create video, audio, or image-based content it’s tough to get likes, shares, and engagement.

Most marketers believe it is because there is so much content for people to choose from. In other words, why should someone read yours?

And the stats do tell that story (2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created each day), but it’s simpler than that.

Check this out…

The chart above shows blog post topics on the Neil Patel blog and clicks from email marketing.

Notice a difference in why some have lower click rates from email blasts than others?

I’ll give you a hint… regurgitated content.

Old content

When I say old content, I am not talking about something that was written a year or two ago. I’m talking about regurgitated content.

How many times have you read articles on the best Chrome extensions or how to rank number 1 on YouTube?

There is nothing new about those topics. Even if I am writing about them for the first time, other people have already beaten them to death.

But on the flip side, if I talk about how marketers are adapting their budgets in 2023 with all of this economic turmoil or how Google released a new best practices link guide that stuff hasn’t really been talked about much.

So, people are naturally more likely to want to read it or learn about it. It doesn’t matter what format you create the content in, people just want new.

And not just new from you, but new from the whole web. That’s why news websites do so well and push breaking news so hard. It’s what everyone wants to read it.

So, what should you do with your content?

Focus on new topics

If people don’t want to read regurgitated content, then don’t waste your time creating it. Unless you know how to build links to it and rank it on Google to get that ever-green SEO traffic… but that is going to take a long time to see results.

Instead, you should focus on new content that people want to learn about.

You should follow these 3 basic steps to help you out:

Step #1: What’s hot this week (or ideally today)

What are people talking about in your industry?

You must have news websites within your space. Heck, if there are SEO news websites like Search Engine Land, your industry should have a news website covering what’s hot.

This should give you an idea of what people want to hear about right now.

If you are struggling to find news websites within your space, just Google: [industry] news

For example, for my industry, I may Google “SEO news”.

Or “digital marketing news”.

Google will give you a list of news websites for you to check out and read on a regular basis. Just avoid the sponsored results when performing these searches.

Step #2: Use Google Suggest data

Go to sites like Answer the Public to see what people are searching for in your industry right now. Literally, the data is pulled in real-time.

For example, if I want to see what’s hot in “digital marketing”, I just go to Answer the Public, type that in, and it gives me a laundry list of keywords with search volume.

If you create content that people are searching for right now, chances are you will get more engagement, because those are the topics that they are interested in learning about right now.

Step #3: Make sure it’s a low-result keyword

It doesn’t matter if you are creating content that you want to rank on Google or if you are creating content for social media, you want to run a quick search before you waste your time creating content.

For example, if I were to create content around how to dunk a basketball if you are short, I would then Google that term and other similar terms.

As you can see there are already 10.4 million results around that topic.

I would then go to YouTube and do a similar search.

Then scroll down and see if there are a lot of videos on the same thing.

Do the same with TikTok and even Instagram.

This will tell you how beaten to death a topic is or isn’t.

Whenever you do a search you’ll naturally see millions of results on Google or thousands of videos on any social platform, but don’t let that scare you. Look to see how many actually are on what you want to cover. Because most of the results aren’t exactly on that topic.

In essence, you are looking for content that:

• Is hot right now and the news sites (within your industry) are talking about it.
• Is popular on tools like Answer the Public and people are searching for it right now.
• There aren’t hundreds of direct results on Google or social sites. (Don’t just look at the total count, double-check to make sure most of the results aren’t exactly what people are searching for)

It really is that simple. Follow the above and you’ll get more traffic.

Conclusion

Creating content isn’t just about going after what is the most popular search term or what your competition is talking about.

It’s about creating content that people want to watch, listen to, and read right now. And people want to digest new content, the stuff that hasn’t been regurgitated a thousand times. New and fresh is the key.

Focus on what’s hot and what there isn’t a ton of content on and that’s what will cause your content to perform better.