Make Your Content High Value With These 4 Sources of Unique Insight

Your blog is your brand communicating to your audience—and that should not be boring or basic.

For content to:

Win audiences
Be memorable
Get shared
Earn organic backlinks
And build trust...

It probably shouldn't mimic the tone and style of the Oxford Dictionary.

It's important to remember that your blog content is your brand communicating to your audience—and that should not be boring or basic.

Instead, it should be spicy: filled with personality, unexpectedly interesting, and making the reader go "ooo" and "ahh".

To make content "spicy", one relatively simple method is to infuse it with original and interesting sources of insight.

So in this week's newsletter, I'll show you 4 ways to source unique data and insights that spice up your content👇

1/ Find the Latest Data From Academic Research

Tools like Consensus AI make it really easy to back up your arguments with evidence.

Let’s say you’re writing an article about “social media strategy” and one of your sub-sections is on LinkedIn.

Asking Consensus a simple question like “Is LinkedIn good for businesses?” surfaces several research reports you can refer to when answering your question.

These are not only great to cite but also stimulate new ideas to weave into your article.

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Tip: I use all the free parts of Consensus and use Google to find the actual reports to read through.

2/ Dig for Whitepapers, eBooks, and Reports

It doesn't matter where the ideas in your content come from, the important thing is that they're original and helpful to the reader.

A source of content most readers likely won't have reader before: PDFs.

PDFs (e.g. corporate eBooks and whitepapers) are long-form, typically more thorough reports that rarely get the air time they deserve.

Transplanting those insights into your SEO content is an easy, yet helpful way to serve your reader.

To find PDFs, use the search modifier filetype:PDF followed by your topic, like this:

Read and cite these to show your article was well-researched.

3/ Dive Into Forums to Give a Human Perspective

If you’re anything like me, you’re adding “Reddit” to the end of 90% of your Google searches these days.

Niche forums like Reddit are filled to the brim with new ideas, anecdotal things people tried and unexpected advice, and that is just incredibly useful for sparking new idea.

Quoting a Reddit user on their personal experience is essentially like quoting an expert. It's a diverse perspective, which can be really helpful for your reader, too.

The good news is that most industries have a forum dedicated to them. Just search for “your industry” + “forum” and dig through to find discussions around your topic.

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Community Slack groups are also really good for sourcing business insights. When I worked at Sentisum, the Support Driven group for customer service professionals was an endless source of ideas (just search for certain keywords to surface old conversations on the topic). It was also a great place to find experts and distribute content.

4/ Leverage Proven Influencer Content

There’s a reason influencer content is so attractive and engaging.

The content is often really good—based on experience, has a real personality, and solves important pain points.

If it isn't good, it doesn’t get engagement—which means the content is proven to be engaging (which is also a fairly good proxy for value).

If you’re lucky enough to be in an industry with lots of influencers, you should 100% capitalize on it.

It can be as simple as:

Embedding an Instagram video
Screenshotting a LinkedIn post
Quoting a Tweet
Quoting and linking to a newsletter
Cutting a clip from a podcast

If your influencers are on LinkedIn, Jake Ward’s tool Kleo makes it easy to search through a creator’s content.

Once you find a relevant post, you can quote it, link to it, or even reach out and ask for a specific quote on the topic.

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Bonus points if YOU are the influencer. When I worked in-house I used to post on the company LinkedIn or publish a newsletter and embed that into content. It created a flywheel effect, where people would find us via SEO but follow us on social media.

Have a great rest of your week,

—Benny

Work With Me

In the last 12 months, I've perfected an SEO strategy that:

Drives tons of traffic
Drives real revenue results

My techniques are built around modern SEO best practices; conversion-focused strategy; and content readers actually love.

This year, I want to help just 10 companies implement the strategy and scale their blog into a revenue-generating channel.

Want in?

I typically work with companies in three ways:

Strategy & SEO Done-For-You: I build your strategy and each month support you with everything you need to build an organic revenue engine.
Everything Done-For-You: I build your strategy and you plug into my content operation. We do your SEO, deliver all your content, and take ownership of getting results.

Email me at ben@thefxck.com or DM me on LinkedIn if you're interested.

PS. My eBook is still flying off the proverbial shelf. If you want to learn to produce content at scale, click here.