So much content created for buying committees completely misses the mark.

It’s overloaded with fluff—a symptom of marketers putting word counts and search rankings before readers and outcomes.

Instead of being genuinely useful or persuasive, content is flooded with generic and unsubstantiated claims. While intended to build trust, strategic content dwells in the theoretical with little or no original value.

It’s why the C-suite have become skeptical and distrusting of most B2B content. Much of it lacks the insight and credibility to warrant their attention.

To them, you’re just another marketer promoting messages they’ve seen a hundred times.

So, how do you cut through the noise to inspire action from your ideal customers?

SCQA: the framework that helps you break through the noise

You need to connect with senior audiences rapidly, paint a picture of the promised land, and guide them there with minimal friction.

Enter SCQA.

SCQA is a simple messaging framework for creating content that stands out, speaks directly to senior executives’ needs and interests, and gets them excited about your solution.

Its four elements create a logical story flow to keep readers engaged to the last word:

• Situation. Your audience’s present reality. Something happening in the world that impacts their objectives, whether they realize it or not. It could be a long-term problem or a recent change in circumstances, but it’s top-of-mind and affects your buyer’s priorities.
• Complication. Why your audience should care about the situation, if they don’t already. What is it about that present reality that’s stopping them from achieving their goals? What should they fear and why do they need a solution? Cold, hard facts help your arguments hit home. Owned or third-party data adds credibility.
• Question. A direct question or statement that bridges the gloomy complication to the bright, sunny promised land of your solution. It’s a change of direction that excites the reader. It gets them thinking, “I need to keep reading.”
• Answer. The core of your message. Your answer acts as the solution that addresses the question. In content marketing, it’s sharing a new strategic way of thinking that will lead readers to make a decision—perhaps even to move forward in their buying journey.

SCQA’s origins are in business consulting. Barbara Minto, then at McKinsey, popularized the framework in her book The Pyramid Principle as a way to ensure consultancy reports resonate with their audiences—the same senior executives you need to reach.

By meeting readers where they currently are and addressing specific pain points, you produce content that truly connects with their priorities.

And we know SCQA works because it helped Grizzle secure its first clients. 

We used it to structure a one-page website selling guest blogging services back in 2016, promoted it via an outreach campaign, and converted 4% of prospects into sales deals within two months.

Admittedly, this landing page broke every copywriting rule in the book. But that didn’t matter. The framework did the heavy lifting, communicating everything our audience needed to know in a logical and captivating way.

The point? However you’re trying to reach the C-suite—be it through landing pages, blog articles, or email outreach—SCQA is effective.

Here’s what each step involves:

Further reading: Learn how we helped this c-suite marketing company get featured in leading publications and generate six figure sales opportunities using SCQA and digital PR.

1. Situation: Meet your reader on their playing field

Set the stage by showing you understand your audience’s current reality.

Lead with a statement your reader agrees with to demonstrate that you understand them. Gain trust by immediately positioning yourself as a peer.

Just make sure what you say is specific. Avoid basic platitudes and overtly obvious facts that any marketer could come up with—otherwise, you’ll just blend in.

A Forrester survey found industry peers to be B2B buyers’ most trusted source of information. Salespeople were the least trusted group. Another solid argument against beginning relationships with self-promotion.

We're not always able to position ourselves as peers. For many marketers and brands, it's tough to escape the perception of "vendor." But laying common ground early in your messaging makes you relatable and trustworthy.

For example, our content production landing page leads with this situation:

It’s simple but the message is clear: “We understand you, your industry, and the problems you face.”

The narrower your audience, the more precise your situation can be.

Reactive content can be great for this—prodding a new issue that’s affecting your ICP right now.

Like this Optimizely landing page that targets users of Google Optimize (the sunsetted A/B testing tool) who’ve been left without their go-to platform:

Optimizely knows its audience relies on experimentation programs and worries about falling behind. By highlighting that situation before presenting the solution, it got the reader nodding along. It established common ground, making them more open to hearing what it had to say next.

Other times, you can fall on your readers’ side of a polarizing argument to build a connection. Like we did in this blog post on backlink acquisition:

Even today, the number of spam link outreach emails we receive suggests that not everyone agrees with this statement. But we know our target audience does. As long as those people are on our side and interested in reading the rest of this article, that’s all that matters.

2. Complication: Introduce an unknown pain point

Now explain how the situation stops your reader from reaching their goals.

They might have an idea already. Even if so, spark that “oh shit” moment by presenting the consequences. Make them need a new way of thinking or working. Build a barrier.

For example, when Google changes its ranking algorithm (a seemingly regular “situation” in marketing right now), most marketers know they must adapt to protect search performance. 

We won’t spark any emotion or urgency by dwelling on what the reader already knows. 

So instead, what are the ramifications of not acting?

The complication isn’t just that search performance drops. It’s that marketers lose website traffic. Which affects revenue, lead generation, and even brand awareness.

Revenue is what marketers are measured against by their bosses. Tying their situation to that ultimate consequence makes them realize they need a solution, fast.

Here’s the complication we presented in our link acquisition article:

We show marketers how their situation—the waning effectiveness of spammy link building—is damaging: following outdated advice on the topic is “time-consuming” and results in damaged relationships.

This is why our readers should care, and why they need a new approach. Our approach.

3. Question: Spark intrigue and build a bridge

Enough woe. It’s time to offer your audience a ticket to the promised land.

By planting a desirable outcome in readers’ minds, you’ll keep content flowing smoothly and logically while shifting the tone to one of positivity and results.

You’re setting the stage for your content’s answer: the core value you’re offering.

Here’s the question element from our landing page. In this instance, we use two direct and precise questions to encourage prospects to continue reading:

It’s only two lines. But they offer a bridge to the promised land, signaling the value to come. Which in this case is Grizzle’s content production methodology.

This bridge isn’t always a literal question. Statements can be just as effective at re-hooking readers and earning their attention.

As a content and SEO agency supporting SaaS companies, we often serve and educate senior audiences with strategic topics.

It involves highlighting the complication of a situation the reader already knows, then transitioning to a step-by-step workflow or piece of advice (i.e., our answer) by explaining what’s in store. 

Like in Pipedrive’s guide to CRM implementation:

The reader knows they need to implement a CRM. That’s why they’re looking for guidance on the topic. The complication is that reckless CRM implementations “complicate existing processes, increase risk and waste resources.”

So, how does Pipedrive carry the reader from that concerned state to a solution without losing the flow? 

By previewing the answer with a statement: “In this article, we’ll show you the best way to…” 

Now their senior audience knows what to expect. They can decide if the content is worth their limited time. Pipedrive ensures this by providing relevant, actionable advice on CRM implementation.

4. Answer: Pave the way forward

Now you’ve set the stage and made a promise. The rest of your content must provide the solutions or insights that address your complication: the better world you’re promising. 

In content marketing, “answer” always means value. And value takes various forms, often depending on the type of content you’re creating.

In a promotional landing page or cold email, your answer is likely the outcome or solution your product or service offers. The next step or action will be to sign up for a trial, demo, or even make a purchase.

Our content production methodology, for example, is the first part of our answer to the questions we asked earlier: “how do you ensure your content marketing program scales effectively while maintaining quality standards? How do you produce more content while ensuring it stands out?”

Then we help the reader move closer to a buying decision with a simple call-to-action:

In Pipedrive’s CRM implementation article, the content is designed to perform well by being immediately useful to decision-makers. Namely CIOs, and marketing and sales leaders.

Instead of a product or methodology, the article answers the question with straightforward, prescriptive guidance that helps the reader optimize their CRM and achieve their objectives.

Once again, the answer = value to the reader.

There’s growing demand among senior decision-makers for non-promotional information. In a 2023 Demand Gen Report survey, 71% of B2B buyers said they use content to guide their purchase decisions but 51% said the assets they found were too “sales-driven.”

Meanwhile, blog posts, webinars, and long-form content were the top three preferred content formats among respondents.

Even then, not all respondents consider “helpful” is genuinely valuable to its target audience.

To stand out, you need to cut through heaps of useless, repetitive content that decision-makers are actively avoiding. That means bolstering your “SCQA” answers with value they can’t get elsewhere.

The best ways to do this?

1. Demonstrating the first-hand experience C-suite executives crave when they seek advice
2. Backing up opinions with reliable first- and third-party data
3. Weaving expert views and experiences into your content

Think success stories with tangible results and unique insights drawn from industry research. Or in our case, anecdotes about launching guest blogging services with single-page websites in 2016.

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Guide senior execs to the promised land

We intentionally used the SCQA framework when writing this article. The fact you’re still reading (or skimmed this far down) is a testament to its power.

Here’s what SCQA looks like when applied to this article:

• The situation is that B2B marketers must engage senior decision-makers to influence buying decisions.
• The complication is that most content looks the same and offers little value, so your target audience won’t pay attention.
• The question is “How do you cut through the noise to inspire action from your ideal customers?”
• The answer is SCQA.

If senior decision-makers form any part of your target market, think carefully about how you interact with them. Whatever the context.

Structure your messaging in a way that forces executives to care what you have to say. You’ll soon start attracting your ideal customers, gaining their trust, and closing more deals.

In this article, you’ll learn how to strategically choose content topics that align with all of your business goals; whether that be lead generation, acquisition or retention.

We’ll share content ideation methods used at Grizzle, as well as those used by content marketers at companies like Databox, ConversionXL and Braze.

1. Tapping into sales and customer success teams

Does your marketing team work in a silo, away from sales and customer success teams? You could be missing out on an array of content ideation opportunities to support prospects across the entire buyer journey.

Below are some tips to help you collaborate with sales and customer success teams:

Supporting your sales teams and generate leads

Lead generation is, of course, a key sales metric. And most sales teams would be grateful for content that answers common queries they hear from leads on a daily basis.

This will enable them to spend less time answering repetitive questions, and more time closing deals!

Here’s how to generate a pool of content ideas that help support your sales team and generate leads at the same time:

Interview sales managers and SDRs

Interview sales reps and managers to understand the sales cycle, their biggest goals and common pain-points or questions they hear from prospects. You can get rich, honest insights by interviewing sales members.

Pro tip: Record and transcribe these interviews and repurpose quotes in future pieces of content. This will help you collect deep, qualitative insights you can refer to when expanding your buyer personas, while positioning your salespeople as experts at the same time.

Here are some questions you can ask sales reps to elicit insights for your content ideation process:

• What are some common challenges prospects bring up again and again?
• Which part of our product/service makes prospects light up?
• Which content would you find most helpful to provide prospects?
• What are the main sales metrics you need to meet?
• What are the common queries you get from prospects?
• What are common sales objections you get across the sales journey?
• Are you happy with current sales materials?
• Can you explain the internal sales process? E.g from first point of contact to closing
• Which sales questions do you struggle to answer the most?
• Which sales materials do you most regularly send leads?

Audit and optimise your sales material

Ask your sales teams to send you the content they use on a regular basis. This can include:

• Any white papers, case studies etc. they regularly send to prospects
• Email outreach templates
• Template responses used for FAQs

Add these to a spreadsheet and note at which stage of the sales cycle materials are used, the traffic to these pages (if relevant), and quality of the content.

This exercise should help you notice obvious gaps and content that needs refreshing. For example, case study pages may get high traffic, but be thin in value and show low “time spent on page”. Refreshing case studies may be a priority area.

Sit in on sales calls (or request recordings)

Sitting in on sales calls will let you grasp objections from the perspective of a potential customer. You may pick up blind spots that weren’t picked up by speaking to the sales team alone.

As Emily Byford, B2B Content Marketer, says:

“Listen to your customers, listen to your sales team. If possible, get your sales team to record their calls, and make a habit of listening to a couple a week. This will help you understand what matters most to your potential customers – the problems they’re *really* looking to solve. What are the questions they ask most often? Use this to prioritise the content you’re planning.”

Once you’ve captured all this information from the sales team and your audits, present a shortlist of topics to the team about which you’ll be prioritizing for the next quarter.

Supporting customer success teams to boost retention (and prevent churn)

Customer success teams want to delight customers and prevent churn. Content can help support customers during this journey.

Below, similar to the section above, is an approach to help you generate a pool of content ideas for your customer success team.

Interview members of the customer success team

Just like you did with sales, fresh insights can be yielded from customer success teams. They speak with customers on a daily basis, and they can bring a different perspective than sales teams.

Some example questions include:

• What do clients love about our product/service?
• What are the common woes (both product and non-product related) that customers talk about?
• What are the customer success team’s goals and success metrics?
• What does the customer onboarding process look like?
• What is the big problem our customers are looking to solve by using our product?
• What are the most common reasons customers churn?
• What are the most frequently asked questions from clients?
• What content would be most helpful to send new customers?
• Best customer success stories?

Compile an audit of current customer success materials

Request to be sent all the current customer success materials in use and create a spreadsheet listing all of these.

Sit in on an onboarding call and a customer check-in call

Listening in on customer calls will help you empathise with customers and uncover content topics that you may not have thought of by talking to internal teams alone.

Agree on topics that will empower customer success

Once you’ve captured all this information, present a shortlist of topics to the customer success team about which you’ll be prioritizing.

I spoke with Todd Grennan, Managing Editor at Braze, who explained how he uses a similar process of interviewing different department representatives to plan each quarter’s topics:

“We operate on a quarterly schedule, aligned with the rest of the business. A month before the end of the previous quarter, my team starts having 1:1 meetings with representatives of other departments in the organisation. We basically sit down with them for half an hour each and talk through what their focus is for the next 3 months, what their business concerns are, what they’re seeing in the market etc.

Often, one of the biggest signals regarding whether there’s a topic we ought to take on is when we hear from disparate departments that a particular topic is a major topic of focus for them. This is usually a sign that this is a topic worth diving into that hasn’t caught on our radar yet.

Usually we take the raw material from these interviews and take that in concert with any demand generation information we have for the quarter. We don’t want to have tunnel vision when it comes to serving internal needs but we also want to make sure that any insights various teams have seen in the market are cared about, particularly if they have relevance for our audience.”

2. Finding SEO-driven topics to increase organic traffic

Below are some tactics to help your content rank on Google; an SEO-first approach to content ideation.

Chris Newton, Inbound Marketing Manager at Klaviyo, explains what we mean by an ‘SEO-first’ approach to support users looking for answers through search engines:

“Content ideation at Klaviyo used to follow an “SEO-second approach” but I’m establishing an SEO-first approach. People would often come to me with a blog post and say ‘can you optimise this for SEO’ after the fact. I find those don’t always tend to perform as well as posts where we identified the topic we want to write about first and then write the post specifically around a certain keyword that we’re trying to optimise for. I call that the SEO-first approach.

I think that as the year goes on, we’re going to be taking more of an SEO-first approach to content ideation.”

How to discover keywords for SEO-first content

When it comes to uncovering SEO-friendly topics, it’s important to begin with some keyword research.

Start by listing keywords you think your target audience would be searching for.

If you’re not sure where to start, have a look at blogs of your competitors. Input their URLs into a tool like Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, or SEMRush and you’ll see which keywords these posts rank for, as Automate.io’s Sr. Content Marketer, Archita Sharma suggests:

Use a tool like Ahrefs to check out your competitor’s keywords and get an understanding of what worked well for them! A simple lookup in Ahrefs’ Content Explorer would show you which keywords, which links are already ranking and how competitive these keywords are. Target these hot keywords and set up your content pipeline accordingly.

Next, punch your chosen keywords to an SEO tool like Ahrefs, which will show you will show you keyword ideas and similar keywords, allowing you to build upon your initial keyword list:

You can even use Google and look at the ‘searches related to’ terms that come up:

Make a note of the average monthly search volume for each keyword, along with the difficulty:

Next, use a tool or a simple incognito search to see which content is ranking on page one of Google’s SERPs:

Note down the content titles, assumed search intent per result (are the topics mainly step-by-step articles? News articles?) and the quality of the top 5 SERP results.

A tool like Clearscope will automatically give you this information to help you see areas to outshine the competitor content. Check which other keywords the top domain rank for: Input the domains for the top 5 results into a tool like SEMRush, Ahrefs or Ubersuggest.

Once you’ve gathered all this information, utilize this data to choose SEO-first topic opportunities. You may choose a buffet of topics. Perhaps a couple of 10x pieces to outshine the competition when it comes to high traffic, high competition topics.

You could also sweep up a bunch niche topics that you’ve identified as having low traffic, low competition.

Focus on niche content hubs to rank a new blog

It can be difficult for newer blogs to compete with content from authoritative sites when it comes to organic search.

Derek Gleason, Content Lead at ConversionXL, explains the ‘hub-and-spoke’ strategy that newer sites can utilize to create content that ranks in Google:

For newer sites, content ideation is pretty simple: Pick a topic that’s:

1. Relevant to your company or product

2.For which you can claim authority

3. For which there’s search volume

Then, cover the core topic and its tangents—a hub-and-spoke strategy, essentially.

For example, in my previous work at an agency, a client managed several pediatric urgent care centers. While anything relevant to healthcare could qualify as a potential topic, we wanted them to narrow the focus to their deepest expertise.

Ultimately, it made the most sense for them to answer the question, “Should I take my child to urgent care or the ER?”. We identified about a dozen posts on topics like “When is a fever dangerous?” and “Can you get stitches at urgent care?”

Google rewarded the narrow focus of our mini-hub, and – despite being a small site with unremarkable domain authority – they rank highly on Page 1 for several “Your Money or Your Life” queries that receive added scrutiny from Google.

When users come to any page, we want them to:

1) Know – know what the page is about

2) Feel – feel that the page gives them the right solution

3) Commit – commit to one single action

In terms of the ideation stage, Chris Old from IG suggests using KFC to get a ‘bucket’ of actionable ideas in the following way:

• KNOW – Leverage the expertise of subject-matter authorities in your business. Ask them to post-it note all the key things your company offers.
• FEEL – Once they’ve done that, expand on all those key concepts with anything you could write about on those topics. Udemy is another good resource for expanding on topics – check their table of contents for courses on given subjects. Or do it the old-fashioned way – have a look down Waterstones for books on the subject and see how they structure the content.
• KNOW/FEEL – Once you have all the ideas, categorise them into content clusters and run them through a keyword research tool to see where demand is. That means the keywords you’ve considered, any similar keywords you find, plus keywords the current ranking content is showing up for.
• KNOW/FEEL – Re-categorise your clusters based on demand. You should have one ‘blockbuster article’ or page for each topic, with off-shoot shorter articles expanding on it where there is demand. Have a super-interesting idea with no search volume? Add it to the hub article.
• COMMIT – For each topic cluster, what is the one thing you want users to do? Expand on that for every page within the cluster – what’s the one action you want them to commit to? This should be the first consideration when briefing the content.
• KNOW/FEEL/COMMIT – Now you have everything in place, it’s time to brief the content. That means the usual stuff – H1, H2s, title tag, keywords, Schema markup etc. But we don’t want to lose site of our KFC. Start with the ‘commit’, as above, then also brief in what you want users to ‘feel’ and ‘know’ from each page.

This approach ensures both Google and users see clearly organised content and a sound internal linking structure for each content cluster.

Including the ‘commit’ ensures you give users what they want at the endgame, and coax them into taking that action. And the ‘feel’ ensures they are comfortable to so and more engaged with the page. That, in turn is good for engagement metrics Google may be measuring, while also boosting semantic relevance around the topic.

The only pitfall to avoid: do not create too many off-shoot articles if there is limited demand or overlap between the content. You don’t want Google’s robots to be confused about which pages to rank for what keywords.

Steps to hub and spoke topic ideation:

Here’s a step-by-step approach to help your new website rank well in Google:

1. Select a main keyword that will act as your main hub topic for your target audience . Using Derek’s example above, this could be the keyword “should i take my child to urgent care or the ER?”. This will be your hub topic that spoke topics will branch out from.
2. Choose niche keyword topics that supplement the main hub topic. For example, spoke topics that relate to the initial query of “should i take my child to urgent care or the ER” could be “when is a fever dangerous?” and “can you get stitches at urgent care?”. These “spoke” topics expand on the hub topics. They can be separate posts that are also internally linked to from the hub post.
3. Connect the hub and spoke topics with a URL hierarchy. Ensure there’s a logical URL hierarchy such as blog/urgent-care for the main hub topic and then  blog/urgent-care/fever, blog/urgent-care/stitches for the spoke topics to increase your chances of ranking.

Huge content backlog? Create a comprehensive content inventory

On the other end of the spectrum, if you have a blog with a huge backlog of posts, the content ideation process should begin with a comprehensive audit of all your content.

Derek goes on to explain the process he uses at CXL:

“When I started at CXL a year ago, the content ideation process was quite complex. We had over 600 posts that we’d published over seven years. We had already covered the most relevant topics, often more than once (leading to “keyword cannibalization” issues). To succeed here, I started by building a comprehensive inventory of all content—a taxonomy that grouped posts into categories and subcategories.

The taxonomy has made it much quicker to help authors identify a topic that’s new to the blog and, ideally, covers an obvious content gap. For example, we recently published a post on how to identify SaaS metrics; we’ve written posts for SaaS companies many times before (and written about analytics dozens of times, too), but we’d never dedicated a post exclusively to SaaS metrics. I doubt we would’ve spotted that opportunity so quickly without an on-demand catalog of our existing content).

Admittedly, we’re very focused on organic search—it accounts for the lion’s share of our traffic. The content ideation process is different if you’re angling for social shares or links (although high-ranking content earns many “passive” links by ranking at the top of page 1. The takeaway is that your distribution strategy should inform your content ideation, not the other way around. You might have an incredible idea for a post, but if it requires a paid social media budget that you don’t have or an army of outreach specialists that you haven’t employed to get visibility, it will fail”

– Derek Gleason, Content Lead at ConversionXL

3. Product-Driven Content that Attracts Buyers

For many marketers, converting readers into leads and customers is a core content goal.

Which is why creating challenge-driven content, based on the needs and pains of your buyer persona, can be a great source for content ideas.

These are simple topics that dive into customer pain points that your product or solution solves.

Here’s a step-by-step approach to product-driven content:

Step 1: Identify which landing pages you want to drive traffic to

If you’re unsure which landing pages to prioritize, start off with an audit of your current product pages.

Gathering this data will give you an informed decision regarding which product pages to prioritise and let you see whether your new content has had the impact you hoped for down the line.

Product page data you could gather:

• Current traffic for each product page:

• “Previous page path” for current product pages via Google Analytics: Which pieces of content are already driving readers to your product pages?

• Conversion rate for current product pages: If you’ve setup Goals in Google Analytics or a have CRM like HubSpot, you’ll be able to see the conversion rate of each product page (whether that be free trial sign-ups, demo requests, or purchases).

Use this data to shortlist the product pages that need more traffic. For example, if there’s a highly converting product page with low traffic, you may want to prioritize content topic ideas that link to that page.

Step 2: Identify which pain points are solved by your product

Next, have a deeper look at the product pages you’ve identified. Note which pains are solved by the solution described on each product page:

Choose content topics about the specific pain points you’ve identified. Add a CTA to the connected product page that illustrates how you solution solves that pain point.

For example if your product page explains how your app relieves the manual effort of exporting spreadsheets, choose content topics like “tips to stop spend hours manually processing spreadsheet data”. Your solution solves this pain point so it would be natural to include a CTA to the matching landing page. Ensure you blogging efforts work with product pages.

4. Generating Product Demand with Top-of-Funnel Topics

Let’s look at choosing content topics to drive top of funnel engagement and traffic. Top of funnel content refers to posts that address problems experienced by your target audience.

Interview your target audience

Interview your target audience about their challenges to collate a buffet of top-of-funnel content ideas. You’ll uncover nuanced topics that are difficult to pick up through online research alone.

The most recent posts (including this one!) on Grizzle’s blog have come into fruition from this interview method:

1. Contact a bunch of people belonging to your target audience that you’d love to interview
2. Organise 30-minute calls with 3-5 of them
3. During the interviews, ask about their goals, biggest challenges and approaches to problems. Ask lots of follow-up questions to get to the nitty-gritty!
4. Make a shortlist of commonly mentioned pain points from your interviewees. You should begin to notice a pattern of nuanced pain points and topics that have emerged

Target audience interviews give you the added benefits of developing long-term relationships with your sector, a deeper understanding of your audience, and quotes you can inject into blog posts (or even a podcast) too.

Crowdsource ideas from your target audience

Databox have a super-organised way of collating ideas from their target audience, as their CEO, Pete Caputa explained to me:

“We collect 100s of content ideas from our writers and readers every month. For most of our content, we are sourcing contributions from experts. We do this by asking 25-50 experts one question, then weaving the best answers together into a long guide on the subject. At the same time, we ask them, “What articles would you like us to write next?” We also invite our freelance writers to pitch us ideas. We review the suggestions and pick the best 5-6 each week”

– Pete Caputa, CEO at Databox

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Refresh old content ideas

Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to great content ideas! If you’ve got a backlog of old content, refreshing old posts can do wonders, as Chris from Klaviyo explains:

“I’m a huge fan of going through old posts and re-optimising them with new data and new insights for a new audience. We have a ton of posts going back from 2015, 2016, 2017, and, with just a few optimisations and edits, we can give them new legs. That’s a big goal of our managing editor.”

– Chris Newton, Inbound Marketing Manager at Klaviyo

Identify sharable topics using BuzzSumo

Buzzsumo can help you identify topics that thrive on popular social channels like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook (Quora isn’t currently included).

Let’s say you want to write about topics around the general theme of “social media marketing”. You can run that search term and see the most socially shared posts via Buzzsumo’s ‘content analyzer’ tool.:

You can identify from this list which topics tend to be more widely shared than others.

You can take that a step further and click ‘view sharers’ for each post:

Not only will you identify influencers for certain topics (who you can contact to share your own posts) but you can also look at other content shared by those influencers for further topic ideas. Read more on connecting with B2B influencers here.

Conclusion

As covered, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to content ideation. It’s important to get clear about your goals before choosing a framework for topic ideas.

Here’s a recap of which content ideation frameworks you can use depending on your goal:

Organic traffic goals: SEO-first ideas using search tools and keyword research should be the base of your content ideation. Hub & spoke approaches are ideal for new blogs.

Conversion goals: Run an audit of your product pages and then choose content topics around pain points that your product solves

Target audience engagement goals: in-depth interviews with your target audience will help you identify nuanced pain points and patterns

Social sharing goals: Use a social sharing tool like Buzzsumo to identify which topics are frequently shared across different social media channels

Supporting your sales and customer success teams (lead generation and retention goals): Interview your sales & customer success teams and run audits of current materials.

Done right, you can build an engaged audience of loyal fans and customers. The trick is to: 

• Post valuable content consistently—both single tweets and threads 
• Interact with your audience in the comments, rather than scheduling posts and walking away

This strategy will help you build an audience and brand awareness at speed while attracting new leads and users who have problems you can solve.

Here’s why investing in your Twitter presence is effective for growth and lead generation, and how to write content that generates reach, engagement, and leads.

Why Twitter is an audience and revenue-generating machine

When you build a community around your brand (both business and personal), your credibility compounds and improves your brand equity because people see you as a human rather than a faceless entity.

This awareness helps you attract fans that are eager to pay attention to what you have to say because your content resonates with them. 

As you consistently provide helpful content, you’ll build authority and credibility—just like you would from any other content marketing channel. 

The key is to stop thinking of Twitter as a repurposing platform and start thinking about it as a  channel to create original content. It’s a content platform with its own ecosystem and search engine. It’s more than a digital billboard for your latest article, event, or announcement—a mindset that severely undermines its potential for attracting your audience.

You wouldn’t post a blog that says “We wrote a new thread on quality content so go check it out on Twitter” with a link. Yet, that’s exactly what some businesses use Twitter to do. This strategy doesn’t work because it’s outdated, cumbersome, and neglects how people want to digest information on the platform.

Users want content served to them directly on the platforms they’re logged into. Non-native content disrupts the intended user experience and breaks a pattern. Unless given a compelling reason to click away, they want platform-specific content.

Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing at SparkToro, coined the term zero-click content to describe that, now more than ever, people crave in-platform content without needing to interrupt their consumption habits.

SparkToro’s data (as well as our own) show that platforms and algorithms favor in-platform content: 

It’s obvious why algorithms prefer it; they want to keep people on their platforms. 

But people also expressly favor high-quality native content because it allows them to:

• Engage with brands where they already are (clicking away can feel cumbersome)
• Experience non-intrusive messaging (CTAs and external links can feel out of place)
• Actually read what’s put in front of them (links are often overlooked or not read)

On that last point, the data is fascinating. A study from Columbia University found that 59% of social media links shared by news domains aren’t clicked on at all.

Furthermore, HubSpot looked at 2.7 million link-containing tweets and found that there is no correlation between retweets and clicks. This means that people will retweet something without even reading it, which aligns with the Columbia findings.

The data makes our jobs as marketers seem bleak, but that's only true if you treat Twitter like a place to simply distribute content. When you tack a link onto the tail end of platform-specific content it will only drive traffic if:

• You’ve spent time sharing native content without links and built an engaged audience on the platform
• You do it sparingly (the 80/20 rule is a good true north for articles)

Not all links are created equal, so the 80/20 rule doesn’t always apply. A link to a blog post is different from a link to a newsletter signup form, for example. The former requires a decent time commitment while the latter is a quick action. 

As such, newsletter CTAs or forms can be tacked onto most posts, preferably a few hours after you share them. This works to:

• Bring your post to the top of people’s feeds again (additional tweets in a thread can trigger the algorithm to ‘reshare’ it)
• Provide a key window of time for native-only content to be consumed 

For example, I created native content almost exclusively in my first four months on Twitter and grew my audience from ~500 to ~14k. 

Because of this, by the time I promoted an article, people were eager to not only click but spend time reading it. In 24 hours, we generated::

• 233 pageviews
• 214 unique pageviews
• 4:48 average time on page

My goal was to build my credibility to a point where people believed me when I said “read this: it's worth your time.” This experiment proved successful and my links now generate clicks, leads, and new clients.

Both threads and single tweets are critical to growth

Single tweets are important and should be incorporated into your content strategy. But love them or hate them, threads tend to have a bigger reach (and impact).

Use threads to expand organic reach

Check out the difference in impressions between a single tweet of mine vs. a thread with only 100 more likes (the higher the like count, the less impactful differences of hundreds become):

These were posted one day apart, which means I was reaching a similar audience. 

While the thread only got 100 more likes, it received ~65,000 more impressions, was shared ~2x more times, and got ~2x more engagement.

Threads generally perform better because they’re educational in nature and help people solve problems. Whether you’re teaching people how to do something or telling a story of success or failure, your audience is learning as they read and taking notes on how to apply the tips to their own circumstances. 

Because of this, your audience will likely be more engaged and keen to retweet and share with their network. Twitter rewards engagement (i.e. comments and retweets), meaning reach compounds.

Think of threads like long-form articles for Twitter, written with a blend of copywriting and content writing styles.

Let’s return to the thread I mentioned earlier that linked to our Quality Content Marketing Matters article at the end and break down why it was successful.

Here are the analytics:

Over 100k impressions and 2k+ engagements is a great result and led directly to that spike in pageviews and time on page referenced above.

I repromoted the same article a few days later in a single tweet with a link and it got 100+ likes but generated nearly 100K fewer impressions than the thread:

The thread drove more engagement, and more readers to my article, generated several leads, and expanded my personal (and subsequently Grizzle’s) brand awareness.

Use single tweets to bolster engagement and show your personality

As for single tweet formats, quick tips, pieces of expertise, or questions to your audience can drum up tons of engagement even if the reach isn’t always as impressive. 

For example, this single tweet asking a question about writing and editing sitting vs. standing got ~14k impressions and generated 67 comments:

And this tweet listing my article writing process (that ended with a question to inspire engagement) drummed up over 1,000 likes and 60+ comments:

We recommend replying to most comments because it shows your audience that you’re a real person and not some unreachable entity. 

This is key for both personal and business brands: when you engage and respond, you personalize the experience and build deeper connections. The deeper your connections, the more loyal your audience will be. 

Critically, they’ll also feel more motivated to learn about the business you run or represent and consider becoming a customer. Meaningful connections through personal interactions build trust, and Twitter is a touchpoint along the customer journey (both before and after an initial purchase). 

The more valued people feel, the more likely they are to add you to the consideration set and feel motivated to explore a purchase. As long as you’re delivering value, consistently publishing tweets and threads will generate awareness, leads, and new business.

As for a posting cadence, we recommend the following: 

• 2x threads a week to teach and bolster engagement
• At least 2x single tweets a day to remain consistent and please the algorithm (which rewards daily activity)

Note that if you do miss a day or two you’ll be fine. Quality wins over quantity, and we’ve not seen notable drops in engagement because of it.

How to write valuable Twitter posts that build compounding credibility 

Twitter content isn’t the same as blog articles, emails, landing pages, or ebooks. It’s also not the same as other social platforms like LinkedIn or Instagram. 

You only have 280 characters to work with, so it’s uniquely concise and people scroll and skim at lightning paces.

Let’s look at how to craft engaging threads first.

The most valuable threads capture and hold attention

A great thread starts with a great hook. People want to know:

• Why they should bother reading
• How it will help them solve a problem
• What they will learn

If you don't answer these questions, they won't care or feel motivated to click into it and read.

A great way to capture attention is to poke at a pain point, add credibility via quantifiable proof (numbers perform well), get specific with outcomes, and end with a cliffhanger:

• Poking at the pain lights up emotions and gives readers something to relate to, e.g. “Most people get this wrong” or “I was struggling and wish I had a playbook to follow”. 
• Adding credibility acts as social proof and gives people a reason to care or trust what you’re saying, e.g. “I’ve edited 3M+ words” or “We’ve spent 7 years building systems that have netted $5,000,000 revenue”. 
• Getting specific with outcomes allows readers to picture what they can accomplish themselves by reading, e.g. “ensure your new employee stays at your organization” or “3x conversions in 90 days”.
• Leaving a cliffhanger encourages people to click to find out what’s next. This is especially key if your thread is a listicle. For example, if the crux is “8 ways to X”, don’t include what those are in the hook—make the reader click more to see more.

A bad hook makes it all about you and doesn’t leave anything up to the imagination. 

Here are a few examples of strong hook formats:

1. [Opinionated state of play]. [Data]. [Poke at pain]. What to do? [Opinionated solution]. Here's how:

2. As a/an [personalized descriptor] I [pain point] with [trend]. So, I did [descriptor of event] to learn [outcome]. Here are X takeaways:

3. Hot take. [Thought-provoking opinion on trend]. I've [take on future of trend]:

4. [State of play]. But [pain point]. Why (and what to do instead):

5. [Opinion]. Stance on [bad take]. I’ve spent [social proof + timeframe] to achieve [outcome]. The playbook:

These hooks are intriguing, specific, and open a loop that makes you curious about what’s inside.

Once you capture people’s attention, you need to keep it and make the juice worth the squeeze.

You want readers to:

• Easily understand your points
• Experience zero friction
• Stay interested throughout

To do that: 

• Share unique insights
• Add the "why" and "how"
• Get creative
• Pay attention to structure

Strong content marketing principles apply to thread writing. The best threads set context, add examples, include prescriptive tips, tell a great story, give the reader instructions on how to do something themselves, and leave them with an action item (e.g. click this link, follow me, and/or retweet to share).

On Twitter, white space is critical—especially when using a listicle format that has dedicated headers. Still, even bold, opinionated, and storytelling content benefits from white space on Twitter.

Generally, this format works best:

• Header: Set the stage
• Subheader: Answer “the why”
• Body: Supplement your argument and answer “how”
• Takeaway: Empower them to follow your advice and give them a reason why it will help them help themselves.

Here’s how this format looks with white space separators:

Here’s a meta example of how you could use this format to explain why this advice will help people write stronger Tweets:

• Header: “Answer intent right away”
• Subheader: “This way, the reader understands why what they're about to read matters.”
• Body: “Include data points or personal anecdotes so the reader can picture themselves doing what you’re describing.”
• Takeaway: “Small tweaks like this make a big impact on flow and drive engagement.”

And here’s a simplified version of how we could format a tweet when giving the advice “break up long walls of text”:

• Header: “Break up long walls of text” 
• Subheader: “White space helps skimmers and makes content easier to digest & navigate.” 
• Body: “Try to limit paragraphs to 2-3 sentences max.”
• Takeaway: “The reading experience matters as much as the words on the page.” 

Add your CTA to the final tweet in the thread. Here’s what my thread CTA looked like when I promoted the Quality Content Marketing article referenced above:

This only worked because it was tacked onto original content, formatted for Twitter, and referenced themes discussed in the article.

Here’s the hook I used:

Nothing was copy/pasted. The best-performing repurposed content on Twitter doesn’t feel repurposed—it feels tailored to the unique Twitter experience.

Here’s an example of a body tweet from this thread where I explain what editorial goals are:

Here’s how we talk about editorial goals in the article itself:

Notice how the examples I picked are completely different. In the article, our target audience is marketers that would benefit from seeing what a relevant content goal looks like.

On Twitter, my audience is a mix of content marketers, writers, and editors looking to improve their written communication skills.

I tailored each example to the audience at hand and structured the content to the format at play. It’s not repurposed; it's reimagined.

Interestingly, I chose to include a second hook in this thread:

And it got 3x more likes than every other body tweet:

That’s because frontloading value, credibility, and getting ahead of objections works well on Twitter. 

In my first hook, I argue that quality content is important but I don’t explain why. To get ahead of objections and prove my point, I used the second tweet to prove:

• I know what I’m talking about
• Here are all the reasons why quality matters
• I’m about to back this up with specifics so keep reading

If the reader wasn’t entirely hooked after reading tweet 1, they certainly are after tweet 2.

This second hook is also a perfect single tweet. Here’s why.

How to write single tweets that drive engagement

The reason why the second hook above performed so well is because it teaches and is uniquely structured for the platform.

Notice how the sentence length cascades from long to short as you read from top to bottom. This is visually engrossing and works to capture attention.

But not every tweet needs to be so obviously structured for the platform. 

This quick tip performed well because it poked at a common pain point (everybody wants to make it big, fast), gave advice backed by years of experience, and spoke truth to unrealistic expectations:

Humorous responses to industry trends or new data are also a great way to start a conversation and let your personality shine through:

What B2B marketer hasn’t seen that infographic by now? It’s relatable and makes you want to run to leave a comment.

In general, single tweets give you a chance to demonstrate your personality. They also challenge you to share valuable advice in a short format—which is excellent practice for cutting fluff and redundancy from your writing.

There’s no “perfect” format for single tweets, nor should there be. As long as they’re tailored towards your target audience, you can get creative, share opinions, ask engaging questions, and have a little fun:

The more relatable and resonating, the bigger chance you’ll strengthen existing connections and attract new followers (that may turn into customers one day).

Ignore Twitter and leave relationships on the table

Since joining Twitter we’ve attracted and converted more leads at Grizzle in a shorter period of time than ever before.

All through organic posts and zero targeted outreach.

Posting daily and providing value has shown potential clients that we know how to create quality content. 

If you’re sleeping on Twitter or annoyed by how clickbaity and regurgitated content there can feel, you’re ignoring its massive potential. When you mute the noise and focus on your personal and business growth, you build strong relationships that lead to new business opportunities. 

Of course, if the idea of doing it yourself is too painful or you don’t have time, you can also work with experts to write social content for you.

According to current understanding of Google, engagement factors like time on site are a key ranking factor. If someone clicks our result and ends their search there, it sends a strong signal that we’ve created content that satisfies their query.

To grab their attention during their search, your page title and meta description must communicate the value they’ll get from your content. But most importantly, it’s got to stand out from the ocean of same-old content on the SERPs.

Attack of the content clones: State of the SERPs in 2021

Search for any given keyword – especially competitive ones – and you’ll likely see a number of similar headlines:

For example, results for the term “what is vat” all provide similar answers to the same question, which can be bucketed into three categories:

1. ‍What is VAT?: Repeating the query back to the searcher in an attempt to prove relevancy‍
2. How much is it/how does it work?: A common question people have when looking for information about VAT‍
3. Complete guides: Content positioned as definitive resources

For marketers looking to stand out, taking a skyscraper or 10x content approach is pointless. Building a comprehensive guide that covers the basics is table stakes.

We need to find a truly unique angle that nobody else is covering and delivers on that unique promise.

In a recent conversation with Rand Fishkin, we talked about an article he wrote about outreach tips. He was disappointed with the results he found when searching for articles on the topic, and so he positioned his content accordingly:

He took a slightly controversial approach, but it paid off. During our chat, we discovered that this article ranks at the top of page one for “outreach tips:”

Look at the results above. Which of these headlines stands out the most?

This might seem like a risky move, but there’s a method in the madness. We marketers have come to expect lackluster results when searching for broad keywords. As someone who personally sits within this target audience, I feel this frustration. Rand’s article stands out because it’s breaking the mold. The promise offered by the page title is more compelling than its counterparts.

So, how would we take a similar approach for a topic as dry as “VAT”? The rest of this guide will cover our framework for writing attention-grabbing page titles and meta descriptions. If you’re looking to increase organic CTR from the SERPs, read on.

Researching angles for killer page titles

Your page title is the first thing your audience will notice. So you’ve got to make it exceptional.

Reverse-engineering the SERPs is a good place to start, depending on how competitive your primary target keyword is.

For example, we’ve already identified several angles for our “what is vat” article:

• Defining what VAT is
• The fact it’s a guide
• How much VAT is
• The full definition “value-added tax”

“SERP-stacking” these themes to communicate a well-rounded, comprehensive article is one approach we can take. But for this topic, we’ll quickly blend-in – which is the opposite result of our goal.

So, let’s take the microphone to our audience. The best way to do this is literally getting them in front of a microphone, conducting customer interviews around their challenges and needs.

Another scaleable approach is searching for relevant keywords on Quora. This will provide us with audience sentiment, and uncover potential angles that competing content has failed to include. Here’s what we find for “what is vat”:

Immediately, I see a huge opportunity in the first result. Here, someone is asking for an explanation in “layman’s terms”. Nobody is making this promise in the SERPs.

Twitter is another great source of insight. But since nobody is tweeting about VAT in this context (and honestly, why would they?), I’ll use “sales pipeline” as an example instead:

I see two potential angles from this single tweet:

1. Why You Should Build Sales Pipelines Before MVP
2. How to Build Sales Pipeline & Close Your First Sale

If you’re writing for a startup audience, you’ve just coupled a topic (building sales pipeline) to the priorities and pain-points (before building your MVP and getting the first sale) of your audience. This insight will become tremendously useful in a moment.

Value-driven meta descriptions

I don’t know about you, but I rarely read meta descriptions.

I’m more of an “open-in-new-tab-and-judge-the-introduction” kinda guy.

Still, meta descriptions are important for communicating the value of your content to searchers.

This is your opportunity to show them your content will answer their most pressing questions. It’s also a chance to get them clicking on your content with anticipation.

We use a framework that takes one or all of these approaches:

1. See what common themes arise on the SERPs
2. Summarise what our content covers
3. Look for questions people are asking elsewhere

Let’s take another look at the SERPs to build a more complete picture of searcher needs. For our “what is vat” article, these are the themes that keep coming up:

• “Current VAT rates – standard 20% and rates for reduced rate and zero-rated items…”
• “…is a tax applied to purchases of goods or services and other ‘taxable supplies…”
• “…broadly based consumption tax assessed on the value added to goods and services.”
• “For a business, VAT plays an important role and can be charged on a range of your goods and services.”
• “…it stands for value-added tax and it adds to the cost of nearly everything you buy in the UK.”
• “Value added tax, or VAT, is the tax you have to pay when you buy goods or services.“

Unlike page titles, there’s a tremendous amount of validation in these page descriptions. While a strong page title will stand out, our meta description should reaffirm they’ll find what they’re looking for.

In a way, Google has already done this for us. The elements are all here on page one. We just need to apply it to our own content.

The more a particular phrase or theme arises, the more we should be inclined to use it. Based on our findings, a possible meta description for our “what is vat” guide could be:

“VAT (currently at a rate of 20%), is value-added tax on purchases of products and services. Learn how to calculate it and what it means for your business in this complete guide.”

But as we’ve already discovered, there’s more to the story than the SERPs offer us…

Bringing it together & creating cohesive metadata

We have everything we need to craft attention-grabbing page titles and meta descriptions that communicates our content’s value.

Let’s start with our page title – which, from our research, is a no-brainer:

“What is VAT? A Layman’s Guide to Value-Added Tax”

Here, we’re demonstrating that we truly get our audience. We’re essentially saying:” “VAT can be complex, so we’re giving you content that’s easy to understand”.

We’re also communicating the fact it’s a guide, building context around the positioning of our content and setting expectations.

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Next, let’s revisit our meta description. While it’s nice and comprehensive, this first draft comes in at 177 characters. As the recommended limit is 155 to 158 characters, we need to cut some of the fat.

After revisiting the SERPs (and putting ourselves back into our audience’s shoes), we’ve come up with the following:

“In this complete guide to VAT, you’ll learn how to calculate value-added tax and what it means for your business (current rate: 20%).”

This description communicates the following:

1. Re-affirm the context (this result is a complete guide)
2. You’ll learn how to calculate it
3. Why it matters for your business
4. The current rate

Including the current rate of VAT brings the answer to the SERPs itself. We’re providing utility in the SERPs for anyone who needs this information immediately.

Standing out, intelligently

You spend so much time producing and distributing your content. But metadata is part of the puzzle that often gets neglected.

Page titles and meta descriptions should make up a critical part of your content creation and promotion process. Without it, nobody will click-through, which means Google will likely decide your content is not relevant enough.

I know writers who craft ten or more headlines for their content. Take the same approach with your page titles and meta descriptions, and you’ll see your CTR soar.

This article breaks down how Headspace generates over 720,000 monthly organic visitors. You’ll learn how this ecosystem helped generate over 2 million paying subscribers for Headspace and how you can apply these lessons to a SaaS content marketing strategy.

The Headspace content strategy: delivering value through content ecosystems

The Headspace product is itself a content platform. It exists to guide people through basic meditation principles, inviting them to subscribe and take advantage of features to expand their meditation journey.

But you don’t need to be a paying customer to reap these benefits. Every piece of content is designed to deliver value and educate their audience regardless of membership or means..

The Headspace home page prioritizes this mission before presenting product features:

There’s a blend of urgent and evergreen content. If you’re new to the meditation scene, there’s plenty here for you to get started no matter your experience level.

Here’s what else Headspace does exceptionally well:

• A deep understanding of their customer personas—no matter where they are in their mindfulness journey
• Dedicated to over-delivering value on evergreen topics
• Rapid and agile responses to trends and major shifts in the world (e.g. when they offered free subscriptions to users affected by the COVID-19 pandemic)
• Cheerful and engaging branding that’s present throughout every blog article, video, and design asset

This strategy ensures their audience finds the information they need to start their meditation journey immediately.

This is what great content should do; inform, educate, and entertain in a way that builds awareness. Most importantly, it gets them invested in your product.

For SaaS and tech brands starting with content marketing for the first time (or those looking to improve their existing strategy), here are some lessons you can take from Headspace’s approach:

1. Set the context: Why do you exist in the world? What are you hoping to help your customers achieve? This must be present in everything you create and publish.
2. Conduct qualitative research: Data is critical for developing a content strategy. But you must talk with your customers to gain a true understanding of their needs. Ask them what they struggle with and what their goals are.
3. Map needs to topics: Help customers solve these challenges by creating content on specific topics. Map your content to each pain-point. Identify trends that you can capitalize on.
4. Go where your customers are: As part of those conversations, find where your customers are most active. Which channels, communities, social platforms, and publications have their attention?
5. Build a community: Go one step further and become that channel. Create a space to let your audience come together, building a community around your product.

For example, martech brand Mutiny has created a community that brings senior marketers and revenue leaders together—both online and in-person:

Not only does Mutiny’s community bring advocates and buyers together, but they also use it as a platform to share their stories. This philosophy transforms their customer into the hero, allowing the broader Mutiny audience to learn from their peers.

Your content strategy must serve your audience and align with your business objectives. Before publishing anything, ensure it accomplishes both of these outcomes.

Creating SEO-driven content in a competitive market

Headspace’s dedication to value-driven content helps them rank for highly competitive keywords like “meditation” and “mindfulness”:

Collectively, the 143,000+ keywords they rank for generate over 720,000 visitors a month (according to data from Ahrefs).

To put that into perspective, you would need a monthly paid media budget of $619,000 to generate that traffic volume.

Let’s break their SEO-driven content strategy down further, starting with this content hub on “meditation basics:”

Using a hub-and-spoke approach, Headspace can create content around more specific topics, building out a comprehensive resource. This helps them build topical authority and rank for highly competitive keywords.

For example, this page currently ranks at position #9 in the SERPs for the term “transcendental meditation:”

This article builds credibility and authority—both in the eyes of readers and the Google algorithm—by:

• Using objective data from third-party sources to back up claims
• Covering the basics of TM without overwhelming the reader
• Wrapping the content in a beautiful UI to keep readers engaged

The result is an incredibly engaging piece of content that organically attracts readers and backlinks.

Optimizing content for better results

A deeper analysis of Headspace’s blog presents several opportunities to improve results.

First and foremost, it could benefit from a more editorial-friendly format. In other words, remove the landing page style and reposition them as articles by expanding on each section.

Furthermore, according to Clearscope, there are several opportunities to include new themes that will help improve rankings:

The same goes for their blog content. For example, this article ranks at position #17 for the term “high functioning depression,” which generates over 17,000 searches a month:

As you can see on the right-hand pane, there are several themes that the article could include to improve search performance.

I explore this in more depth in the video below:

Adopting a content optimization process can improve traffic and future-proof your content. It requires you to tend to your content like a garden. A publishing schedule and distribution act as soil and fertilizer, but you must water and prune those plants to see them flourish.

Charming and educational video content (generating over 120 million views)

Headspace's YouTube presence embodies the high-quality, educational content they're known for:"

Their presence on the world’s second-biggest search engine is impressive, with over 500 video uploads to date. According to Social Blade, Headspace’s YouTube channel generates an average of 658,543 views every day:

Their YouTube channel offers a cohesive experience that shares educational content around relevant topics.

Many SaaS and tech brands treat YouTube as a dumping ground for webinars, product demos, and sales enablement content.

This is a mistake. While you may attract views, you won’t build an engaged audience hungry for your next upload.

Thanks to their commitment to high-quality video content, Headspace has generated over 620,000 subscribers.

However, the question remains: how do they use YouTube as a standalone marketing platform? To answer this, let’s dig deeper into one of their most popular videos on understanding dark thoughts:

Based on the comments, we can deduce that paid media—namely pre-roll ads—has driven the majority of these 139 million views.

Despite this, it still garners a high level of engagement—with more than 14,000 likes and over 900 comments from people who find the disruption welcome.

We’ve discussed how content can fuel your paid media efforts in the past, and Headspace is proof that it works.

YouTube is also the second biggest search engine in the world, another factor that Headspace capitalizes on:

This particular video ranks for the term “meditation” and has generated over 80,000 organic views in four months.

In short, video is a critical component of Headspace’s organic and paid acquisition strategy. It generates clicks, educates their audience in entertaining ways, and drives new users.

Creating exceptional video content at scale

Producing high-quality video used to be a mammoth task. However, it’s not as expensive and time-consuming as it used to be.

By establishing visual styles and adopting proven video frameworks, producing video content at scale is now simple and affordable.

Headspace uses constraints to publish beautiful video content consistently. There’s a clear visual style, with each video focusing on a specific purpose:

• Short guides: Beautifully animated videos that provide advice on specific topics
• Interviews: Long-form videos where Headspace’s founder, Andy Puddicombe, interviews experts and thought leaders
• Direct-to-camera: A scripted format where Andy sits in front of the camera to provide meditation advice

They’ve also created several “limited video series” around specific topics. One example is “Sleepcast,” an audio series providing free bedtime meditations:

‍

Applying constraint to your video marketing allows you to scale up production while maintaining a high bar for quality. Commit to specific frameworks and batch elements of the production process to maximize resources.

For example, if you’re looking to publish four direct-to-camera videos a month, batch the live-action portion across one or two days.

Use your social media presence to set audience expectations, create a cohesive experience for viewers, and get them excited for future videos.

Digital PR, link building, and getting featured by Bill Gates

Headspace have gained their fair share of press attention. With mentions from CNBC, Forbes, and even Scientific American, they’ve effectively climbed the attention ladder.

Done right, digital PR contributes to brand awareness and helps you connect with prominent industry influencers.

Headspace’s digital PR activity took on a life of its own when they caught the attention of Bill Gates. In his own words, the product helped him go from meditation skeptic to believer:

Headspace consistently get picked up by publications for several reasons:

• They create exceptional content in a variety of formats: This includes blog and video content, as well as “traditional formats” such as books. Package and position your content in new ways to open up distribution opportunities.
• They simplify complex ideas: The science behind meditation can be daunting. Andy and the team have broken this into digestible chunks, seen throughout their entire content ecosystem.
• They produce owned data: Journalists are hungry for new studies and data to cite. It helps them back up their content, make accurate claims, and increase their stories' credibility. Create data-driven content, become a go-to resource, and generate backlinks in the process.

Headspace goes one step further, partnering with scientists and organizations to conduct their research. Not only does this amplify their reach, but it makes these studies more credible:

This approach can help fuel your link building efforts. Do this by creating assets that allow creators and brands to enhance their content. Experiment by creating content around highly shareable formats:

• Thought leadership: Expand on a topic and deliver delightful experiences. Make your content so comprehensive that others can’t help but link to it.
• Studies and research: Use owned data to conduct research and report on trends. Survey your audience about their experiences or thoughts on specific topics.
• Infographics & visual content: Content creators are hungry for illustrations, graphs, and infographics to include in their content. This helps them make their content more valuable and engaging.

Social media scheduling tool Buffer took a data-driven approach to digital PR with their “State of Social” report: 

Over 100 blogs and publications cited this report in its first 14 days of publication. At the time of writing, it now has over 1,280 referring domains.

Developing strong relationships is a critical ingredient for digital PR. Cold outreach has its place, but establishing partnerships and collaborating with other brands is more effective in the long term.

Why? Because editors, bloggers, and journalists get bombarded with generic pitches every day. Instead, find ways to collaborate and help everyone win.

For example, we recently helped a martech client get featured in several publications and blogs by creating content with other marketers. Using this approach, we achieved a 37% response rate and a 44% link acquisition rate.

It’s not just about links. These conversations will lead to other business opportunities that ultimately help you capture a wider audience.

Building a personal brand around Andy Puddicombe’s expertise

Founders often start their business around a problem they have first-hand expertise in. It’s essential to get that expertise out into the world.

To date, Headspace Founder, Andy Puddicome, has talked at leading conferences like TED, SXSW, and The Ellen Show:

His story is compelling and easy to connect with. The journey that led him to create Headspace is full of valuable lessons we can use when adopting a meditation practice.

No matter the size of your company—or your role within it—you can share your voice and story to build connections and bridge the gap between brand and customer. This works best for:

• Founders and CEOs: Become the face of your company. Connect with influencers and connectors in your space. Those relationships will last a lifetime when the time comes to step away from the spotlight.
• Marketers: Same goes for growth, demand generation, and content leaders. You can make your job easier by becoming the face attached to every blog post, guest post, or video. You’ll achieve results for your company while advancing your career in the process.

For example, May Habib, Co-founder and CEO at Writer, uses LinkedIn to share content around generative AI and product updates happening at Writer:

People connect with other people. Building a personal brand and human presence is important for both startups and enterprise companies alike.

Converting readers and viewers into paid subscriptions

No matter where you look, Headspace offers one clear call-to-action:

“Download the app.”

This kind of CTA can often be a huge ask when selling complex or high-ticket offerings. For product-led SaaS or tech brands like Headspace, it makes absolute sense.

Let’s look at what the customer journey from “awareness” to “subscription” may look like for a single user to understand why:

1. They browse YouTube and get suggested a video from Headspace teaching a specific meditation technique
2. They watch the video and decide to read more about the concept on the Headspace blog
3. They follow a link to another article and decide to download the app and follow the free 10-day meditation program

The Headspace content ecosystem contributes directly to user acquisition. From here, they can deliver more value in the app with free lessons, using relevant CTAs and offers to convert free users into paid ones—the classic freemium model.

In this sense, the Headspace product is part of this content ecosystem. It makes sense to drive app downloads from blog posts, YouTube videos, and other owned content assets.

For SaaS and tech brands, the offers and CTAs you use across your content will depend on the complexity of your product, solution, and the nature of your sales process.

You might offer a newsletter CTA to build an audience and slowly nurture them into leads. Or, you could offer a free trial or demo of your product. This is especially effective when crafting crafting bottom of funnel content.

Headspace can nurture free users with three methods:

1. Email marketing (newsletters, announcements)
2. Mobile push notifications (retention)
3. Product marketing (adding new free content)

For example, the email below invites free users to dive back into the app if they’ve not tried a meditation after a specific period of time:

The CTA encourages the user to learn the basics, easing them in by addressing a time-based objection: it takes three to 10 minutes.

Users are far more likely to continue their journey and invest in a monthly subscription if they consume free content within the app.

Build a content ecosystem

Any B2B or SaaS brand can learn something from Headspace.

They’ve built their content strategy on the premise of delighting, educating, and empowering their audience at every touch-point. It’s no wonder they’ve created a product loved by millions of users.

Great content marketing establishes a strong foundation for trust to emerge—all while contributing to critical growth goals needed for success.

Start with your existing customers. Discover why they value your product and put more of that into the world. Do this across your selected channels, and you’ll quickly build a brand your audience loves.

In this article, we go beyond content marketing basics and cover the principles behind content that generates a high average time on page, builds emotional resonance, and drives conversions. I also share before and after examples of edited content and show how small changes can make a big impact.

1. Create emotion-driven content to plant persuasive seeds

Your content is an asset that will help you achieve a goal, like increased conversions, more website traffic, or credibility that lands you in the consideration set.

But what job-to-be-done (JTBD) does it fulfill? How can you strategically motivate, empower, and influence the decision-making process—even in long sales cycles?

If your messaging doesn’t align with readers’ JTBD, it won’t resonate. Attempting to connect with or persuade readers solely with logic and data discounts the emotional motivators behind buying decisions. 

Emotional motivators are future-based desires. They range from wanting to grow confidence to feeling a sense of belonging to building a successful business..

Consumers feel most aligned with their favorite brands when they experience trustworthiness (83%), integrity (79%), and honesty (77%). But even when a brand is trusted, it often still fails to speak to its customers’ emotional drivers. 

This missed opportunity costs money. Fully connected customers are 52% more valuable: 

Emotional drivers vary based on your brand, category, customers, customer segments, and stage of the buying cycle. Conduct research (surveys, phone calls, data-driven insights) to uncover the key motivators that drive your audience, then execute emotion-driven content. 

Here are a few ways to do that:

Inject storytelling into your narrative

It helps to think of your content as a conversation between yourself (the narrator) and your audience (the reader). 

The bridge is storytelling, which is all too often left out of a data-driven narrative:

“Content that relies only on data to tell your story can end up falling flat. Worse, it can overtake the heart of the matter—creating stories that align with your strategy and speak on behalf of your brand.” 

To get to the heart of the matter, return to your emotional motivator research to answer:

• What keeps your audience up at night? 
• What do they dream about doing/achieving?
• What makes them trust information and what makes them wary?
• What kind of content do they find compelling, and why?
• What’s their primary JTBD and what emotional driver is that tied to?

As you build your story, continuously confront your readers' pain points or desires. This will create a personalized experience that helps them understand, connect with, and trust your solutions.

For example, Patagonia’s audience is primarily driven by the desire to feel a sense of belonging and to protect the environment. The team behind the outdoor brand knows how critical it is, therefore, to make their audience feel like they belong.

I wrote about how they do this in an article on storytelling for the CXL blog:

“Their Climbing Stories, for example, showcase anecdotal experiences, often told in the first person. They’re full of tips and tricks, practical methodologies, and recommendations. Stories from the mountains, as told by Patagonia’s customers themselves.  

Emotionally, they make the reader feel like they’re part of something bigger. Practically, they inspire new and improved purchases to solve a challenge (e.g. how to pack for alpine climbing).” 

Patagonia cleverly builds trust and resonance by creating a space where their customers can tell stories to each other.

Lavender, an ​​AI email assistant software, also masterfully uses storytelling to connect with its audience. At time of writing, they’ve grown to 26,000+ followers on LinkedIn by posting humorous videos that are universally relatable.

Their target audience is sales reps, who’s biggest pain point (and barrier to success) is getting their emails ignored. 

Watch how they address this common struggle, and position Lavender as the hero, in this short yet brilliant video:

If you’re already a fan of Lavender, this makes you smile because you’ve experienced a massive uptick in email opens like Kyle Coleman:

If you’re a potential customer, this makes you curious and eager to see if what they’re boasting holds truth. 

Storytelling, whether owned or leveraged, is only one way to plant persuasive seeds. Let’s look at another.

Spike emotional resonance with creativity

When everyone sounds like each other, people are drawn to innovative ideas. Creativity is a strong way to differentiate and create memorable content that stays top of mind.

Done right, it entices audiences to think in new ways, consider new concepts, and overcome skepticism. When you offer value in a way that no one else does, it builds trust, which is paramount in gaining a competitive advantage. 

However, if you recall, trust alone won’t move the needle. You need to use creativity to speak to those high-impact motivators that drive purchases.

One way to do that is to bring experts into the conversation. Sounds simple, but many content marketers still rely solely on third-party data to drive first-person narratives. 

SMEs can help you find unique angles, make contrarian points, or speak to why established norms work so well.

They’re also personalization powerhouses. Hearing how a like-minded expert approaches a problem, overcomes a boundary, or achieves a desired outcome makes it easier to picture doing the same thing in your own life. It humanizes the topic—in turn, humanizing the brand. 

For example, Semrush has a customer segment that’s driven by a desire to succeed at work and in their personal lives. To speak to those drivers, they need to make their customers feel that by using their product, they can lead more meaningful lives.  

They did just that in a newsletter that shared SME insights through an emotive storytelling lens. Told through the eyes of SME Gaby: SEO by day, DJ by night:

Gaby lives life on her own terms—an image that evokes freedom and worth. Through Semrush, Gaby can redefine her work-life balance and experience the best of both worlds.

While Gaby doesn’t share any expert tips per se, her position (SEO specialist at Peacock) and lifestyle (thriving DJ and aspiring producer) is creatively positioned to add credibility to the conversation. 

It’s a masterclass in spiking emotional resonance. Anybody with a desire to live life on their own terms will feel inspired to check out how Semrush can aid their journey.

2. ‍Drive your points home with relatable examples

Want to kill emotional resonance before it has a chance to work its way into the subconscious and influence decisions? 

Brands devote countless hours to strategy and research, only to miserably underperform on execution. They’re proud that they’ve come up with a solid roadmap, but refuse to spend the necessary time building editorial standards that will allow them to produce high-quality content at scale.

One of the biggest differences between mediocre and valuable content is the ability to overcome the generalization gap: 

Too many content marketers make a point and then leave the reader hanging. Where's the takeaway, example, or actionable advice?

Yes, content needs to be skimmable . Even if your reader is lazy or in a rush, you shouldn’t be. 

Explain the “why” behind the “what” to remove guesswork and add value

Never miss a chance to explain your point further. That could leave the reader guessing and motivate them to find the "why" somewhere else.

For example, if you write a sentence like, “X is especially true because of Y”, you need to explain why Y matters. 

Take this before and after as a case in point. 

Before: “It's clear that the user experience Podia facilitates is valuable, particularly in a mid-pandemic world." 

Ok, but why?

After: “It's clear that the user experience Podia facilitates is valuable, particularly in a mid-pandemic world where people have extra time, a desire to learn something new, and an unparalleled impulse to connect with others."

Most people can relate to feeling isolated and yearning to connect during a pandemic. Now, you’ve not only explained why, but you’ve connected with your audience on that crucial emotional level. 

This adds a human element to your content. It’s what helps you go beyond the role of a robotic business trying to sell something to make a profit. It shows that you understand because you feel it too. 

Nobody wants to feel like they're being sold to. Everybody wants to feel seen and heard. 

Similar to how sales superstars master the art of connecting with their prospects on a personal level, use specificity to drive authentic connections. 

Show, don’t tell to prove authenticity 

These days, “take my word for it” doesn't fly. Not when social proof and word of mouth influence buying behavior, purchasing decisions, and brand loyalty above all.

A Deloitte study finds that, in order to bring authenticity into the digital age, you need to lead with purpose and center the human experience:

“Purpose answers an all-important question, ‘Why does a company exist?’—and the answer can serve as the beacon for all organizational decision-making.”

To prove authenticity, make sure to demonstrate exactly how you accomplish your goals. If you have permission, inject social proof by centering a real customer story that personalizes your data. 

For example, Co-Founder and Co-CEO Alina Vandenberghe understood the power of a strong brand before she started Chili Piper. Its brand has managed to differentiate amongst steep competition like Salesforce. 

Peep Laja of CXL writes:

“I've been watching the meteoric rise of Chili Piper. So many lessons to be learned from this company.

Their net revenue retention is super high (which also landed them an amazing valuation during their series B, like a 20x multiplier on ARR).”

Alina Vandenberghe wrote an article on how they built the brand from the inside out. She doesn’t simply talk about the journey, she gives specific examples of how they skyrocketed brand awareness and audience building:

Authentic content often correlates with transparency. When you give away your ‘secrets’ for free, people feel more connected to your purpose and want to come along for the ride.

3. Declutter your copy and avoid redundancy

This may seem basic, but even advanced content writers struggle with wordiness and redundancy. 

We all have publishing deadlines breathing down our necks. But if you’re starting to feel like you’re prioritizing quantity over quality, catch yourself.

Figure out why your sentences are averaging 20+ words and set up a strategy to reset and refocus. 

Create a process for self-accountability to stay on track

At Grizzle, our writers create a detailed outline before getting started to make sure they avoid waffle. A comprehensive outline acts as a roadmap to follow, which reduces the chance you’ll repeat key points (which adds friction to the reading experience).

But if you’re a short-outline, write-as-you-research kind of creator, catch yourself at the end. Take a few hours away from your draft and revisit it before you publish.

Your message needs to be simple, clear, interesting, and skimmable. Complexity and wordiness do you no favors and certainly don’t give you an intellectual upper hand. 

Content marketing isn’t intended to mimic dissertation’s, argumentative essays, workflow documentation, or anything else that calls for longer prose.

To declutter your copy, focus on these key copywriting principles: 

Use active not passive voice to empower your reader to take action

Active voice is easier to skim and empowers the reader to take action. 

Why? Because we're putting the power in their hands. 

Rather than telling the reader that something can happen to them, we want them to feel like they can take charge and make it happen for themselves. 

This ideally leads to the reader clicking a CTA or internal link, which works to build a stronger connection and gets them closer to becoming a customer.

For example:

Passive voice: “If you don’t have a mathematics degree, gaining professional qualifications like these is likely to boost your career prospects.

‍Active voice: “If you don’t have a mathematics degree, pursue relevant professional qualifications to boost your career prospects."

The language is more actionable and likely to inspire and energize the reader.

Another example:‍

Passive voice: “To optimize the time of your sales team, utilizing a data-driven marketing automation approach is key.”

Active voice: “To optimize your sales team’s time, utilize a data-driven marketing automation approach.”

It’s cleaner, easier to read, and tells the target audience (in this case, sales managers) exactly what to do (i.e. learn from data and automate repeatable tasks). 

Rather than a solution that reads like half-baked advice, active voice empowers the reader to take matters into their own hands.

Trim the fat to get to the point

Never use more words than you need to. To quote William Strunk Jr., co-author of “The Elements of Style”: 

“Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!”

People skim, but when they do land on a section of interest, they need to be engaged. 

If your sentences twist and turn and are full of words that don’t really need to be there just to further make a point that you feel is important then you’ll lose them in a heartbeat. 

See what I did there?

Let’s try that again. If your sentences are redundant and wordy, your readers will leave.

Here are a few examples of how to trim the fat:

Before: “To start making a plan, sit down and ask yourself the following questions:”

After: “To formulate a plan, ask:”

‍Before: “Affiliate marketing is often paid out by getting a free product or service.”

After: “Affiliate marketing is often paid via product or service payouts.”

Before: “To get more likes on Twitter than you’re currently getting; to squeeze everything you can out of a post, you need to approach content tactically."

After: “To get more likes on Twitter, approach content tactically.”

Your reader gets the same point, faster. Cutting superfluous words is not about cutting value. Quite the opposite. It creates more value because it’s easier to understand. 

Avoid redundancy to preempt boredom and cultivate your character

I think of redundancy in two buckets: 

1. Repeated words or phrases that are overused and thus redundant
2. Repeated ideas that are unnecessary because you’ve already made your point

Avoid both types.

Here’s an example of redundant words:

Before: “The roles begin to diverge once you take technical skills into account. Sales engineers have technical skills that allow them to identify patterns that someone without technical expertise may miss.”

See how the phrase technical expertise is starting to sound like a tongue twister?

After: “The roles begin to diverge once you take technical skills into account. Sales engineers have the industry expertise to identify patterns that an untrained eye may miss.”

That’s a lot easier to get through.

Let’s look at one more example.

Before: “When working with potential customers, technical sales engineers can explain complex concepts in a customer-friendly way. They use their knowledge to explain to potential clients how the product works and what makes it unique.”

After: “When working with prospects and leads, technical sales engineers can explain complex concepts in a customer-friendly way. These experts can demonstrate exactly how your solution will produce desired results and what makes it unique.”

Variety makes copy more compelling. Nobody wants to read the same word over and over. At best, it will make your copy look sloppy. At worst, it will look like keyword stuffing, which is the fastest way to appear robotic instead of a relatable, human narrator.  

Redundant ideas are harder to neatly demonstrate as they often pop up throughout content rather than in the same sentence or paragraph. 

For example purposes, I’ve condensed redundant ideas into one paragraph:

Before: “When pitching to investors, use data to dial up the pain and show how trends in digital adoption could harm business if they don’t act fast. As an example, [company name] outlined the opportunity investing in digital transformation presents. They hit stakeholders with some pain, and then showed them how they can turn it into an opportunity.”

After: “When pitching to investors, use data to dial up the pain and show how trends in digital adoption could harm business if they don’t act fast. Then, use examples to outline the opportunity on the other side of these pain points. As an example, [company name] used qualitative and quantitative data to demonstrate risk and showcase outcomes.”  

The difference is nuanced but important. The first is slightly repetitive, and the second makes the same point without any repetition. 

In the first example, the writer makes a point that you should ‘dial up the pain’ then ‘outline the opportunity’ this pain presents. They wrap up the paragraph with the same exact point, stated differently. It’s still effective, but ever so slightly repetitive, which we don’t want.

The second example wraps the ‘use pain to then outline opportunities’ point into the entire paragraph. Thus, they make the same point, but in a uniquely different way. It flows smoother and fit better into a seamless storytelling narrative.

It’s impossible not to repeat your ideas throughout a piece of content writing, but in doing so, make sure they flow seamlessly and aren’t obvious repetitions of one another. 

This way, by the time your reader gets to the end, you’ve driven your point home so smoothly that they fully understand your argument but don’t feel exhausted or bored by repetition. 

Key takeaways

Content marketers that master emotional resonance thrive. Content marketers that create strategies built to spike emotional resonance, then execute them with a quality-first mindset win.

Devote equal time to strategy and execution to build a competitive advantage and an army of loyal fans.

In this article, you’ll uncover a compelling argument for taking more creative risks, the importance of expanding your frame of reference, and learn specific methods to build a competitive moat around your content and brand.

Why creativity is more important than ever in an AI-generated world

The late futurist Jacques Fresco once said:

"Creativity takes known elements and puts them together in different ways.”

Jacques’ work was famous for its creativity. He consistently challenged the status quo in city design, resource management, and social engineering. This reimagination of how to use modern technology was born out of frustration at the lack of industrial innovation.

Today, your audience feels that same frustration due to how common bad content has become.

Blog articles have rapidly lost their zest and originality. As marketers compete for the same keywords, they rely on identical frameworks as their competitors.

But buyers can see that most SEO-driven articles are unreliable and copy each other, which undermines their trust in Google as a source of information.

What’s worse, tools built on top of OpenAI and ChatGPT are exacerbating the problem. While this will ultimately make our jobs as marketers and creators easier, in the present reality they’re being misused to create terrible experiences.

Consumers are already calling out media brands who churn out low-quality content. Just take this comment from a recent Unilad post:

How do we alleviate doubt and delight readers? How do we offer an experience that surprises them and builds trust?

Injecting creativity and doing what robots can’t is the only way.

Use creativity and benevolence to build a content moat

Creativity elevates your content and builds trust with skeptical readers.

As Jacques Fresco said, this requires putting “known elements” together in unique ways.

But we still need to generate business results. Content that generates the lion’s share of attention does so for a reason: it fulfills search intent.

The problem is, everyone ends up copying each other. Trust is eroded as your customers bounce from one article to another.

Creative applications to SEO-driven content helps your content stand out. It keeps the reader on the page, sending engagement signals to Google. The longer a user sticks around, the more likely they are to take action.

Let’s say you’re writing an article on relationship selling. Typical advice for this topic includes “giving value” and “solving objections.”

However, based on your experience, you know it’s important to build intimacy by counter-intuitively challenging prospects and introduce them to their peers.

This perspective offers a unique approach to relationship selling into your article. It builds trust with your readers and creates a stack of value.

Why go through so much trouble for a single piece of content? Because it’s the only way you’ll break through your audience’s “B.S. shield” created by copycat and low-effort AI content.

In their “How People Read Online” report, Nielsen Norman Group found that there are two components to building trust in content:

1. Credibility: The user believes you have the ability to provide the information they’re looking for.
2. Benevolence: The user believes you have good intentions for providing that information.

One participant of the study shared their experience reading an article from Cleveland Clinic about the health benefits of kombucha. However, despite reading the entire thing, they decided to find a second opinion:

“[The Cleveland Clinic article] was very pro-kombucha. Which is why I was like, I’m going to look somewhere else.”

They ended up reading a Healthline article that shared both the positive and negative effects of kombucha. Healthline offered a complete and impartial perspective. In turn, the reader learned to trust Healthline on the topic over Cleveland Clinic.

Benevolence is an often overlooked element of establishing trust, which is impossible to do if you’re only emulating other articles in Google or relying solely on what AI tools give you.

Broaden your inputs to uncover new creative ideas

Creativity isn’t an ephemeral characteristic. Remember, creativity is simply the act of “putting known elements together in different ways.”

New creative endeavors, therefore, require us to do two things:

1. Collect new inputs (such as content, conversations, and data from new places)
2. Expand your frame of reference (by investing in new experiences or experimenting)

As a B2B content marketer, a practical way to broaden your inputs might involve researching what other industries are doing to promote their products.

For example, if you’re charged with growing enterprise software, you might find unique content formats in the ecommerce world.

But there’s so much more to it than this. To drive these principles home, let’s explore three specific methods for collecting new inputs to elevate your content.

1. Pay attention to how journalists tell stories

A good hook will communicate why readers should care about your message and earn their attention to continue reading.

Take this example of an introduction found in a blog post on digital transformation:

Digital transformation is a global business phenomenon, capturing the attention of enterprises in every industry and spurring major investment.

Learn why digital transformation matters now, what successful initiatives look like, and how to avoid common pitfalls.

It’s unlikely this introduction makes you feel emotionally invested to continue, even if you’re eager to learn about digital transformation.

Let’s compare this with an introduction from The Atlantic, taken from an article titled “Coffee really does make you happier:”

“I remember the night I fell in love.

“The year was 1977, and I was 12 years old. A neighbor kid’s parents had bought an espresso machine—an exotic gadget in those days, even in Seattle. There was just one Starbucks in the world back then, and as luck had it, we lived within walking distance. The neighbor kid and I bought a pound of coffee and had about eight espressos each. Feeling fully alive and inspired to get closer to the universe, I climbed onto the roof of his house. In the process, I cut a gash in my stomach on his gutter. Bleeding profusely, I marveled at how intense the stars were.”

Not only is an emotional connection made, the story is relevant. The headlike makes a promise before the click, and the introduction sets the reader up to go on a journey that’s likely to have a satisfying payoff.

Using relevant stories will hook readers in and keep them engaged throughout your entire article. When relevant, they can quickly communicate what’s possible with your advice and help your audience relate to your experiences (or those shared by third-party contributors, subject matter experts, etc.)

If you get abstract with this approach, make sure to get to the point quickly. For example, when I shared the story about Jacques Fresco, you may have wondered how it was relevant.

While it hopefully piqued your interest, I didn’t expect to keep your attention for long. So, I made the story succinct and quickly tied it back to the underlying point I wanted to make.

You can use this journalism-inspired technique to create a pattern interrupt. Done right, stories can offer a welcome respite in industries known for dry or technical language.

Here are some methods for finding a worthy subject for your journalism-inspired stories:

• Historical figures and industry legends: Share the lessons learned by those who paved a new way of doing things. Lay the foundations for your argument by blending timeless stories with current issues.
• Underdogs: Avoid leaning on unrelatable lessons from brands like Apple and Coca Cola. There are plenty of small businesses and startups that have achieved a more relatable definition of success. Few can emulate the actions of a billion-dollar brand, but most can apply the principles that helped a business generate its first $100,000.
• Behemoth backstories: If you must use a Fortune 500 brand to make a point, go back to its roots. Marketing blogs love talking about Apple’s branding, but nobody talks about Steve Jobs’ time as a video game designer and his Buddhist pilgrimage to India.
• Individual contributors: Celebrate how practitioners achieved a specific goal. For example, by breaking down the nuances of Apple’s product photography to provide relatable takeaways.

Finally, don’t neglect your own experiences. You have a tremendous amount of wisdom to share.

2. Find an investigative angle with complementary or conflicting data

Many content marketers and writers have a habit of using stats to back up ideas they’ve already committed to.

But it only works if that data is statistically significant, presented honestly, and adds value to the reader.

The best writers use data to share additional perspectives while offering the most suitable conclusion for the reader.

Take this piece on mushroom intelligence from Psyche:

The entire article is a science-backed exploration into the behavior profile of mushrooms.

Here’s how the writer talks about an experiment involving beechwood:

When researchers followed the transfer of nutrients in the lab, further remarkable discoveries were in store. In a tray of soil, hyphae were observed to make contact with a block of beechwood. [...] The fungus in these experiments showed spatial recognition, memory and intelligence. It’s a conscious organism.

They then use data taken from several studies to to interpret how different mushrooms behave:

The behavioural complexity of fungi increases when they interact with living trees and shrubs rather than dead wood. Some of these relationships are destructive while others are mutually supportive. Pathogenic fungi can be very cunning in how they feed on plants and evade their defences.

The author provides an in-depth analysis of fungi, generating over 10,000 shares on social media— a tremendous amount of engagement for a story about mushrooms.

Taking an investigative approach to data-driven content can provide unique angles for your content.

For example, our article on the backlink profile of Buffer and other SaaS brands took a very different direction to the one we originally intended.

The investigative journey that fueled this article looked liked this:

• Use seed data: We started our investigation with this Semrush study, which found that “only 22% of respondents are creating original studies and data-driven content” and “24% say they rely on external publications (digital PR) or guest blogging” for distribution.
• Check your assumptions: Many SEO studies have found that links do matter when growing search traffic. If this is true, why is nobody creating data-driven content, which has been proven to generate links?
• Ask a better question: Do how-to articles, definitive guides, and other SEO-driven content formats still generate links? From our experience, link building outreach that relies on these formats is ineffective.
• Apply your first investigative layer: To answer these questions, we identified data-driven content from 10 well-known SaaS brands and collected backlink data from Ahrefs.
• Add a second investigative layer: We found that these data-driven articles generated an average of 847 backlinks. However, this still didn’t answer whether or not they get more backlinks than editorial and SEO-driven content.
• Add a third investigative layer: We dug deeper into Buffer’s most linked-to pieces of content to find an anecdotal answer.
• Identify the conclusion: Not only does Buffer’s “State of Social” report stand out in terms of backlinks, but we found it was 293% faster to generate the first 100 links to this report than their most linked-to blog article.

Imagine if we stopped at the Semrush study. This article would have looked like every other piece on data-driven content.

Curiosity is the only thing you need to uncover engaging narratives, and access to the data that fuels them is often democratic.

Allow yourself to be proven wrong. If you find two sources that contradict each other, dig deeper into both.

Are there differences in sample size or representation of survey respondents? Use these methodologies to your advantage. Share your findings to tell a story that helps your customers solve their problems.

We talk all about how to use stats honestly and with integrity in this episode of the Demandist podcast.

3. Establish an expert committee to poke holes in the status quo

Subject matter experts (SMEs) can inject your content with credibility.

If the content on page one of Google looks similar, they’re likely exacerbating the same falsehoods.

SME insights can help you break the cycle of false information by calling out what conventional advice gets wrong.

This can build trust with your audience—especially if you debunk an unspoken yet well-known falsehood.

Going back to our article on relationship selling, we found that most blog posts oppose the idea of being likable.

However, our internal SMEs with decades of experience selling to the c-suite inherently disagree. And they can prove it.

Not only will this angle make your content stand out, it will undermine the falsehoods your competitors amplify, giving your audience more reason to trust you.

Jakub Rudnik, Head of Content at Scribe, uses this approach to make his content more original:

As a trained journalist, I look for opportunities to bring in experts wherever possible. Who is the best-case source? What other sources can offer different perspectives? This may not be completely original, but so few content marketers are willing to take these steps.

Get SMEs invested in your content by making it worth their time:

1. Batch conversations into topical themes: Schedule one call a month to discuss a single theme or series of articles.
2. Communicate asynchronously: Allows SMEs to share their expertise in their own time with Slack voice messages.
3. Fuel their personal brand: Many SMEs aim to elevate their message to build awareness. Offer to repurpose your blog content into a LinkedIn post or Twitter thread for SMEs to share with their audience. Better yet, get it featured in a guest post.

SME insights will also help you build E-E-A-T. Featuring the voice of known experts sends a signal to Google that your content is credible, establishing you as an authority in your topic cluster of choice.

Inputs shape your outputs

Creativity is suppressed if we drink from the same altar. Outputs become homogenous and we end up creating the same thing as everyone else.

To inject your content marketing with creativity, collect new inputs and broaden your horizon with new content formats.

Build a moat by doing what nobody else is willing to build. Watch as it provokes thought, influences the conversation, and builds trust with even the most skeptical audience.

Your content brief is the roadmap that paves the way for high-quality content.

Without a solid brief, you’re likely to produce content that fails to meet expectations. A good brief connects your strategy and traffic goals with expertise and audience needs.

After collaborating with dozens of clients, content marketers, and writers, we’ve found the best approach to removing production headaches is a strong angle, detailed outline, and collaboration at the brief stage.

Your audience, why this topic matters to them, and how you’ll inject your expertise should be crystal clear for every stakeholder.

This article will detail the process and components of a content brief that drives high performing blog posts, landing pages, and more.

Content positioning

Content marketing is suffering from a case of “blind leading the blind.” For SEO-driven content, research often starts and ends by reverse engineering the SERPs.

Reverse engineering Google is critical for search. However, it will hurt your credibility if used as your only research method. Copying other articles “because they rank” is symptomatic of a lack of subject matter expertise. Your buyers can smell it a mile off.

Solid research is the bedrock of a great content brief. Conducting SME interviews, taking inventory of your own experiences, and diving into the rabbit hole of a topic is critical when writing for skeptical and experienced audiences.

But let’s assume you’ve acquired this expertise and done your research. It’s time to create a content brief, but where to start?

There are two key steps that must be followed when beginning the content brief creation process:

1. Analyzing the competition to see what they’re doing right, what they get wrong, and gaps they’re leaving open.
2. Establishing a unique angle that will ensure your content stands out—no matter which channel you prioritize it for.

These two elements are the most effective ingredients to establish a strong position in the market. One will give you the data to make creative decisions, while the other will help you stand out.

This is what we call “content positioning.”

Content positioning means treating your content like a product, differentiating it in a competitive marketplace, and helping your ICP solve their jobs-to-be-done (JTBD).

How to find an angle that outperforms the competition

Content positioning requires an understanding of the value other articles are offering and how they’re currently getting attention.

To identify competitive gaps, you must first understand what you’re up against. There are three approaches to competitive content analysis:

1. Content quality: What’s the overall quality of other articles? Do they lack value? Are they repeating the same conventionally held (yet incorrect) beliefs as everyone else? It’s often possible to outcompete on quality alone or by focusing on a hub-and-spoke strategy to build topical authority.
2. Brand equity: Are you up against a number of industry incumbents? Do they have a monopoly on the topic, or are they dipping their toes in? This is a reality that should inform your overall content strategy, not just your brief. For example, a project management brand like Asana writing a one-off article on “remote working” is unlikely to have much authority on the topic.
3. Distribution landscape: For SEO-driven content, how hard would it be to rank based on the number of backlinks other articles have earned? What’s the keyword difficulty for your primary term (as well as the average across your entire keyword cluster)?

Your findings will inform how you approach the production and distribution of your content. For example, you may find a top competing article from a startup has lots of backlinks, but is poorly written and contains little utility. This is a prime opportunity to outcompete by creating more authoritative and value-driven content.

Competitive analysis will help you inform your content positioning and create original blog articles. Here are three practical ways to apply your findings:

1. Finding unique angles for search

Too many content marketers continue to create content by reverse-engineering and emulating the SERPs. But this presents a deeper issue, as content begins to look the same and, over time, erodes the user experience.

While aligning content with search intent is critical for organic growth, it mustn't be followed blindly. Use the SERPs to evaluate competing content and identify gaps that you can fill.

For example, when writing an article on CRM technology, you might find that nobody covers how to evaluate and choose the right platform. Instead, everyone focuses on definitions, benefits, features, and the like.

In this scenario, you could include an entire section that teaches readers a process for evaluating CRM vendors. This creates a temporary moat around your content and provides the reader with more value in the form of practical next steps in their vendor research.

2. Communicating credibility and authority

Marketers often make lofty claims with no data or proof to back them up. This provides you with an opportunity to build a more credible and original piece of content.

Building authority is more than writing in the language of your audience. It means collecting or leveraging experience and expertise on a topic.

For example, if you’re writing for a senior marketing audience on ICP research, you’d ideally seek input from an expert that has experience conducting countless customer interviews.

Using your audience’s language will generate more engagement. But to build trust, don't just emulate their words, speak their mind. Reflect back what they're thinking but nobody else is saying out loud. This will build deeper emotional resonance and connections. These insights can only be gleaned from someone your reader would consider a peer.

3. Be controversial

In marketing, zigging while everyone is zagging can be all you need to differentiate yourself.

Rand Fishkin, founder of SparkToro, did this when a customer asked for advice on cold outreach. After searching Google, he found the SERPs contained repetitive and outdated advice:

So he decided to write an article on the topic to call out these outdated practices, titled “Outreach Tips (better than anything you’ll find searching Google):”

He opens up with a controversial introduction before moving on to a subsection that promises the reader eight tips they won’t find anywhere else.

This article is one of the most commented on the SparkToro blog and ranks below the featured snippet for the term “outreach tips:”

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When a seasoned marketer or salesperson next searches for cold outreach tips, which result do you think will stand out in the SERPs? We’d hazard a guess that Rand’s article gets the lion's share of clicks.

A controversial angle breaks the mold and grabs attention in a sea of sameness. Allow your content to stand out by framing it around earned, accurate, and proven advice.

Building an outline using data & creativity

A good outline creates context around your content and communicates the narrative to other stakeholders involved in the production process.

Including a clear objective will keep everyone aligned on outcomes and avoid the problem of “too many cooks in the kitchen.”

Let’s say you’re a SaaS startup and your primary goal is “generating organic traffic with high buying intent.” In this scenario, your article should sit within the sweet-spot of these three areas:

1. Algorithm: What themes, questions, and sections has Google deemed important for the user to fulfill search intent?
2. Audience: What are your customers hungry for and what gaps are competitors leaving unfulfilled?
3. Product: How will your content align with your value proposition, solution, or product?

Templates and frameworks can guide you through the production process and reduce the friction in getting started.

For example, a “how-to guide” template follows a step-by-step instructional narrative, which is perfect for anyone targeting individual contributors looking to solve a problem or JTBD.

Alternatively, when targeting senior decision makers, you might use a framework that outlines their problem, builds an argument for new solutions, and demonstrates a new way of doing things.

Use tools like Clearscope when planning SEO-driven content to uncover which themes to include. Here’s what some of those relevant terms look like for the term “DOOH” (digital out-of-home media):

Avoid stuffing these terms without context, as you’ll ruin the content experience and undermine trust. Use this data to inform sections and themes to include in your content.

Finally, don’t worry about perfecting the subheading copy. Subheadings should simply communicate what each section will cover. Once you’re writing the draft, your subheadings should communicate the benefits or outcome that each section promises to deliver. This grabs the attention of skimmers and communicates the overall value of your content.

Outline collaboration

Everyone has their own method of writing outlines. Instead of providing you with a rigid framework, here’s a scrappy example using the DOOH topic introduced above:

Here, we see a portion of the outline that includes details to add context around what each section will include:

1. Outcomes that the target audience will benefit from using DOOH
2. Statistics and data to back up certain claims
3. Key DOOH metrics to measure, what they mean, and why they’re important

Your outline also provides a canvas for stakeholders to get involved. Including lots of white space and nested bullets will create a hierarchy that’s easy for everyone to follow. Stakeholders can add comments with their thoughts and insights with ease.

Collaborating on an outline will mean fewer draft revisions as the narrative and structure was agreed upon well in advance.

Content briefs are your roadmap

Many marketers see the brief as a hurdle to overcome between having an idea and writing it down.

Your content brief is the compass and your outline is the roadmap. Both allow you to find a gap in the content landscape and uncover an angle that your audience is hungry for and will stand out.

Point in the direction you want to go in, chart a course, and pave the way for content that resonates with your audience.