Surveys prevent content marketers from living in a bubble. As content marketers, we embrace the idea of storytelling in everything we do. A great story is the way we pull our audiences in, and hopefully get them to keep listening and connect with our brands. The only problem is, our well-intentioned stories can sometimes become tall tales if we’re not careful. If we embellish too much on the awesomeness of our product or service, we begin to live in a bubble, out of touch with what our audiences want — and need — to hear. Surveys are a great reality check. Want to know what topics or themes will resonate best with your audiences? Create a survey and just ask them.
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Conducting a great survey helps promote your company as a thought leader. We all need data to help support the content we create. By running your own survey and compiling key insights on a compelling topic, your organization becomes a go-to resource for data that other brands will use in their own content marketing. This elevates your brand as a true thought leader in your space, and lets the data you’ve collected — and your brand name — live on in a variety of different ways.
Great data is the content marketing gift that keeps on giving. Once you run a survey on a specific topic, that data you collect is only the beginning of a long list of great content marketing opportunities. Start out by creating a research report that comprehensively explains all the data and why it matters in your industry. Follow that up with an informative infographic that visually presents the data in a unique and engaging way. Select a few of the key insights you’ve gleaned and create a SlideShare deck that will go viral. And finally, frame an entire series of blog posts around the different questions and results you obtained in the survey. The possibilities are endless.