Content-Mining the Press

Content marketing requires a constant source of relevant and usable ideas. Even if you have an original  blogger and you re-purpose existing content and you have a steady source of outside content, you still might be looking for ways to interject fresh ideas into your content stream. If so, look to the press and the blogosphere and mine content from there.

Sources:
News

• Find a way to make a news item relevant to your audience. Even if a story isn’t directly related to your industry or your market, you may find useful nuggets.

Internet

• Search industry and governmental organizations, blogs, and magazines.
• Set up alerts or RSS feeds for relevant topics
• Set up alerts for news releases
• Keep track of upcoming conferences
• Read newsletters from industry organizations.

Data

• Find surveys, research reports, and year-end reviews. Connections may inspire thoughts about content for your marketing program.

Competition

• Monitor your competitors’ websites, press releases, RSS feeds, publications, white papers and case studies.

Conversation

• Talk to the industry insiders, who usually have good ideas and interesting stories that haven’t been told yet.

Re-purpose this content by answering the following questions:

• Who is the target audience for this content? How can you change the approach for your readers?
• What triggered this story? Would changing the context help you create useful content, perhaps with your expert insights?
• When? Is the story timely or does it have longer relevance, and than thus be used for recurring posts?
• Why is this particular information important?
• Where? Rework national stories to have local relevance or rework a local story for a national audience.
• How did the story happen? Try an opposing viewpoint or imagine different circumstances. Shared the information in a different way or format.

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