Original content? That's pretty tough these days. How many times have you had a light-bulb blog moment, only to discover, through the power of Google, that your competitor published something similar only two months ago.
In reality, the only way sure fire way to stand out from the crowd is by analysing what's already been published, what#s trending, what gets shared, what's long, what's short...you get the idea.
Most of you probably have your favourite tools by now. Google Trends, hashtagifyme, BuzzSumo and others. But this article describes the most comprehensive approach that I've seen for a long time, combining the best of viral, social and good to honest copy writing brilliance.
My only challenge is that it describes a rigorous process that works well for weekly cycles of content, but doesn't address the need to turn out articles on a six pence in response to breaking news, a trending hashtag or an out of nowhere social phenomenon - world_record_egg anyone?
Still, it's beautifully put together and I'm taking it to work tomorrow.
Now it’s time to use your analytical abilities. Choose at least 5 top articles from Google and 5 from BuzzSumo and start gathering information about them. You can also analyze it separately and decide what content is the most shareable and what content usually appears in the top-10 results. First of all, read all these articles and think if there are ways to improve them. What do you like about these articles? What would you add to make it better? What would you remove to make it better? Write down all your thoughts and use these notes when writing your post.
