A lot of content writer make the mistake of being in a hurry to write their first content draft.

 I made that mistake as a beginner in content writing. But as I wrote more, I realized that great content doesn’t have everything to do with their writing.

It has a lot to do with the research. Adding concrete evidence to your writing makes them a lot more believable and useful for your readers.

With enough time spent on research, you can make your basic content 10 times better.

The problem is research is hard. That is probably why it is so valuable

The major part of the battle is exactly knowing how to research properly. Which is exactly what I would be helping you with

In this article, I have broken down tons of valuable tips that pro content writers use to turn their content from basic to expert-level awesome and drive immense value for both their business and their clients.

Why is content research important for your business?

Research is a cornerstone of effective content marketing. It ensures the quality, relevance, and authority of your content, helping you stand out in a crowded digital landscape.

• Producing the Right Content:

By conducting thorough research, you get to understand your target audience’s needs and preferences. You would also know the right keywords to use when you analyze your competitors. Now, you can tailor your content to address specific pain points and provide valuable solutions.

• Building Professional Authority:

When you publish original, well-researched content, it serves as a great way to showcase your expertise. Also Citing credible sources and incorporating expert insights helps to strengthen your authority. So, if you want to position your brand as a thought leader in your industry, all the information you publish must be well-researched and verified so your audience does not lose trust in you.

• Improving Searchability:

You still need to optimize your content for relevant keywords to improve search engine rankings. Proper research needs to be out in place to achieve this while still adhering to Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines to enhance your website’s credibility. This way, apart from having search-optimized content, you would also have high-quality and informative content that satisfies user intent.

• Overcoming AI Saturation:

With the increase in AI content, being a very good writer may not be enough to provide the differentiation and authority your content needs. To truly differentiate your content from AI-generated text by providing, you have to provide updated and original insights and analysis since most AI-generated text is very generic. With proper research, you can focus on human-centric storytelling while using a unique perspective. So, take advantage of the resources available to uncover valuable information and create engaging content.

• Promoting Shareability:

With well-developed and compelling content that resonates with your audience, you get the privilege of having your content shared organically by your readers. To make this happen, you need to incorporate interesting facts, statistics, and visuals to enhance engagement. So, optimize your content for social media sharing to maximize reach.

• Establishing Trust with Customers:

Prioritizing accuracy and credibility in all your content by implementing a rigorous fact-checking process would help you maintain trust.

7 Easy Content Research Strategies for Writing High-Quality Articles

Effective content research is the backbone of any well-written article. Here are seven tips that have enabled pro writers to provide valuable insights, and engaging information that resonates with their audience.

1. Find Data and Fact Points

• One thing that would always stand out is adding relevant data and facts from pertinent sources that further support your argument or the information you are sharing with your audience. When getting data, you want to ensure that you are very appropriate and trustworthy sources. Here are some relevant sites where you could get lots of data about your topic:

• Mckinsey
• Statista
• Marketing Charts
• The Information
• Retail Dive
• Ourworldindata

These are just a few sites. In other to broaden your search, you could add some useful strings to your topic while searching on Google. This would give you lots of great reports you could use.

So are some examples of what your search string would look like:

• “{Topic} statistics”
• “{Topic} examples”
• “{Topic} report”
• “State of {Topic}”
• “{Topic} case study”
• “{Topic} survey”

As I said, it is very important to prioritize information from trustworthy sites only. Also, choose the most updated data for your content. To get the latest data, go to tools on your Google search results page and choose past year.

There are also some hidden gems in Google News. You could search “new data shows” or “survey reveals” and then attach the topic you are writing on. Most times you would see really useful information.

Protip: If you are aware that you would be writing on the same topic regularly, you can build a mini resource library using tools like Google Sheets or Notion. The resource library could follow this simple format.

• Who published it
• Topics discussed
• A link to the report

You could also expand these to a swipe, which would include screenshots of tweets, quotes and other information you may need regularly, if you are a very Niched writer. For the swipe file, the recommended tools you could use are Notion, Evernote and  Pocket.

2. Search for Research Studies on Your Topic

Another source for very trustworthy information about the topic you are writing about is research studies from Universities. The info obtained from the university thesis and other papers also provides concrete evidence that could be used to further add clarity to the points you are making. To access these papers, go to Google Scholar. When you choose a topic, say digital marketing for online stores, you research on Google Scholar using the following tip ideas.

• “The prevalence of impulse buying behavior in consumer decision-making.”
• “The impact of digital marketing tactics, such as sales promotions and online store design, on impulse buying behavior.”
• “The relationship between perceived online store atmosphere and consumer dwell time and impulse buying behavior.”

Protip: consider using the Google Chrome plugin “unpaywall” to bypass paywalls on articles that provide strong data on your topic.

3. Use Google Books for Quotes

• You would normally see lots of writers add quotes to their content. These quotes have a very meaningful impact on improving your content. Some ways they can be useful include

• Adding fresh perspectives: Quotes can provide new voices and perspectives to your narrative.
• Highlighting lively language: Quotes can allow you to include the lively language that people often use when they speak.
• Reducing misreporting: Repeating the exact words of a speaker or writer can minimize the risk of misreporting.
• Supporting arguments: Quotes can provide evidence to support your argument and lend authority to your point.
• Defining concepts: Direct quotes can be used to define or describe specific concepts.
• Leaving a lasting impact: Well-crafted words can leave a lasting impact on the reader.
• Also, very importantly, it shows your readers that you are well-read on the topic.

A great resource to help you with this without any struggle is Google Books. This tool scans thousands of books based on your topic of choice and provides great quotes you could use for writing. With this tip, you do not have to spend thousands of hours reading books, highlighting quotes then sometimes forgetting them. You could simply explore these tools to get great third-party opinions for your article in just minutes without reading the whole book.

4. Interview experts in the industry experts

• One of the best things you could do for your writing is get expert insights on the topic. Interviewing experts would give you the opportunity to add extra authenticity to your writing. Another reason why they are so important is they provide nuanced insights that quantitative data often can’t capture. By giving experts the opportunity to add unique, sharable information that helps back up their points, they could also get backlinks for their sights; this way, it is a win-win for everyone. Some platforms where you could request expert third-party information for any topic you are writing about include:

• Help a B2B Writer and
• HARO

On these platforms, you could explain the type of person you need an opinion from and add a small summary of the topic you are writing about. Then, reach out to people who fit the criteria.

Here is a great example of how to do this from peak freelancers

You could also keep a swipe file for writers who are experts in your Niche and are always happy to contribute to any topic you are writing about. If you do not have a lot of background on the subject, you are writing about. Getting assistance from other experts would go a long way in giving you the ground you need.

You need to request these contributions at least some days (at least three days) before when you really need them, as you would need some time to look through all the information sent.

5. Dig into forums

You might meet some dead ends when researching some topics. The available information may not be very in-depth, and the few resources you may find may be from company websites that may provide very biased information on the topic. In moments like this, to get a very unbiased view on these topics, you need to search different forums or social media platforms to get a first-hand idea of what people are really saying about that topic. You could check forums relevant to your topic on Reddit, Facebook, or just search X (Twitter) or Quora. You would see the different questions people are asking about your topic and the responses they are getting. This way, you could see what real people are saying about the topic when they are not being paid. Now you have a new, less nuanced perspective you could package into a blog post.

6. Transcribe Podcasts from Experts

A lot of times, it may be a struggle to get experts to provide their opinions on certain topics, especially if you are writing for a less-published website. People are busy, and they may not have the time to provide expert insights to everyone who requests it. So, the best way to go about this is to listen to their podcasts or other interviews they have been on and transcribe information relevant to what you are currently writing about. Some really great transcribing tools like Otter, Rev, and Descript would help you get all the information. No need to pause and write and have all your time wasted. After the transcription has been done, you can pick up what you need from it.

An important pro tip is to also listen to podcasts by your client and also take some information from them that may be relevant to what you are writing about

7. Collaborate with Clients

This is actually a no-brainer, especially if you are a freelance writer, but a lot of times, people may not consider it. Your client and their team would have lots of subject matter experts in which ever topic you are writing about since your content would be circled the type of product or service they provide. Leverage the opinions of subject matter experts from their team.  Also, ask if they have client reviews or case studies that could be used as a source of fresh, relevant examples.

They may also have some data their research team has collected from their customers (i.e. the percentage of customers who’ve liked or disliked the feature you’ve mentioned.)

Content research plan for blogging business owners

As a new blogger looking to grow your online business, researching high-quality content is crucial. Follow this step-by-step formula to improve your article research skills, establish yourself as an authority in your niche, and boost your search engine rankings.

• Define the content objective:

Before even choosing the topic to write about, it is very important to be clear about what the aim of this content is. Are you targeting the top-of-the-funnel content where you want to educate and gain traffic by standing out as an expert in the topic, or is it the bottom-of-the-funnel content where your goal is  to convert.

• Analyze the needs of your target audience

Search the service you are providing on Google, Twitter, Reddit and other forums so you can have an idea of what people are talking about, the areas where they need clarification and particular topics where you believe you can add the most value and get the most results. Analyze their particular need around the service you provide.

• Topic Exploration:

This is the moment when you explore various keywords you could write about then you can search on multiple SEO tools for their ranking difficulty or if these topics are getting enough traffic.

• Study search intent:

Even after you have chosen the topic, you still want to study the search intent for people searching that topic to be sure it aligns with your current content objectives. Look at what the ranking sites have written about this topic, and this would tell you what you need to know about readers searching the Internet about this topic.

• Choose your topic:

This is the first and most important part of your content research process. You need to know what you want to write about. Depending on your Niche, you would like to write about topics that set you as an authority in your industry and, most importantly, drive traffic and potential leads to your page.

• Check various sources:

Now that you have decided what you want to write about, you can search multiple sources for inspiration on what to write about and also incorporate all the strategies I mentioned under the content writing tips.

• Look for areas where you can add value to the topic:

If you would want your content to rank, it should be adding more value than the current content that’s ranking depending on the reader’s search intent. This is something you should try to achieve by researching on various platforms apart from Google.

• Run surveys and gather feedback:

After your content has been published, you may want to run surveys to see what your readers really feel about the content you wrote and if there is any extra information they would like to see you add to it next time. You could use your social media pages to achieve this easily. You could also find other means to talk to your readers by asking them to email you their views and promise to provide a reply. This can also be a great method to generate new relevant topics for the next article you will be writing about.

• Continuous improvement:

As you research and write more, improvement becomes inevitable

Final Thoughts

The content research process may seem lengthy; However, the time spent on research is an investment that would inevitably pay off in the long run. Another very great thing about great content research is that it instantly cuts down any form of writer’s block because now you already have so much information on your table to mix up. You only have to think about what angle you want to go about it. And with time, the research process gets easier, and your content gets better, so you can only win when you take content research seriously!