Documentation

How to Use Research to Kickstart Your Articles

How​ ​To​ ​Research​ ​And​ ​Write​ ​Content​ ​

Looking for ways to improve the writing process or experience is a good thing. This is true whether you are a newcomer who is looking for ideas on how to get started writing or someone who has been at this a long time.

Writing an article means knowing your subject.

Research​ ​is​ ​required​ ​when​ ​you​ ​want​ ​new​ ​ideas about​ ​a​ ​subject​.

Sometimes you may know the subject very well, but just need some inspiration for WHAT to write about.

A little research can be a great brainstorming exercise to get the content flowing.

​​Reading other people’s articles is a great way to get ideas for your own.

As with all other areas of research, it will simply mean sifting through all available content to find the information that works to spark your own creativity.

Example: “parenting articles” or “dog training articles” or “weight loss articles.”

This should give you plenty of options to research.

I have a set process that starts with the keyword and the most pressing questions surrounding the topic.

For example, if the keyword was men’s straight razor, I would look up the top questions related to men’s straight razors.

The Google query is “men’s straight razor + questions,”

I get the following results:

How to sharpen a straight razor?

How to maintain a straight razor?

Do straight razors give a closer shave?

Is shaving with a straight razor difficult?

Now I have a great basis for my research.

What I have not seen in the question research is buyer intent.

What’s buyer intent? If I wanted to sell a product, I’d want to check to see how many people were looking to make a purchase right now.

Here, I dig further by running a query on “how much” + straight razor.

I get the following auto-complete results:

How much is a straight razor?

How much is a straight razor shave?

How much is a cut-throat razor?

How much is a straight-edge razor?

How much is a straight razor cost?

How much is an old straight razor cost?

Since the standard search result is about 44,700,000 results on the buyer intent for this phrase, I feel pretty confident that this is a worthwhile article idea.

I can dig a little deeper for questions by going to a site called AnswerThePublic.com

I’ll type in the main keyword “straight razor cost”. Let’s see what we get now.

Are Straight Razors Better Than Regular Razors?

How Much Does a Straight Razor Shave Cost?

Why Are Straight Razors So Expensive?

Where Do They Sell Straight Razors?

Are Straight Razors Better?

Why Use Straight Razor?

This should be more than enough to get a long form article going.

Ok, I have one more source to hit. That’s the related searches section on Google’s search results page. Let’s see what “straight razor cost” got for us.

·         Related searches

·         Straight razor kit

·         Dovo straight razor

·         Small straight razor

·         Best place to buy straight razors

·         Barber straight razor

·         Disposable straight razor

Now, when you’re ready to conduct research, use your questions and the related keyword search results. Plug them into the search engine of your choice. You can open a tab for the article template of your choosing in Content Marketing Magic and cut and paste. Remember, the questions will become your subheads. Fill them in first. Next, go through your search results and clip answers, then past them into paragraph slots.

You can save this as your research sheet in a text file or rename the file as “Title” research. You can always open another tab in Content Marketing Magic and produce your article in your own words. If you are including facts and figures, be sure to credit the source.

When you create your research sheet first, you have a full sample of your article that was created in minutes. Now, take the time to review your research and clean it up a bit. If you want to use that style, you’ll be able to finish the post in a few minutes.

You may find that after your research, you’ve picked another format. No worries! Your content is there to make into any style you choose. You may even want to create several articles based on the same information with a few changes to make them unique.

The value of the template system is that you can quickly fill in the blanks with your references and research results, then change the material a bit during final edits. Be sure to keep your title reference sheet and power word sheet open in separate tabs when editing. You’ll want to ensure that the content is optimized for maximum engagement.