Many companies think that "making buzz" fulfills their goals in terms of visibility, traffic and conversion.
Error!" Seeking to be popular by surfing trends is a very haphazard approach.

Be on the first page of search results on Google, have your content shared thousands of times, feel engagement from your prospects increase, and generate quality traffic to your website... These are the dream of the modern marketer!"

These are also the objectives of the Content Marketing !

Setting yourself up as an authority or a reference in your field by providing useful information and practices today goes through the content-marketing and helps create quality traffic to one's website.

However, many companies create content with the goal of being popular and forget the original goals of that strategy.

Popularity seeking is NOT the goal of Content Marketing!

Why does chasing popularity through trend identification (often) lead your content strategy to failure?

Putaclic: popularity at the expense of quality

Today, the quest for a large number of shares is all too often at the expense of quality.

However, the popularity of a piece of content does not mean that it fits the needs of your persona.

It will surely be successful in the short term but will not create reader loyalty to your company.

Furthermore, the lack of response to the reader's information needs can prove damaging on your natural referencing (hey yes, Google doesn't like these practices either) and therefore, affect your content strategy results.

An audience that is not satisfied with your content will spend less time on your website, view fewer pages during their session, and certainly have no desire to leave information on a website.

In other words, a catchy title leading to a hollow article will increase bounce rate, reduce click rate and theconversion rate of the web page.

Have you ever just signed up for a website's newsletter after wasting 5 minutes looking for non-existent information yet promised in the article's title?

On the contrary, many people post content they think is great in hopes that readers will feel the same way and share it.

Developing a Content Marketing strategy is a job that is undertaken over the long term and the path to long-awaited notoriety is fraught with obstacles.

Developing your content marketing strategy on trends that buzz? Wrong way!

Identifying trends: a tool for understanding and analysis, not a focus for creation

Analyzing trends in no way guarantees content virality but is a great way to identify axes of improvement for your strategy and to perform in-depth analysis.

Social networks are an ideal place for large-scale content sharing and often reflect quite accurately web trends.

However, it is very difficult to identify trending topics related to one's field, due to the lack of relevance of the reports provided by the social networks themselves.

BuzzSumo: your friend for the opinion

To remedy this, you can resort to BuzzSumo.

BuzzSumo is a search engine that identifies the most popular content on the topic of your choice.

Results can be filtered by date, language, country, content type and more.

BuzzSumo then provides you with a summary of the fallout, by article and by social network (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest are analyzed by the search engine).

The specialized search engine also allows you to see who has shared what content, a very useful feature for identifying influencers in your field.

In summary BuzzSumo allows you to find out what content is most viral for any field, the content format chosen to pass the information, where and by whom that content has been shared.

Knowing this information allows you to know what appeals to your audience and how to reach them effectively.

Google trends: a trend that persists

The SEO is a factor you can't do without to ensure content virality.

Google Trends is another tool, complementary to BuzzSumo for finding out how popular a topic is.

While the BuzzSumo platform focuses on social networks, Google Trends focuses on keyword relevance.

Google Trends is the perfect tool to compare different keywords and evaluate their relevance.

The tool also offers filters to focus on a country or regions.

Testing different keywords in Google Trends allows Identify the keyword for which audience interest is increasing.

Working on a keyword as its popularity is growing makes it easier to share content.

It also helps to understand why one article generates less traffic than another.

The good and bad example of The Super Agency

The good example

The Super Agency offers relevant content creation that will answer the questions our audience is asking.

One of our major content publishing focuses is - as you probably know - Inbound Recruiting!

This is a theme and a low search keyword compared to Inbound Marketing or even the word "banana" for example.

"Inbound Recruiting" isn't widely searched and doesn't provide much visibility. But this keyword is what our readers are looking for

Here is a Buzz Sumo recap of the most shared "Inbound Recruiting" content on social networks, in France and over the last 6 months.

BuzzSumo search results for "Inbound Recruiting" over the past 6 months

The article "Inbound Recruiting: how do the best Business Schools do it?" has been shared 34 times on social networks and comes in at #4 on this topic.

We have published many articles on this topic with each time the desire to provide the reader with quality information. They rank quite logically in the top trends of BuzzSumo and Google Trends.

However, the article on Inbound Recruiting for Grandes Ecoles had a particular success with Internet users.

This popularity and number of shares can be explained by the growing public interest in this keyword at this time.

We observe that the keyword is more searched in this end of 2017 and had a nice increase at the beginning of November, period of publication of the article

The article was actually published on November 6, 2017 when the popularity of the keyword was significantly increasing.

Of course the popularity of the theme alone cannot generate such good results.

The article in question is primarily rich in information, infographics, images and examples, which therefore contributed to its success in terms of traffic and sharing. 

The "bad" example of The Super Agency

Our "Black Mirror: a dive into social media hell" is typically an example of an article that is popular but strays from the objectives of Content Marketing.

While this article is indeed one of the most viewed on The Super Agency blog, it doesn't necessarily match the expectations of our readers, though they may be interested.

As a result the article did not meet our content marketing objectives as it did not result in any conversion.

The article has been viewed more than 2,300 times but has not generated any clicks.

For comparison, here are the results for the previously discussed article, over a short period:

The article generated only 108 views but 4 clicks for a 3.7% conversion rate

Despite the low views, the article "Inbound Recruiting: How the Best Business Schools Do It" achieved a conversion rate of 3.7%.

Thanks to its relevance, the content offered was able to answer the reader's questions and generate interest in what The Super Agency offers.

These different results clearly demonstrate the value of prioritizing relevance and quality over keyword popularity.

Creating precisely targeted content generates fewer views but increases conversion.

This lack of visibility or popularity can be discouraging for some Content Marketing teams, but it doesn't mean they should stray from their goals!