Content marketing is undeniably an important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) and a powerful lead generation tool, but many businesses make the mistake of solely focusing on content directly related to their offerings.
This narrow approach limits their potential to reach a wider audience and engage new customer segments who may not have otherwise stumbled across their products and services.
With tangential content, brands can broaden their audience reach and captivate new customers.
In this article, we explore content marketing tips for integrating tangential content into your SEO content marketing strategy, as well as:
• What Is Tangential Content?
• Tangential vs. On-Brand Content: Which is Right for My Brand?
• Benefits of Tangential Content to Businesses
• How To Develop Tangential Content Ideas for Better Customer Reach
What Is Tangential Content?
Tangential content is topics related to your business but not necessarily about your products or services. It helps broaden the range of topics on your website and attracts a wider variety of readers who might have yet to pay attention to your content.
This blog by Thrive Internet Marketing Agency is the perfect example of a tangential topic. The article ventures beyond their typical digital marketing topics and skillfully incorporates subtle promotion of their services in the close.
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Done right, this strategy can engage customers, increase your customer base and boost brand awareness without feeling like you’re doing a hard sell of your products and services.
It may seem like a long shot, but developing and publishing tangential content can benefit businesses in more ways than one. We’ll learn more about that shortly.
Tangential vs. On-Brand Content: Which Is Right for My Brand?
As established, tangential content focuses on topics indirectly connected to your brand or industry. It provides valuable information and insights that interest your target audience but may not directly promote your products or services.
Branded content, on the other hand, directly aligns with your brand and promotes your products and services. It often showcases your unique selling propositions (USPs), highlights product features and tackles success stories.
Both on-brand and tangential content have their merits and can be used strategically depending on the brand’s goals and overall marketing strategy.
Brand-centric content, for starters, allows you to showcase your expertise and establish yourself as an authority in your field. In contrast, tangential content helps widen your blog’s reach by appealing to readers looking for something other than your products or services.
If you’re uncertain about which type of content to focus on, professional content marketing services may benefit you.
Benefits of Tangential Content to Businesses
Incorporating tangential content in your SEO content marketing strategy offers multiple benefits, especially for brands in highly niche industries. Here’s how:
Boost Brand Awareness
Tangential content is likelier to evoke curiosity and emotion than a direct product-focused blog post. This keeps your brand top of mind for consumers when they’re finally ready to purchase your products and services.
Improve Customer Acquisition
With tangential content, brands can engage with audience segments outside their traditional customer base. This can result in new prospects, better leads and increased conversion opportunities.
Widen Customer Reach
We couldn’t overstate the importance of having a good customer reach. Tangential content enables you to tap into new markets, target specific segments and capture the attention of potential customers who may have overlooked your offerings.
Capture Better Leads
Quality leads are the lifeblood of any business. Tangential content offers a unique opportunity to showcase your expertise and provide valuable information beyond your core offerings. This, in turn, builds trust with your audience, increasing the likelihood of them becoming leads.
Acquire Quality Backlinks
Creating tangential content related to your core topic or industry attracts a broader range of websites and publishers. This can lead to partnerships, guest posting opportunities and natural backlinks.
Soft-Sell Your Offerings
A subtle approach works best for some industries. Tangential content helps to subtly introduce a brand’s offerings without sounding too salesy or driving away prospects.
Build a Rich Content Library
Tangential content allows brands to experiment with different content types, such as webinars, podcasts and eBooks. You can use this opportunity to identify which format appeals best to specific audience segments, then focus your content marketing efforts there.
Hook Customers With Emotional Content
Tangential content evokes emotions in users. Branded content often falls short in this regard, as the sales aspect tends to overshadow genuine emotional connections.
With tangential content, brands can deliberately tell stories and share related content that customers can relate to.
Establish Industry Authority
Most customers want to buy from authoritative sources. By producing content on topics of interest, brands can position themselves as knowledgeable and reliable experts in the industry-building trust and credibility among new and existing customers.
How To Develop Tangential Content Ideas for Better Customer Reach
While there’s no one way to develop tangential content ideas, these SEO content marketing tips can help you get started:
Research Topics
Before creating tangential content, look up trending and relevant topics related to your industry and target audience. This will inform your organic keyword research to ensure posts rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Conduct Keyword Research
Keyword research offers insights into terms and phrases people search on Google. This enables you to identify popular topics and themes among your target audience. Look for keywords with a moderate search volume and low competition to ensure your tangential content ranks well.
Create Buyer Personas
A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer based on data like demographics, interests, behaviors, motivations and goals. Detailed profiles of your target audience can deepen your understanding of customers and aid in developing tangential topics that pique their interest.
Monitor Competitor Content
Keeping tabs on competitor blogs helps identify content gaps and discover underdeveloped topics. Use this as an opportunity to develop tangential content marketing ideas that fill those voids and offer value to your audience.
Utilize SEO Tools and Performance Metrics
SEO tools like SEMrush, Google Ads Keyword Planner and Ahrefs provide valuable data for content ideation. This includes keyword search volume, user behavior, organic impressions and rankings. Analyzing these metrics allows you to uncover emerging trends and high-demand topics in your industry.
Utilize Social Media Analytics
Social media likes, shares, comments and click-through rates can support your content generation efforts. You can use them to identify topics generating the most engagement among followers. With this information, content ideation can be a breeze.
Seek Inspiration From Outside Sources
To enhance content generation, look beyond your industry for inspiration. Scout popular blogs, news articles, social media platforms and forums for tangential content marketing ideas. You might discover unique angles and tangential topics that could enrich your content ideation efforts.
Stay Up-To-Date on Current Happenings
Pay attention to trending news or social media topics, such as politics, sports, movies or cultural events. These timely subjects provide opportunities to create engaging and relevant content that resonates with your target audience. More compelling content equals improved lead generation.
Utilize Trending Hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to find interesting tangential content marketing ideas. Search for keywords and phrases related to your core subject, then check which hashtags are trending on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. This can help you uncover related content that piques customer interest.
Attract New Customers to Your Brand’s Orbit With Thrive
Tangential content is a powerful but often overlooked lead generation tool. A study suggests that integrating tangential topics into a brand’s SEO content marketing strategy can result in 30% more linked mentions and 77% more social shares than related content alone (Moz, 2017).
But then again, like any other content marketing approach, you need a well-rounded strategy to maximize the benefits of this content type.
Thrive, a full-service digital marketing agency, assists in identifying and leveraging content ideas that generate interest and capture attention. With our expertise, we can strike the perfect balance between branded and tangential content marketing.
You can rely on our content marketing team to:
• Offer content marketing tips to inform your strategies.
• Broaden your audience reach by addressing related topics of interest.
• Establish your brand as a knowledgeable industry leader.
• Drive engagement and foster connections with your target audience.
• Increase organic traffic and improve search engine visibility.
• Generate better leads and enhance your overall conversion rate.
• Implement lead generation strategies within your tangential content, such as lead capture forms, call-to-action prompts and lead magnets.
Contact Thrive today to see how we can help improve customer acquisition and widen your audience reach through tried and tested content marketing services.
