If you are trying to advertise in an oversaturated market, it can be hard to come up with ideas for new content like blog posts. When there are lots of businesses out there similar to yours, you may feel like everything has already been done a thousand times over and there’s nothing that can set you apart from the competition in search engine rankings.
If you’re in this situation, you may want to consider tangential content to reach a broader consumer base and increase your brand’s visibility.
What is Tangential Content?
You probably create content that is directly related to your business. For example, if you own a residential real estate company, your content is most likely focused on all things related to buying and selling homes: tips for first-time home buyers, guides to local zoning laws, things like that.
Although this content is helpful to your consumer base and provides valuable information, they can get that information from an infinite number of internet sources, and you’ll have a hard time finding SEO keywords that haven’t been used dozens of times before.
If you’ve exhausted every possible topic that is directly related to your business, it’s time to try tangential content, which focuses on SEO for tangentially-related topics that your consumer base will still find interesting or helpful.
For example, for the aforementioned hypothetical real estate business, you could try branching out into indirectly related topics like home decor, family living, or custom homes. You could create a video series giving interior design tips, make Pinterest boards with architectural inspiration, or post tips for parents of young children on social media.
Why Should I Create Tangential Content?
Tangential content helps you reach people who are not necessarily actively looking for your services or products, but will still find them relevant or useful. Who knows — your content might help them realize they do, in fact, have a need for your product or service.
Even if tangential content doesn’t immediately result in better conversion rates, it still increases brand awareness. If this content resonates with consumers, they will remember your brand or company later on when they’re actively searching for a specific product or service you provide.
How Do I Come Up With Ideas?
There are many ways to come up with content ideas, but here are two methods to get you started.
Buyer Persona
The best way to come up with ideas for tangential content is to consider the type of people you serve. This can include demographic information, like gender, age, and location, or other considerations like behavior patterns, goals, values, and motivations. What are their likes and dislikes? What are they interested in? How do they spend their time?
Once you’ve considered all these things, you can create what’s called a buyer persona, which is a fictional characterization of an ideal customer. Cater your tangential content to this buyer persona.
Coming back to the real estate example, maybe your buyer persona is a couple in their early thirties with young children who are looking to buy a home in your area. They are moving from another state and value quality time with family, education, and outdoor recreation.
Based on this buyer persona, you can create tangential content you think people like this would be interested in. You can feature local schools on your social media, create a map of nearby family-friendly hiking trails, or write a blog providing helpful information about your area for people looking to relocate.
Mind Maps
Start with a central idea. For a real estate company, it could be something like “homeownership.” From there, you create branches for more specific related topics, like home maintenance. Take those subtopics and list even more specific aspects — lawn care, pressure washing, or appliance repair.
From there, you can keep branching out and getting more and more specific until you find a unique topic you want to create content based on. This is a great way to find unexplored SEO niches and elevate your content in search results.
Elevate Your Content With PDM
At Performance Driven Marketing, our professional team is committed to helping our clients develop their brand and reputation, improve their SEO results, and create high-quality content. We provide our clients with everything they need to increase their customer base, including web design, signage, promotional products, social media ads, and more. If you’re ready to amp up your marketing efforts, reach out and request a free consultation today!
