How to Use Surveys to Tap into Trending Conversations (and Build Links)

When you’re trying to build quality links, one of the best ways to do that is by creating interesting content and pitching writers to secure media coverage.

But in order to be successful, your content has to be newsworthy.

One of the most common newsworthy elements is timeliness, meaning the information is either brand new or relevant right now.

Most brands aren’t operating full newsrooms and don’t have the capacity to cover breaking news, but there are still ways to participate in relevant, newsworthy conversations — and surveys are a great option.

I’m going to walk through how you can utilize surveys to add value to conversations, and earn the interest of writers at top publications.

Step 1: Identifying the trends

Saying “trends” is honestly too broad, because a trend can last for hours, days, months, or even years. Obviously, the shorter the trend, the harder it’ll be to contribute in a timely fashion.

For the purpose of building links, I tend to ignore Google Trends, Twitter trends, and other rapidly changing interests, because you’ll need at least a handful of days to put a survey together, and there’s no guarantee the topic will still be popular by the time you’re done.

Instead, I look for trends that last in the range of months, as they accommodate longer-term conversations and give you the room to explore new angles and perspectives without racing against time.

Here are some ways to identify these types of trends:

• Keyword research: When keywords and topics have a high volume, that means there’s a great deal of interest; often these tools use historical data to inform their volume estimates, so it’s safe to assume these topics didn’t just start trending.
• Exploding Topics: The goal of this site is to help people identify trends before they peak so you can contribute while the conversation is becoming more and more relevant. Keep tabs on topics related to your industry to get ideas.
• BuzzSumo: When using this tool, check out the Content Analyzer and type in your niche. But don’t just look at the stories that have gotten the most engagement — see if there’s a story or pattern in the first couple of pages of results. Perhaps there’s an underlying trend there.
• Join communities: See what topics are being discussed where your audience connects with others. Are their Facebook groups, Slack/Discord channels, Twitter chats, or anything else where these conversations are happening? Make sure to pay attention.
• Publisher stories: Keep tabs on your target publications. What are they publishing stories about? What do these stories have in common?

For example, let’s look at a project we did for our client Signs.com called American Mask Mandates. As you know, COVID-19 has been a very unfortunate “trend” that’s been thrust upon us, and because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event, the scary novelty of it has generated a lot of news stories. But you can go even further than that — what else related to COVID-19 is trending?

We knew mask-wearing debates were appearing constantly in the media, but it was hard to tell exactly where the general public stood on the matter separate from all the noise those sensational stories stirred up.

When we identified this trend, we decided to survey 1,000 people to get their thoughts on the issue, and we framed the timeliness and trending aspect of the story in our project’s introduction:

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Created on Apr 30th 2021 05:35. Viewed 177 times.

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