Content marketing is hard work. It can feel like pushing a rock uphill some days. You have to consistently publish quality content and there is a danger that if you stop or change, you may lose the gains you have already made and roll back down. And everyone’s racing their own rocks up the same hill.

How to win? Your content strategy will be more effective if you understand the content trends in your industry and act faster than your competitors. And there may be shortcuts to the top: For example, identifying the new opportunities and avoiding very saturated and competitive content areas. In shaping your content strategy you will want to answer questions such as:

Is this topic area saturated with content? How many articles are being published each week? How can we stand out?

What are the emerging topics or content areas where engagement is growing?

What post types are gaining the most traction and on which social networks?

Has interest in this topic peaked, as measured by shares, or should I act quickly to take advantage of growing interest?

Are average shares declining or increasing for specific topics and formats?

In which niche areas and networks do I have the best chance of gaining attention and engagement with my content?

In this post we explore how you can answer these questions with BuzzSumo’s new content trends chart and how to develop a strategy that is appropriate for your content area.

Ideally we all want to identify when a topic starts to trend and be early in publishing relevant content. First mover advantage matters in content marketing. We equally want to avoid joining a ‘me too’ bandwagon in areas saturated with content and where average shares are falling. Where a topic area is saturated with content you need to adopt a very different strategy with a greater emphasis on quality content and promotion. So let’s look at how you can quickly review content trends.

Analysing Content Trends with BuzzSumo

With BuzzSumo’s new content analysis charts you can simply enter the topic you are interested in, and we will show you both the number of articles being published and the total number of shares over time.

In the example below I used the topic ‘Machine learning’. The chart shows that the volume of content being published about machine learning has increased significantly since 2015.