This year I passed my driving test, and I’m now (tentatively) in the market for my first car.

The thing is, I know very little about cars and advice from friends and relatives is often conflicting. The internet, therefore, is an important (but admittedly chaotic) resource in the car buying process. I want information, guides and reviews from sources I trust, and I can’t be alone.

Naturally, since I write about data all day, I wondered how auto companies would go about appealing to the first time car buyer best.

Using a combination of Brandwatch Analytics and BuzzSumo, I’m going to build a simple guide to getting content inspiration for first time car buyers. It’s all about listening.

An uphill start

There is no shortage of people asking about their first car, and that is great for marketers looking to appeal to this audience.

Using BuzzSumo’s Question Analyzer, I was quickly able to access the kinds of questions being asked around “first car’. The Analyzer searches sites like Yahoo Answers and Reddit to find common question topics which are helpfully grouped together, as shown below.

I immediately discovered that age appears to be a big factor in other first time car buyers’ questions. I’ve not been searching for answers to “What’s the best first car for 24 year old women” but age certainly seems to be a concern for others. If you’re looking to attract younger buyers, who seem to be the predominant group including their ages in searches, you’d probably do well to incorporate that into your content for maximum Google points.

Just a brief scroll through these questions can give you an idea of the topics people want to know about (price and insurance were big) and the precise wording people are using to look for that information. If you can speak to first time car buyers in their own language you’re on to a winner.

BuzzSumo also gives you the opportunity to check out how other content about your area of interest performs.

For instance, Wednesdays seem to be a prime time for shares on first car articles over the last year.

And you can get inspiration, or check out the competition, by seeing which sites are doing best in your area of interest. In this case, caranddriver.com, alongside The Guardian and BBC are doing very well.

Not only have your got inspiration for the content of your post, you’ve got some great promotional clues, too.

Braking down the data with Brandwatch

Brandwatch Analytics can also provide you with some handy tips on creating content for specific groups.

For this example, we thought we’d show off our subreddit analysis skills.

We tracked mentions of “first car” (omitting “first car accident”) on the subreddit r/cars from 1 – 28 November 2017, finding between three and 29 mentions each day.

We were then able to scroll through the different conversations people were having about what first car they might buy, how they felt when they bought their first car, what circumstances they were in and what they were interested in.

Using the Topic Cloud component, you can see some of the main themes in the conversation.

A simple scroll through the popular posts can give you ample inspiration for multiple articles on buying your first car, with verbatim examples from real life people who are curious about taking the leap into car ownership.

You can get even more granular by searching for terms you’re interested in within the first car conversation. I found this example among multiple others just by searching for “buy” or “buying” a first car.

Now, I am 25 y.o. and got my first “career” job and I am in the position of having my buy my first car because of work commute. Looking around, I am getting urges of wanting to learn more about cars instead of treating it as a “point A to point B” object.

FROM REDDIT USER “NEWPOSTS”

On Reddit, since you’re usually anonymous, people are happy to put all sorts of details out there meaning you’re likely to find honest opinions and feelings.

But I don’t want to create content for first time car buyers…

That’s fine.

The point here is to give you a taste of what’s possible in using data for content inspiration.

Maybe instead you want to attract people to your food blog – why not use Brandwatch Analytics and Brandwatch Audiences to find out what influential foodies are talking about?

Perhaps you want to update your FAQ page – why not try BuzzSumo‘s Question Analyzer to see what your customers and prospects are asking about your product or industry across the web?

Whatever content you’re writing, some simple data analysis can give you fast insights into what to write, how to write it and how best to promote it.

Are you a journalist looking to cover our data? Email react@brandwatch.com for more information