Content creation is crucial to any successful digital marketing strategy. Incorporating high-quality tangential content into your content marketing efforts can bring significant benefits. 

Let’s look at tangential content, what it is, and how to identify and create an effective tangential content strategy to enhance your content marketing activities and eCommerce strategy.

What is tangential content?

Tangential content is indirectly related to your core topic, but still provides value and engagement for your audience. 

Giving solutions to your audience and indirectly promoting your product and service as a tool to achieve it might bring surprising results.  

Let’s say an online store sells cooking machines, like blenders and juicers. In this case, tangential content could be recipes that a user might need to use those products to recreate the recipe. 

Industries beyond eCommerce can also use tangential content as part of their marketing strategy. 

The SaaS industry can use it to attract customers to their business in various stages of the funnel.

In the case of the freelance service platform, it can provide information about taxes or marketing tools that help customers grow their business.

How to find ideas for tangential content articles

Understand your audience and their interests

To identify tangential content opportunities, it’s important to have a deep understanding of your target audience. 

Conduct thorough research and create detailed buyer personas to gain insights into their preferences, interests, and pain points. 

By understanding your audience, you can identify topics and themes that are relevant to them but slightly outside the scope of your core content.

Conduct keyword research

Keyword research helps optimise your content for search engines and enables you to find tangential content ideas. 

Use keyword research tools to identify related keywords and search queries that are frequently associated with your core topic. 

These keywords can serve as a starting point for creating tangential content that complements your main content while providing additional value to your audience.

Monitor industry trends and news

Keeping an eye on industry trends and news can help you identify potential tangential content ideas.

Look for emerging topics, new technologies, or significant developments within your industry that are indirectly related to your core content. 

By staying informed, you can create timely and relevant tangential content that resonates with your audience and demonstrates your expertise.

Leverage user-generated content and feedback

Engage with your audience through comments, social media, and customer feedback to gain valuable insights into the topics and areas of interest beyond your core content. 

Pay attention to your audience’s questions, comments, and discussions. These interactions can help you identify content gaps and create tangential content that addresses their needs and interests.

Use Google Image filters to find related topics

Google image filters can be valuable in identifying and creating effective tangential content. 

Google utilises image annotations to expand and enhance connections within the Knowledge Graph, linking entities such as objects and attributes.

Use image filters creatively to explore unexpected connections between images and topics. This can help you create fresh, compelling content that resonates with your audience.

First, thoroughly search for the main topic you want to explore. Once the initial results appear, click the ‘Images’ tab to view image-based results.

Next, access various filters in the ‘Tools’ option below the search bar. The ‘Type’ filter allows you to select different image types, such as photos, clip art, or illustrations, while the ‘Color’ filter enables you to refine the images by dominant colours.

The ‘Time’ filter can also view recent images or historical visuals, providing diverse perspectives.

By experimenting with these filters and exploring the various images, you can uncover related topics, themes, or unique angles that inspire the creation of engaging, tangential content.

How to create tangential content calendars at scale

Understand your buyer persona

Buyer personas are vital for understanding and connecting with your target audience. They are fictional representations of your ideal customers, crafted based on real data and market research about your existing customers.

By delving into their characteristics, motivations, and preferences, you gain valuable insights that help you align your marketing strategies effectively.

These personas encompass various areas of information, including:

  • demographics 
  • behaviour patterns
  • goals
  • challenges
  • values
  • fears

Understanding these key aspects empowers you to empathise with your customers and anticipate their needs, allowing you to tailor your content and offerings to resonate with them more deeply.

If your marketing department already has well-defined personas, utilise them as a starting point for your tangential content strategy.

However, without such personas, you can turn to ChatGPT to assist in crafting comprehensive and data-driven buyer personas to bolster your understanding of the target audience.

Create a thorough mind map

Creating tangential content calendars at scale can be complex, but utilising mind maps can significantly streamline the process.

The mind map acts as a visual guide by starting with a central idea and branching into main topics, allowing content creators to explore related subtopics and ideas.

It’s crucial to think beyond traditional keyword research and delve into the mindset of the target audience.

Mind maps enable marketers to empty their minds and see the world through the eyes of their buyer personas, understanding their values, aspirations, preferences, and potential questions they might have. 

By leveraging mind maps, content teams can efficiently brainstorm a wide array of tangential content ideas, ensuring a diverse and engaging content calendar that resonates with the audience on multiple levels, ultimately boosting brand awareness, engagement, and conversions at scale. 

Use Miro, MindMeister, or any relevant tool to create it virtually and share it with the team to get various insights and ideas. 

Use data validation to prove the ideas

Once you get a list of ideas, check their potential by using data proofing. You can use various methods to do it. 

First, type that topic in Google and see what results you get including related topics and questions in the People Also Ask section.  

Secondly, research topics in Ahrefs, Mangools, or any tool to help you identify keyword search volume.

Keywords with no search volume or low search volume but with interesting search results may be valuable for your niche.

Don’t give up on them — the topics may be so narrow that tools can’t identify search volume, but may still be highly relevant to your audience. 

Closing thoughts

Content marketing might be a powerful tool that increases revenue. Good audience awareness, SEO strategy, and storytelling are the aspects that you can’t omit during tangential content creation.

Technical content writing services might be a solution if you want to enhance your business on a bigger scale.

Professional content writing, comprehensive audit of the existing copy, and fast recommendations are keys to rapid growth and success.