Many companies still don’t see the benefit of creating content that isn’t directly about their products or brand. But unless you have a universally interesting brand, you’ll be hard-pressed to attract much of an audience if all you do is publish brand-centric content.
Content marketing is meant to solve this dilemma. By offering genuinely useful content to your target customers, rather than selling to them, you earn their attention and over time gain their trust.
And yet, I find myself explaining the value of non-branded content all too often. I frequently hear grumblings from fellow marketers that clients and bosses refuse to stray from sales-focused content. I see companies publishing what are essentially advertorials and calling it content marketing.
In addition to turning off customers, branded content can be extremely challenging for building links or earning PR mentions. If you’ve ever done outreach for branded content, you’ve probably gotten a lot of pushback from the editors and writers you’ve pitched. Why? Most publishers bristle at content that feels like a brand endorsement pretending not to be a brand endorsement (and expect you to pay big bucks for a sponsored content or native advertising spot).
Fortunately, there’s a type of content that can earn your target customers’ attention, build high-quality links, and increase brand awareness...
Tangential content: The cure for a boring niche
At Fractl, we refer to content on a topic that’s related to (but not directly about) the brand that created it as "tangential content."
Some hypothetical examples of tangential content would be:
- A pool installation company creating content about summer safety tips and barbeque recipes.
- A luggage retailer publishing country-specific travel guides.
- An auto insurance broker offering car maintenance advice.
While there’s a time for branded content further down the sales funnel, tangential content might be right for you if you want to:
- Reach a wide audience and gain top-of-funnel awareness. Not a lot of raving fans in your “boring” brand niche? Tangential topics can get you in front of the masses.
- Target a greater number of publishers during outreach to increase your link building and PR mention potential. Tangential topics work well for outreach because you can expand your pool of publishers (larger niches vs. a small niche with only a few dedicated sites).
- Create more emotional content that resonates with your audience. In an analysis of more than 300 client campaigns, we found the content that received more than 200 media mentions was more likely than low-performing campaigns to have a strong emotional hook. If your brand niche doesn’t naturally tug on the heartstrings, tangential content is one way to create an emotional reaction.
- Build a more diverse content library and not be limited to creating content around one topic. If you’ve maxed out on publishing content about your niche, broadening your content repertoire to tangential topics can reinvigorate your content strategy (and your motivation).
Comparison of tangential vs. on-brand content performance
In our experience at Fractl, tangential content has been highly effective for link building campaigns, especially in narrow client niches that lack broad appeal. While we’ve assumed this is true based on our observations, we now have the data to back up our assumption.
We recently categorized 835 Fractl client campaigns as either “tangential” or “on-brand,” then compared the average number of pickups (links and press mentions) and number of social shares for each group. Our hunch was right: The tangential campaigns earned 30% more media mentions and 77% more social shares on average than the brand-focused campaigns.
So what exactly does a tangential campaign look like? Below are some real examples of our client campaigns that illustrate how tangential topics can yield stellar results.
Most Hateful/Most Politically Correct Places
- Client niche: Apartment listing site
- Campaign topic: Which states and cities use the most prejudiced/racist language based on geo-tagged Twitter data
- Results: 67,000+ social shares and 620 media pickups, including features on CNET, Slate, Business Insider, AOL, Yahoo, Mic, The Daily Beast, and Adweek
Why it worked
After a string of on-brand campaigns for this client yielded average results, we knew capitalizing on a hot-button, current issue would attract tons of attention. This topic still ties back into the client’s main objective of helping people find a home since the community and location of that home are important factors in one’s decisions. Check out the full case study of this campaign for more insights into why it was successful.
Most Instagrammed Locations
- Client niche: Bus fare comparison and booking tool
- Campaign topic: Points of interest where people post the most Instagram photos in North America
- Results: 40,000+ social shares and more than 300 pickups, including TIME, NBC News, Business Insider, Today, Yahoo!, AOL, Fast Company, and The Daily Mail
Why it worked
Our client’s niche, bus travel, had a limited audience, so we chose a topic that was of interest to anyone who enjoys traveling, regardless of the mode of transportation they use to get there. By incorporating data from a popular social network and using an idea with a strong geographic focus, we could target a lot of different groups — the campaign appealed to travel enthusiasts, Instagram users, and regional and city news outlets (including TV stations). For more details about our thought process behind this idea, see the campaign case study.
Most Attractive NFL Players and Teams
Client niche: Sports apparel retailer
Campaign topic: Survey that rates the most attractive NFL players
Results: 45,000+ social shares and 247 media pickups, including CBS Sports, USA Today, Fox Sports, and NFL.com
Why it worked
Since diehard fans want to show off that their favorite player is the best, even if it’s just in the looks department, we were confident this lighthearted campaign would pique fan interest. But fans weren’t the only ones hitting the share button — the campaign also grabbed the attention of the featured teams and players, with many sharing on their social media profiles, which helped drive exposure.
On-brand content works best in certain verticals
Tangential content isn’t always necessary for earning top-of-funnel awareness. So, how do you know if your brand-centric topics will garner lots of interest? A few things to consider:
- Is your brand topic interesting or useful to the general population?
- Are there multiple publishers that specifically cover your niche? Do these publishers have large readerships?
- Are you already publishing on-brand content that is achieving your goals/expectations?
We’ve seen several industry verticals perform very well using branded content. When we broke down our campaign data by vertical, we found our top performing on-brand campaign topics were technology, drugs and alcohol, and marketing.
Some examples of our successful on-brand campaign topics include:
- “Growth of SaaS” for a B2B software comparison website
- “Influencers on Instagram” for an influencer marketplace
- “Global Drug Treatment Trends” for an addiction recovery client
- “The Tech Job Network” for a tech career website
Coming up with tangential content ideas
Once you free yourself from only brainstorming brand-centric ideas, you might find it easy to dream up tangential concepts. If you need a little help, here are a few tips to get you started:
Review your buyer personas.
In order to know which tangential topics to choose, you need to understand your target audience’s interests and where your niche intersects with those interests. The best way to find this information? Buyer personas. If you don’t already have detailed buyer personas built out, Mike King’s epic Moz post from a few years ago remains the bible on personas in my opinion.
Find topics your audience cares about with Facebook Audience Insights.
Using its arsenal of user data, this Facebook ads tool gives you a peek into the interests and lifestyles of your target audience. These insights can supplement and inform your buyer personas. See the incredibly actionable post “How to Create Buyer Personas on a Budget Using Facebook Audience Insights” for more help with leveraging this tool.
Consider how trending news topics are tangential to your brand.
Pay attention to themes that keep popping up in the news and how your brand relates back to these stories (this is how the most racist/bigoted states and cities campaign I mentioned earlier in this post came to be). Also anticipate seasonal or event-based topics that are tangential to your brand. For example, a tire manufacturer may want to create content on protecting your car from flooding and storm damage during hurricane season.
Test tangential concepts on social media.
Not sure if a tangential topic will go over well? Before moving forward with a big content initiative, test it out by sharing content related to the topic on your brand’s social media accounts. Does it get a good reaction? Pro tip: spend a little bit of money promoting these as sponsored posts to ensure they get in front of your followers.
Have you had success creating content outside of your brand niche? I’d love to hear about your tangential content examples and the results you achieved, please share in the comments!
Finally! There's a word for that. Great article Kerry! I particularly enjoyed seeing the American football example. Creating content like this is almost like hunting for the c-c-c-combo content! Getting your brand in front of the audience of so many teams and players who already have a massive loyal following - massive win for tangenital content.
Thanks, Marty! We forget that tangential content isn't widely used outside the Fractl walls, so I'm glad others can make use of this term, too.
It was really awesome to watch the football example get spread around by the players and teams on social media -- that level of exposure can be so valuable to a client.
We do this at my company. We bucket content into categories, and this category is called 'topical' for us, but same idea! We've see the same results... these articles perform better and are much more shareable.
Great topic Kerry!
While we usually go with on-brand campaigns, I can easily see how tangential campaigns would work much better for some industries.
I'm sure that all of you noticed that recently we see more and more maps and geographical comparisons. Why? because all sites have local data, because surveys are accessible and easy to run, and because it's easy for people to relate to GEO based facts.
Pro tip: Usually we would all want national (or international) media pickups, but with GEO based campaigns, after pitching the story to national outlets, tailor the story for the most interesting states and tell the local journalists their story from their own perspective. It often works very well for us.
This is exactly why we pursue so many geo-focused campaign ideas. And I love that you mentioned syndication on regional and state news outlets, this is a strategy of ours as well!
Kerry, I'm curious - do you recommend putting these stories on the brand blog? Or how did you earn links when you put the story on something like cnet or Fast company? Do you put a "teaser" and then a link to your site for full story?
Hi Blair, we publish something either on the client's blog or on a landing page which publishers can link back to in their coverage. This includes all of the graphic assets and a summary of all the data we've collected. We usually time this to publish at the same time as the exclusive placement.
I agree with Marty. The problem is not knowing that tangential content performs better. The problem is explaining this to clients or bosses, and show them the proof that they should stop focusing on boring branded content. Now we have a term we can use.
Thanks for the research Kerry!
Thanks, Jean-Christophe. I'm really loving that others can use our research as proof to get buy-in on this concept from clients/bosses!
Concepts can be so hard to grasp sometimes, but numbers always seem easier to understand :P I'll bookmark your article!
Exactly Jean that I always wonder how to convince your client or boss about the importance of tangential content. After so many studies and experiments, its still difficult..
It's even hard to choose the right studies, with so many self thought oldschool SEO's! I thank Moz for always giving us insightful infos!
Great contribution Kerry! Innovative informational content always brings huge audience and awareness especially in the case of small-mid sized businesses.
We've been doing something similar with our self storage clients. The subject of self storage is pretty morning by itself, but if you consider what people store in their units, there is a wealth of content creation ideas. Many of their clients will store old classic cars, so we created a blog series around great local road trips and scenic routes. These reach a much wider audience and help increase incoming links to the blog, which is internally linked to a car storage SEO page,
Great example! Although maybe self storage isn't so boring -- there are entire TV shows about it ;)
100% true. Five out of six most read articles on our blog are tangential content. And the closest one about the product is six times less popular the the top tangential article. Our top keywords in USA are still the ones related to the top-2 articles (website promotion and Reddit marketing) which is a little embarrassing :D
https://i.imgur.com/9RDy9QJ.png
Thanks for sharing your blog stats, Igor! Curious if the search traffic to your tangential posts bring in stick around on your site and end up viewing some of the more branded content?
Doesn't seem like it, to be honest. But that's our fault because we failed to add something to prompt readers to do so.
Thanks Kerry, great post! We find most clients in two camps on this, those that don't see the value of it, and those that don't know how to or have the time to do it. For the former this is certainly something helpful to point them to thet explains it better than we do! For the latter we'll also be referencing this to reinforce the message of why its important to create that time, or outsource it.
It makes me very happy to see comments about passing this along to clients. Hope it helps you change some minds :D
Hi Kerry,
Thank you for including case studies. What a great post!
Great work Kerry putting this together. You're organizational skills when it comes to explaining concepts makes me envious haha. Clients in particular need to understand that broadening their scope can attract new patrons that find their content/product to be unique.
I love this approach locally. Especially considering the sites already have age and metrics in their favor.
Thanks for your post. It motivated me to check out tangential content in the next post on our blog. I agree that it also helps to enhance the writer's motivation which is going to help a lot too actually...
I love, love this article! I'm glad you came up with a term for this---as an outreach coordinator and PR pro, I constantly struggle with getting clients to buy into creating interesting, engaging, non-branded content. You hit the nail on the head!
Kerry, I love the part in this post about content being created for "the boss." The expectation CEO's have (especially ones who don't understand "content marketing" as a philosophy) of content directly leading to sales is a tough objection, and it's data like this that helps me persuade "Bosses" to think otherwise.
One thought, might you consider this content to be better described as "circumstantial" rather than "tangential?"
If you look up the differences between the two, it seems like "tangential content" would better describe more random content meant to get engagement, where "circumstantial content" could describe content that always has the goal of building trust/ interest in an audience, even if the original topic is not returned to.
(I should mention, I'm approaching this as if we're deriving these terms from the definitions of tangential & circumstantial speech)
Thoughts?
Hi Kerry. The increase in pickups and social shares is a very strong argument for tangential (nice term) content. What did you do to get the user data on these topics? and was it difficult to sell your clients on them? Thanks for the great tips at the end of the post!
Hi Kerry
That's True. A few months ago I worked for a company that was in charge of providing trophies and medals for competitions. I tried to convince the CEOs that a good option to get repercussions would be to sell sports, not medals and trophies. Today, they continue to promote only their articles and continue without having the repercussion that can reach
It's not much of a stretch to tie sports into the trophy/medal niche -- that should be an obvious avenue for tangential content! Shame they didn't take your advice.
This is great! I always push for clients to be innovative and explore topics that are outside their very specific niche and now I have real evidence to show them!
Glad we could give you evidence that this type of content can yield a lot of benefits! That is actually how this post was born -- we knew based on observation that our tangential campaigns performed better but had never collected that data to prove that (which will now be useful for getting other clients on board).
Another thing to consider Kate is you just may have them target areas just outside their current reach but well within their location. Could be a boost for their local businesses traffic.
Wow! The idea of "Fans want to show off that their favorite player is the best" opened my mind. Thank you very much.
Great article - and great way to get people more involved in your blog!
Insightful and practical... in our team, we try to have 3 types of content: some articles intend to convey a message and preach a way of thinking to our readers base, some are educational and the last type of articles, are product-centered.
Taking a page from Seth Godin talking about the concept of 'permission' when trying to have a 'conversation' with an audience - shifting marcom focus to content 'tangential' to the brand but relevant to the consumer just seems like good manners. You're now more focused on putting the customer first, and meeting their needs - rather than putting your brand and the need to sell something first - which rarely goes over well. Today's audiences have a fine nose for advertising and find it distasteful. Marketers who get good at understanding their audience, getting in their head and understanding their interests, and cater to them, should enjoy success.
Im curious to know where you host this tangential content if you've built a brand and are unsure about hosting off-brand content on your website/blog. Any suggestions? Do you publish on other sites, or do you muddle your on-content blog/website with this off-brand stuff?
Great post. I can relate to your very first sentence about clients not understanding why every piece of content can't be based around direct sales copy. This is especially true when trying to create linkable assets as no body wants to link to a product page for no reason but many websites will link to a great resource.
I will definitely be sharing this article directly with some of my team.
Hey Kerry,
Really liked the NFL example.
Thanks Kerry, it was so inspiring. I´m stuck in a quite boring niche son tangential content are looking so wonderful for me right now. Let´s see how they perform; -)
Without diverse content everything gets so boring. It's like shouting in a room full of other shouting people.
Creating content I think is one thing we should all do now. It is the most effective way to create brand and get to connect with the customer. In the article, I would like to congratulate you for this.
Thanks!