Brand/Expert Research Techniques
In this segment we’re going to share five different research methods related to the brand or authority you are writing for.
Review mining [15] is one of the most popular and widely talked about techniques for uncovering insights related to the products and services you are writing about. There are several ways to do it… starting with Amazon reviews.
Often the product or services you write about share topics with books on Amazon. For example, if you’re writing about a new journal or time management application, you could look for books on time management or journaling, and scan the reviews for insights to use in your copy. And because there are books on virtually every topic, you can probably find insights to use as you promote any product or service you write for.
When you mine Amazon for reviews, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, be aware that Amazon has a fake review problem. It’s gotten better recently, but a lot of product reviews are still created by bots and paid reviewers. In my experience, this is less true about books than other products, but watch out for any reviews that are obviously fake. If you see several reviews that are similar in tone, roughly the same length, saying virtually the same thing, these may be fake.
Also, the best insights are generally found in reviews with three or four stars. Five star reviews tend to be overly effusive. Scan them for sure, but pay the most attention to reviews with three or four stars. The opposite is true for one star reviews. They tend to be so negative that any insights you pull won’t be all that helpful.
Read through the reviews. When a phrase jumps out, copy it into one of your research documents. You’re looking for pains, problems, objections, outcomes, and other ideas you might be able to add to your copy. Don’t edit out anything at this point, just copy and paste the exact words into your document.
Then, once you’ve collected enough to go with, start looking for commonalities and ideas that show up again and again. These could become headlines, subheads, bullets and more.
Once you’ve filled your document with clips from these reviews, you can run them through an AI engine to analyze them in all kinds of ways. We’ll show you some of them in the next segment.
Amazon isn’t the only place to mine reviews. There are several review sites that collect reviews including Google. If your client is listed on Google Maps, Yelp, TripAdvisor or has a Facebook page [16], it can be worthwhile to mine those reviews as well.
Another type of mining you’ll want to do is what we call group mining [17]. You’ll be doing much the same thing as you do with Amazon reviews, but in Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Reddit, and other groups where your prospects and customers hang out.
The difference here is that there isn’t a section of reviews to scroll to where you can simply copy and paste. You’ll need to do a bit of hunting.
First, find and join a group discussing the pain or problem your product fixes. There is usually more than one group for a particular problem, so you may want to join several. Some are definitely more active than others.
Now search within the group for words like “frustrated,” “stuck,” “disappointed,” “confused,” “help,” “overwhelmed,” “don’t believe,” “not sure,” “lost,” “hopeless,” “can’t,” “hate,” and any other term you can think of to help find the pains your prospect is trying to address. These search terms are emotional, and if you find comments that include them, you’ll be reading deeply felt, emotional words and phrases that will connect with readers when you use them in your copy.
Each time you find a comment that catches your attention, copy and paste it into your document. In addition to problems and pains, you can use search terms to identify competitors, and find insights that you can use, not just in your copy, but to make the products you sell better.
Another place to mine for sentiments and insights is social media [18]—Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and even LinkedIn. This can be time consuming, so be careful not to get lost doom scrolling or envy scrolling in the feed. Instead, find experts or authorities in the industry or niche you are writing for. Follow them. Unfortunately, the search function in these apps isn’t as helpful here as it is with group mining.
Twitter’s advanced search can help you find specific terms used by an account holder, but it won’t show these terms in the comments of their followers. Instagram’s search is similar, it doesn’t’ pull up comments. And worse, you can’t search for terms within an account. So to pull this off, you’ll have to do it the old fashioned way… reading and scrolling. For this reason, this is probably the most time consuming and potentially the least helpful technique we are sharing. However, that doesn’t mean it can’t produce great results. Lots of people are vulnerable and share their frustrations on social media. They share their true feelings about products, competitors, and solutions.
Start with your client’s social media accounts. Pay attention to any posts specifically related to your writing assignment. Check out the comments and if any of them jump out at you, copy and paste them into your document. Like the other mining techniques, you’re looking for insights and ideas you can use in your copy. Objections you can overcome. Headline ideas. And success stories.
Once you’ve mined your client’s account, look for competitor’s accounts and follow the same process. Look for comments that talk about problems, pains, objections, surprises, and successes. Write down anything that might be useful for copy later.
The last type of mining you’ll want to do is what’s called user generated content mining [19]. If your client is unknown or the product or service you are writing about is new, you may not be able to use this technique. But if the product is popular, or if there are competitive products that have been around awhile, it may be useful. It’s simply mining user generated content for ideas and inspiration.
You’ll find most of this content on YouTube, TikTok, and social media sites. Rather than searching for terms like “frustrated” or “confused,” you’re simply looking for mentions of the product or service you are writing about. Best if it’s the actual product, but looking for content about competitive products can be insightful as well.
Search for your product or product category. Note what people are saying about the product and others like it. Is it positive? Negative? How are people using it? What do they like about it? What do they NOT like about the product? What can you use to connect with prospects in your own copy? Paste that stuff, word for word, into your research docs.