A hub and spoke strategy is a popular approach to content marketing that can help businesses create a cohesive plan for their content efforts. This strategy involves creating a central hub of content, such as a blog or resource center, and surrounding it with related “spokes” of content, such as social media posts or email newsletters.
Here’s how you can create a hub and spoke strategy for your content marketing:
Identify Your Content Hub
The first step in creating a hub and spoke strategy is to identify your content hub. This is the central location where your main content is housed. Some examples of content hubs include blogs, resource centers, video channels, or podcasts. Your hub should focus on providing valuable information that aligns with your brand and appeals to your target audience.
Create Content Spokes
Once you have your content hub in place, it’s time to create your content spokes. These are the different channels where you will distribute your content, such as social media posts, email newsletters, infographics, or webinars. Your spokes should be related to your hub and provide additional value to your audience. They should also drive traffic back to your hub, where your audience can find more in-depth content.
Determine Content Themes
When creating content for your hub and spokes, it’s important to determine your content themes. These are the topics or categories that your content will focus on. Your content themes should be aligned with your brand and appeal to your target audience. Some examples of content themes include industry news, how-to guides, or customer success stories.
Develop a Content Calendar
Once you have your content hub, spokes, and themes in place, it’s time to develop a content calendar. This is a schedule that outlines when and where your content will be published. Your content calendar should take into account key dates, such as holidays or industry events, and should also include a distribution schedule for your spokes.
Distribute Your Content
Now that you have a plan in place, it’s time to distribute your content. This involves promoting your content on your spokes, such as social media or email, and driving traffic back to your hub. Your content distribution channels should be tailored to your audience and aligned with your marketing goals.
Measure and Optimize
It’s always important to measure the performance of your content and optimize it over time. This involves tracking key metrics such as page views, social media engagement, or email open rates. You can also optimize your content by updating old content, repurposing content for different channels, or experimenting with new formats or themes.
Importance of Internal Linking
Paul Dughi, CEO at StrongerContent.com, says it’s also important to incorporate internal linking into your content marketing strategy. Internal linking involves linking to other pages on your website within your content. This helps to improve the user experience by providing additional context and information, and it also helps to boost your website’s search engine rankings.
When creating content for your hub and spokes, be sure to incorporate internal links to related content on your website.