The Content “Core”

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For those of you who I’ve bored to tears in recent (the last year or so) new business, client or professional presentations on the intersection of PR, content and social platforms, the idea of the “hub and spoke” is not a new one. The hub and spoke is our way of explaining our approach to content curation and social media.

Originally, we (I) thought of the hub as a way to convince a hesitant client to start a blog. In most cases it got the decision maker over the hump as we talked about the blog being the core of the content strategy and the rest of the social platforms becoming the promotional “spokes” designed to cross promote the main or hub content. You then build audience and engagement by spending money on social ads (the only way you can really build targeted numbers on a social channel) and by posting solid additional content to keep the audience regularly engaged.

Recent client and new business work is now making me slightly rethink the hub or core. Instead of convincing the client that the blog is the “go to” answer for that core content, the new “core” can be any content (preferably online content) that changes on a regular basis, drives the audience somewhere measurable, and supports the overall communications strategy.

The “core” can include but is not limited to the following:

  • A blog: Well we don’t want to throw this away. It is still the best way to communicate your point of view in a direct, unfiltered way to your audience. It is the best way to build your expertise over time.
  • A website or microsite: With a major caveat that the core content needs to change regularly, preferably once a week. This can be new merchandise for B2C folks to sell or new information like white papers, etc., for B2B folks.
  • A video (or photo) channel: This can reside on a website, a YouTube channel, etc. But again the videos need to support the communications goals ranging from expanding your brand by explaining your philanthropic approach to a specific message from your CEO. They also need to be updated regularly.

There may be more “cores,” but those three are great places to start. They also help clients get over the blog hump since in those cases you’re asking readers or consumers to go somewhere to gain new information and not necessarily asking them for feedback in return.

As with the traditional hub and spoke model, if you change the core content, say, once a week, you then promote that content on all your social platforms to your growing audiences on each of them. You also then cross promote those platforms, as well, to make certain that everyone on all your platforms is exposed to that content and driven to it. This drives exposure, website numbers and eventually sales and makes all of those (like me) who refresh Google Analytics once every ten second extremely happy.

Wow that’s pretty serious stuff for a Wednesday afternoon. No there won’t be a test on it tomorrow. But we have been thinking of doing a series of video blog entries to visually explain our approach. It’s currently working well for a number of clients and seems to make sense to fellow marketers.

If you’re interested in seeing those video posts please let us know. That will inspire us to actually produce them :).

Jon Newman

In 2002 Jon cofounded The Hodges Partnership and has helped to grow it into one of the country’s largest public relations firms (based on O’Dwyer’s annual rankings). Jon has taught communications as an adjunct professor at VCU, speaks regularly at conferences and meetings and blogs and tweets about public relations and marketing issues.

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