How a content hub supercharges your organic marketing
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Every business dreams of minimizing reliance on paid advertising. Organic digital marketing can be a more cost-effective and sustainable alternative or even a supplementary option. A robust organic digital marketing strategy needs a persistent source of high-quality content. This is where a content hub becomes invaluable, helping you organize and effectively distribute that content.
In this article, we explore what makes up a content hub, how to create one in a few steps and showcase some examples of successful brands.
Content hub definition
A content hub is a central node on a corporate website where a company’s content marketing efforts converge, including blog posts, videos, podcast episodes, infographics, social media posts or webinars.
It’s the home for all a company’s content, the primary source for solving prospects’ and customers’ problems, answering their questions and meeting their needs, ideally moving them closer to a purchase.
You’ll rarely find a section labeled “content hub” in a company’s website menu. Such pages are usually named “learning center,” “info center,” “magazine, “guide” or “resources.”
Content hub vs. blog: are they the same?
While sounding similar to a corporate blog, a content hub is not a traditional blog. A blog is text-based, chronologically organized and consists of editorial content.
A content hub can display diverse media formats and is often organized thematically. It incorporates a blog and features infographics, whitepapers or video content. The primary role of a content hub is to direct users to more specific content to answer their questions, whether in text, image, audio or video form.
Benefits of a content hub
Better user experience. Users find all relevant content in one place, organized by topics, making it easier to find what they’re looking for without hopping from the blog to YouTube to LinkedIn.
More trust. A content marketing hub signals expertise to prospects, enhancing a brand’s credibility and potentially serving as a long-term competitive advantage.
Greater reach. A content hub benefits SEO by presenting many types of content at once, extending user engagement on the page and leading to more interactions
Longer-lasting content. Unlike social media, where content lifespan is momentary, a content hub allows for permanent presentation.
Better customer journey. With varied content centered around a central theme, a content hub aids prospects at all customer journey stages, accelerating the purchasing process.
How to create a content hub in six steps
Planning: Define the scope, objectives, target audience and formats of your content hub.
Design: Ensure the hub is easy to navigate and inviting, reflecting your corporate identity.
Content audit: Review and optimize existing content, create new content and monitor metrics to see your performance.
Content research: Identify relevant keywords and analyze your competitor’s content library for inspiration and differentiation.
Content strategy: Decide on the organization of content, categories, subpages and landing pages and integrate different high-quality content formats to avoid workflow overlaps.
Publication: Interlink posts where appropriate for SEO benefits and to guide readers to more helpful content experiences.
What is content hub software?
Content hub software solutions are effortless to deploy. They start primarily as a sturdy, expandable application programming interface (API).
Operating exclusively in the background, they’re reachable via a command line interface (CLI) for developers and web-based, graphical user interfaces (GUI) for content curators and editors. User and group access settings maintain safety and control of your digital content throughout any cooperative activities.
Content hub software ensures that all teams can utilize consistent, harmonized content, irrespective of their CMS, DAP, CRM or content generation tools.
Three examples of successful content hubs
There are several types of content hubs. They vary in appearance, but best practices can be derived from successful examples:
NerdWallet: NerdWallet provides an extensive resource hub on all things finance. Their content subtopics cover credit cards, banking, investing and personal loans. The site prioritizes clarity, breaking complex financial matters into easy-to-understand guides and tools.
Mayo Clinic News Network: Mayo Clinic is a major medical institution. Its content hub provides health news, expert advice and patient stories throughout an extensive content library on a wide range of health topics.
REI Co-op Journal: REI’s content hub focuses on outdoor lifestyle topics but indicates formats like articles, videos and podcasts. Topics range from gear reviews to conservation issues, appealing to a broad audience of outdoor enthusiasts.
Final thoughts
Creating a piece of content is labor-intensive. To maximize the impact of this effort, consider why you need a content hub. A content hub makes this effort more worthwhile by improving the customer experience and journey and enhancing SEO.
By centralizing content management, potential customers find it easier to locate, extending its effective lifespan.
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