Content Strategy: By Melissa McDonald, Founder of My Networks

As a child, I never understood why my mother used her pocket calendar for everything. It brought me to the edge of annoyance. Dentist appointment…get out the personal planner. Saturday market next weekend…put it in the diary. I couldn’t fathom why everything had to be so well documented. 

Skip forward to today, you know where the story is heading!

With the ever-increasing number of meetings, events, and to-dos, my personal planner is now like my second husband: I love them both equally. That’s why the morning I scrolled through my feed to discover Google’s Hero, Hub, Hygiene content marketing model, it spoke to my (newly found) organizational soul. Particularly as any strategy revolving around my content calendar sings joy to my little British heart.

Where It Began:

The Hero Hub Hygiene content strategy was originally created for YouTube publishers. However it has now been applied to all types of content creation from copywriting to photography. It helps categorize (and ultimately organize) your content to ensure you cover a range of business goals from improving site relevancy and authority to increasing brand awareness and engagement.

Because every business goal needs, and more importantly deserves, a different type of content!

Think landing pages for newsletter sign ups.
Blogs for monthly engagement and web traffic.
Video for mass awareness.

Here’s how it’s broken down, in three simple categories:

1.   I Can Be Your Hero, Baby

Your Hero content is any GO BIG campaign designed to raise large-scale awareness, authority, and engagement. This will be the least frequently created but may take the largest amount of time and investment. Think impact; Think strategy!

Before diving into any hero campaign, be sure to map out which channels you will utilize to share your content, how it will engage your audience, and the hook to get them sharing and discussing (and ultimately buying!) your ideas or products. This will help you on your way to gain a successful return of investment, rather than time – and more importantly money – wasted creating viral content with no plan to ensure it creates a wave in the digital sphere.

2.  Hub Is Where the Heart Is

Your Hub content is designed for your prime customer and is what we categorize as ‘push’ content. This means you create content for a specific person or audience and share it through emails, ads and social media. It’s used to generate relevant leads by demonstrating your knowledge and expertise. Think niche positioning for your target market!

Hub content can take the form of blog posts on your website or a series of videos. It’s regular, but not daily, and is composed of evergreen storytelling (content that stays relevant regardless of the season). This type of content revolves around your brand position (the benefits you bring to customers) and helps you provide value. Your brand tone of voice is crucial here and keeps users coming back and re-engaging.

3.   We Do a Lot of This Thing Called Hygiene

Your hygiene content is known as your helping content. This is your daily or weekly content designed to ‘pull’ people into your brand and make you visible during search. SEO is extremely important here. Think explain, describe, and help.

Hygiene content will form the foundation of your digital marketing communications; it helps build your community and (should!) take the least amount of time to produce. For example, captions for social media posts and images. If you’re sat at home or in your office thinking…but my social posts take me over one hour every day to create? It may be a good idea to start a calendar to begin the habit of pre-planning content and save yourself some time. At My Networks, we like to dedicate an entire day – our preference is Monday – to plan out a full week (or more) of content.

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Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions on how to integrate this model into your overall content strategy and calendars. I hope this post was helpful to get those creative (but strategic) juices flowing and I can’t wait to see how you use this model to elevate your business!