Always having fresh content, whether it’s for your social media posts, blogs, or white papers, can be stressful for many small business owners. You’re the expert in what you do and you want, and need, to share that information with your customers and potential customers to grow your sales.
Creating a content pipeline is a good way to have fresh content available when you need it. Your content pipeline is really your content marketing strategy in action.
Before you start your pipeline, think about what type of content is relevant to your visitors and how you can incorporate feedback from your visitors.
Organize your efforts
By organizing your efforts, you will be able to focus on specific goals that you have set in your marketing plan.
I recommend using a content marketing pyramid. Having this marketing model to follow will make your content marketing process consistent. The content marketing pyramid shows you a way to align your organizational objectives and your content.
Develop a strategy
The content marketing pyramid is your roadmap for the implementation of your strategy. It can help you understand the types and amount of content you should produce.
At the top of the pyramid is your core content. This is the original content that is your research or thought leadership ideas. This content is a small part of your total content but is extremely valuable to your business. This is what your customers pay you for.
The middle of the pyramid is your blog posts, presentations, and content that is contributed. This content is used for lead generation. Using this mix of content allows you to reach a wider audience.
At the bottom of the pyramid is your promotional micro-content. This is your social media posts, blog comments, guest posts, and your newsletters.
Create content
Start by creating your level 1 content. As I said above, this is your core content, your research or thought leadership, and is considered your ‘anchor content.’ It is long, in-depth and requires the most effort and planning. This content is rarely used.
The middle level content, levels 2 and 3, is your lead generation content. It’s shorter in length than level 1 content. This content too may be valuable enough to sell to customers. Think webinars and presentations. Your longer blogs and contributed content (articles you write for trade publications) also fall into this category. This content is used more often than level 1 content but not as often as levels 4 and 5. Presenting and holding webinars can be done monthly or even less frequently. Blog and writing articles can happen a few times a week to once a month.
The promotional content in levels 4 and 5 uses pieces of your core content in shorter snippets to help raise brand awareness. This content consists of your social media posts, blog comments and newsletters. Posting on social media should occur several times a week at a minimum. Depending on the social media platforms you are on, you might be posting several times a day.
Using this pyramid allows you to think about the content you are creating, see where the content fits in your overall marketing plan and defines what types of content and how often you need to create your content.