- Content sits at the core
of your digital marketing strategy.
Your entire online presence is built around your website,
maps listings, mentions on blogs and social media channels,
through ads and emails and, well, that is all content,
but organizing and planning for the content you need
can get overwhelming fast.
What you want is a blueprint of the different places
where you'll be distributing content.
I like to use a hub and spokes model to simplify.
Much like a bicycle wheel,
this model has a hub in the middle, the most essential part,
and spokes that extend out and support the wheel.
So at the core of your digital marketing strategy
is the content you own and host on platforms that are yours.
This could be your website or your blog
and this is all of your owned media.
Now, blogs are great in digital marketing.
They represent a cheap and easy way
to control the conversation.
You can write about your company and your team,
product launches, industry developments,
events you're hosting, and so on.
You control the style of your writing
and you can focus on areas that you believe
will appeal to your target audience.
The content in your hub is entirely under your control.
You create it, you edit it,
and you manage that conversation.
In short, you own it,
but that message needs to get distributed.
So you select your spokes
and the spokes represent the digital channels
that you'll use to distribute that message.
You'll want to select platforms that you'll actively use
and ask yourself, where does your target audience hang out
and what channels do they interact with?
Also, be sure you're checking
where your competitors are active.
Say, for example, several of your spokes are social media.
While you can manage your business accounts
and social media, you're going to have less control
over the audience that's interacting with you.
Social networks encourage engagement and conversation,
so your posts are hopefully going to start to reach beyond
the pages that you posted them on.
Now, this is going to introduce less control,
but also, monitoring and managing this conversation
can take up resources.
In fact, the more spokes you have,
the more resource intensive your model is.
Every spoke needs management.
If you don't have the resources, well, it's better to stick
with just one or two spokes and maintain those,
rather than setting up your presence in many platforms
and losing control over the conversation
or looking as if you're no longer active.
The hub and spokes model serves as a great blueprint
for your digital marketing strategy.