The complete guide to content hubs
Like many organizations, your company has no doubt devoted countless hours and resources to creating compelling content. However, simply adding content to your site doesn’t guarantee that it will perform as expected or deliver measurable results for your business, no matter how good the materials may be.
To maximize the efficacy of your content, consider creating content hubs. This post will put content hubs under a microscope so you can better understand how they work and whether they’re a good fit for your marketing strategy.
We’ll be covering the following:
What is a content hub?
A content hub is a carefully curated collection of content pertaining to a specific subject. Each content hub contains infographics, videos, articles, podcasts, and other types of content users can explore to gain a better understanding of a topic on which your brand is an expert.
By consolidating topic-specific content into a hub, you make it easier for users to learn more about a product, service, or other subject they’re interested in. Instead of scouring your blog library and landing pages for content, everything they’re looking for will be available in one centralized, easy-to-navigate location.
While content hubs aren’t intended to sell services or products, they’re a powerful means of building your authority, expanding your presence, and increasing brand awareness, which will ultimately boost sales and improve your conversion rates.
Benefits of a content hub
Content hubs can provide a broad range of benefits for your business, including the following:
Visibility and traffic
Content hubs can make a tremendous impact on your online visibility.
Consolidating and structuring content in a curated fashion can make your top-performing blogs and videos easier to find in search. This, in turn, can lead to a notable rise in website traffic. The uptick in visibility and traffic will pave the way for an increase in engagement.
Engagement
Consolidating your materials into a content hub will give users more opportunities to engage with your brand.
They can easily transition from one piece of content to another. Every time they read a blog or view a video, they’ll strengthen their attachment to your brand. This attachment can easily transform into purchasing intent, at which time the users will become viable leads for your sales team.
Lead generation
Building brand awareness, educating customers about your products or services, and nurturing a sense of connection with your company will help you generate high-quality leads.
Increasing leads is a precursor for higher revenue. However, to capitalize on these leads, you must establish your authority, which content hubs help you do.
Authority
Content hubs house a diverse array of materials, including infographics, blogs, and videos. While a single piece of content does little to bolster your authority within your industry, creating an entire library of focused topical content demonstrates your knowledge and expertise to your customer base.
When users view your brand as a trusted source of information on particular topics, they’ll start to form a community.
Community establishment
Establishing a community of loyal readers and customers is key to business continuity. With content hubs, you can build several sub-communities within your customer base, each of which values your products and services for different reasons.
By tapping into each segment of your audience, you can begin cultivating more targeted marketing strategies and delivering personalized user experiences.
Optimized user experience
Since each content hub is carefully curated, it can provide an optimized user experience that speaks to each group’s specific pain points, challenges, and needs.
Creating a more personalized experience via content hubs will increase your leads and improve conversion rates. However, to optimize UX for your target audience, you must first choose the right content hub based on your community’s unique needs and preferences.
Types of content hubs
There are several different types of content hubs to choose from. You should select the model that best aligns with your marketing strategy and the preferences of your audience base.
The most common types of content hub structures include:
Hub and spoke
Many brands elect to use the “hub and spoke” content hub model. In this model, you’ll select a core or hub topic and create a piece of long-form content to explore it. You’ll then create several spokes (pieces that branch off the hub content). Depending on the complexity of the core topic, you can create additional sub-spokes for each main spoke.
While the content hub needs to be searchable, it should also act as a rabbit hole that draws readers deeper into your site. To ensure that it does this, include plenty of internal links on your hub and pillar pieces so users can easily bounce from article to article.
Content library
A content library model uses separate index pages for each topic. On each page, users will encounter a list of subtopic pages and links to those pages.
The content library model is useful if you need to cover several different complex topics and want a user-friendly way to structure your content.
Topic gateway
Topic gateways are structured similarly to Wikipedia pages. In this format, each topic has a dedicated webpage, each of which includes a brief summary of the topic and links to resources and related content.
Whereas topic libraries are a good content hub model for organizing content covering multiple topics, topic gateways are a better choice if you have extensive material on a single subject.
Content database
The largest content libraries are often organized into content databases. A content database allows you to curate large amounts of data and a high volume of digital assets. You can filter your assets based on characteristics like content type (i.e., blog or guide), topic, or other factors.
If you manage a huge brand, the content database hub model may be the best fit for your organization. A content database ensures that both consumers and your marketing team can easily find the assets they’re looking for.
How to create a content hub
There are different methods for creating content hubs, depending on the type of model you choose to build and your marketing goals. However, there are some general steps you can follow to get started building your content hub.
1. Develop a strategy
A content strategy lays the foundation for your content hub. It should build synergy between your brand goals, business objectives, and content.
Your strategy should also identify the hub topics your content covers, lay out a publishing schedule, and outline how to publish and distribute your digital content.
2. Select resources
When choosing resources for your content hub, make long-form, high-performing content the foundational element of each hub. Then, build on these hubs with high-quality pillar pieces that dive deeper into particular elements of each core topic.
Remember, this resource center should function as a hub of all your inbound marketing efforts as well. With that in mind, include your top-performing marketing resources when building your hub, not just blogs and other educational pieces.
3. Design a UX-friendly hub
Next, you need to build a user-friendly content hub. This will require you to adopt digital asset management (DAM) software or a content management system (CMS).
While many brands use a CMS, a DAM has the content management software built right in, giving you a unified location for curating and distributing your marketing assets. Adobe Experience Cloud is a prime example of an all-in-one DAM solution.
4. Create your content
Now for the fun part — creating captivating content for your hubs. You can create your content in-house or outsource to accelerate the process.
While it may be tempting to create content first, resist the urge. Instead, complete the preceding steps so you know precisely what types of content you need to build out your hubs. Without a sound strategy, you may end up wasting time and resources creating content that doesn’t align with your long-term goals.
5. Establish a promotion plan
Once your content is publish-ready, you need to decide how to promote it. You could use a standardized search engine optimization (SEO) approach and target organic traffic. Alternatively, you might hype up your content using social media channels and email subscription lists.
While there’s nothing wrong with taking the SEO route, supporting your organic brand-building efforts with supplemental channels is a great way of expediting the process and maximizing your ROI.
6. Track your results
Content hubs are powerful tools for generating leads, driving engagement, and boosting conversion rates. However, they’re only one component of an effective content marketing and brand-building strategy.
To maximize the efficacy of your content hubs, you must track engagement, views, leads, and other metrics. You can use these insights to identify which pieces are performing well and which need to be revamped to make them more appealing to audiences. Continuously refine and optimize your content hubs to stay ahead of your competitors and build a strong presence within your niche.
Create and manage your content hub with Experience Cloud
Creating content hubs will help you drive engagement, inform your user base, and nurture leads. However, if you want to maximize the efficacy of your content strategy, you need a headless content management system (CMS) capable of unifying content in a single hub.
When you’re ready to get started, an end-to-end digital asset manager (DAM) can help you develop and manage a content hub that yields campaign success.
Adobe Experience Manager combines your digital assets and content management workflows into a centralized solution, enabling you to deliver relevant, personalized, and content-led experiences to your target audiences.
To learn more about Experience Manager, watch an overview video now.