This is a guest post by Lesley Vos.
You write content.
No, you don’t write content.
You produce awesome content. Badass content! Compelling content! Evergreen content…
The content of all contents!
Tons of content to promote. Tons of content to cover a broad audience. Tons of content to prove your marketing strategy works.
Tons of content to support your business.
That’s great! And your mom is proud of you! *Applause*
But:
#1 problem: It takes a good deal of time.
#2 problem: It doesn’t leave you time for efficient promotion.
# 3 problem: It makes your content strategy suck.
#4 problem: You forget that content marketing is not about content.
It’s about what you want to achieve with your content! *Surprise-surprise!*
#5 problem: You join that 62% of marketers who don’t consider their content strategies efficient.
It’s always better to join the rest 38%, isn’t it?
To save time, funds, and energy, having a step-by-step strategy is a must.
“Yes, I know that!”, you say.
Okay, it’s my turn now:
Is your content marketing strategy documented?
Does it meet your corporate objectives?
Do you know your corporate objectives, after all?
Do you operate with a smart content framework?
Looking back at your tons of content, are you sure you don’t reinvent the wheel by content
recreating instead of its repurposing or curation?
At least one “no” present?
It seems you need to rethink your approach to content marketing and direct your attention to the pyramid principle of dealing with content.
“But I answered ‘yes’ to all above questions…”, you say.
No ifs or buts!
You still need to direct your attention to the pyramid principle of content marketing to make your strategy rock!
What the heck is that?
Okay, first and foremost…
What Is The Content Marketing Pyramid?
Invented by Curata, The Content Marketing Pyramid is defined as:
A strategic framework that enables the execution of a content campaign, assuring optimal content consumption, reuse, and reach.
English?
In other words, it’s a principle that helps you concentrate on corporate objectives and marketing plans instead of wasting tons of time on content creation.
In different words, it’s a principle of dividing content into levels and structuring it according to goals you want to achieve.
You remember that content marketing is not about the content itself but the result you want to achieve with it, don’t you?
Depending on your marketing plan, your content marketing pyramid will have a definite structure.
Okay, my inner voice whispers you need an example. Do you?
Why mess with success?
Let’s say, your objective is to increase shares at mobile market. Clever move! With the number of mobile users exceeding desktop ones and users spending more time on mobiles, your marketing plans might be:
- to do some innovations in mobile, or
- to empower the mobile workforce
With objective and plans established, you can start creating a content pyramid that will structure everything and save your time on writing content for mobiles.
Content Pyramid Levels
To save time and efforts, divide your content into three levels:
1) Core Content
It’s a source material for all other assets of your content pyramid. It’s original, well-researched, and in-depth explored. Once created, it becomes a heart of your strategy for getting the required results for your corporate objective.
And now, instead of spending hours on ideas generation and tons of content assets creation, concentrate on your core content and make others fly around it.
To save even more time, choose a highly promotable asset, which helps you make a buzz and lets people speak about it.
The trick is, your content becomes user-generated, saving your dear time on its promotion.
Any examples of highly promotable content needed?
Why mess with success? Part 2:
The mentioned handbook about content pyramid is a perfect fit. It’s helpful, it solves a problem…
… and we speak about it!
More examples needed?
Case studies, ebooks, books, cheat sheets, snowfall projects, guides, applications, educational videos – you choose!
N.B! Decide on your core content; otherwise, your marketing strategy will make no sense and results.
2) Derivative Content
It’s all about assets derived from your core content and aimed to support and promote it.
You have information already, so it’s a good chance to save time on brainstorming, idea generation, and research.
Take chunks from the core and create more derivative content with fewer efforts, producing a variety of formats and repurposing them to cover a broader audience.
Examples of derivative content: (You’re reading one of them right now.)
- long reads
- slideshares
- infographics
- presentations
- guest posts
The goal: engaging the audience and leading them to your core content.
3) Micro-Content
It’s the pyramid’s foundation that takes fewer efforts but brings better results. It builds awareness and facilitates conversation about your content. Micro-content is your curated content and social media posts.
With fewer efforts, micro-content appears the most time-consuming category for content marketers as it demands frequent publishing and constant promotion.
To shorten social media promotion time, try following tricks:
- Concentrate on your marketing personas.
- Make a buzz.
- Go viral.
- Use social media templates.
- Link your social media networks.
- Invite brand advocates.
- Concentrate on two-three networks instead of trying to cover them ALL.
- Schedule publishing.
- Set strict time limits for every social network.
According to surveys, we are on social media for 3,6 hours every day! The above tricks will let you shorten this time to one hour with spending 10 minutes on monitoring, 20 minutes on scheduling, and only 30 minutes on sharing your micro-content.
Why To Use The Pyramid Principle?
That’s all wonderful but…
“What does make this pyramid principle different from my awesome content strategy?” you ask.
As easy as ABC.
It helps you focus: all your marketing efforts will be documented and coordinated now.
It makes you more productive: you’ll create only compelling content providing cohesive messages and concentrating on required results.
It saves your time: you will stop spending hours on ideas generation, topics research, data gathering, and wondering about what content formats to use for better promotion. With the pyramid at hand, you have all these questions answered already.
It’s like a chain.
It’s an algorithm to follow:
Core content to meet objectives and marketing plans —-> A variety of formats to support and promote core content, engaging people and leading them to it —> Micro-content to let people know about you and facilitate conversation.
Got it?
That’s all wonderful but…
“It’s not enough to satisfy me.”, you say.
Okay then. *Deep sigh*
Your Benefits Here
It seems you are quite skeptical, aren’t you?
But still interested if you keep on reading this train of thoughts.
As a reward for your patience, here come your key benefits of using the pyramid principle of content creation:
*Bang!* You will have a better control of your workflow.
With a clear picture of objectives in mind, you will share the strategy with your team (you don’t work alone, do you?) to concentrate all efforts and time on working toward the same goal.
*Bang!* You will generate more content in less time.
With a clear message of your core content, you won’t spend tons of time on thinking what to write next.
*Bang!* You will become flexible in content creation.
With a clear picture of all content levels from the pyramid before your eyes, you are free to choose which level to start.
*Bang!* You will send a consistent message.
With an assigned value of each content piece, you will be able to reduce inefficiencies in your content strategy.
*Bang!* You will produce diverse content.
With your target audience preferring different types of content, you will keep in mind more content formats to cover all of them. As far as you understand, a text is not the only format to consider for your content marketing strategy.
But it’s my favorite one. *Smile*
And Now…
Shhh…
*Silence*
Breathe out. Digest what you’ve just read.
Yeah, I had the same feeling after I heard of the content marketing pyramid for the first time.
But isn’t it awesome?
Don’t you want to give it a try, see how it can save your time, and notice your productivity growth?
And if you work with content (like your humble narrator), it will become your proven technique. I promise.
P.S. A big thank to Curata for inspiration!
P.P.S. A bi-i-i-i-ig thank to Tor for approving me here!
Anything to say on the topic? Let’s share the love in comments! 🙂
Lesley Vos is a wanderer who can’t help dreaming about writing a bestselling ebook. A content writer from top to toe, she contributes to many publications, sharing her experience and sharpening her writing skills. Check out her thoughts on writing habits at Bid4Papers, a blog where she writes from time to time.
I help online entrepreneurs NETWORK with influencers and position their BRAND so they can attract the right CLIENTS fast. Award-winning blogger.
This idea is GENIUS!
Thanks for sharing this Lesley/Tor.
What I really loved about the content pyramid is the emphasis on strategy: identify your objective –> decide on your core content –> derivative content flies around it.
I had every intention of clipping this into Evernote and reading it later (working on a priority project) – but got pulled in.
I confess: strategy geek here.
Great work!
Hey Alp,
awesome seeing you here. Thanks for your kind words.
Yes, I totally agree, Lesley did an awesome job. And yes, the content marketing pyramid is…
GENIUS 😉
Tor
Hi, Alp!
Thanks for your comment!
Happy to know you like the post 🙂 This pyramid is truly cool, and I am lucky to meet it at Curata and be able to share its principles with Tor’s readers!
May the force of content marketing be with us!
Cheers,
Lesley
Hey Lesley,
I totally agree that the this content marketing pyramid is cool, and since you are sharing it with my readers…
that makes you kind of cool too, right? 😉
Thanks for blessing us with your content marketing force 🙂
Tor
Wow! Your article is freaking useful, Lesley! Although I already knew about the pyramid principle, I never thought about it this way. I am grateful because you took your time to write it.
And… thank you, Tor, for having the brilliant idea of inviting Lesley on your website.
Thanks for commenting, M.C. Yeah, Lesley did a super job 🙂
Have a great day!
Tor
Thank you for your kind words, M.C.!
It’s an honor for me to hear such feedback from readers, as it means I grow as a blogger and writer. Though, there are no limits to perfection 🙂
Best,
Lesley
Lesley, the feedback was well-deserved.
You are a VERY good blogger and writer 😉
Tor
One more thing, M.C. I actually didn´t invite Lesley, because I don´t officially accept guest posts.
That being said, when she sent me the outline for her post…
well, with her writing, how could I possible say no? 😉
Tor
You’ll spoil me with such comments))
Hey tor and Lesley! Amazing post! The best think about is that I ve never ever heard of it! Its unique! I will give it a try! Hopefully it’ll make me more organised and produtctive.
Though I am a bit lost on what exactly is the core content? Is it the main blog post? Sorry a little slow here CD Anyways, I Loved reading the post and I loved your personality in it! Good job! Thanks.
Hi, Jade!
Glad to know you liked the post!
Core content is the one you want to get a conversion and increase ROI from. It can be your e-book, your landing page… Or, if you want one particular blog post (long read, for example) be your #1 content to build your content strategy around it, why not? Everything depends on your plans and objectives.
Have a great day!
Lesley
Thanks for a great reply, Lesley.
I really appreciate your engagement. Everything you did from A to Z; from pitch to replying to comments after the guest post has been published, should be in everyone´s guest blogging 101 🙂
That is also how I roll when I guest post 🙂
You rock!
Tor
Great to see you here, Jade.
Thanks for commenting. I really appreciate it 🙂
Yup, Lesley wrote a great post, and she has an awesome personality.
I can see that Lesley already replied to your question.
Rock on!
Tor
Hi Lesley,
Nice post!
I never had a strategy but I think having one makes sense now. Thanks for prompting me. 😉
Core content is really essential. Though I have some on my blog (meaty blog posts) and a few incentives on the pipeline I did not think we can use them in this way to get more out of my content marketing.
Thanks for the post!
Time to work out on the blog and strategy now 🙂
-Swadhin
Nice to meet you, Swadhin!
Being more writer than marketer, I didn’t think much about a strategy, too. I like the process of writing itself, and that is why I am always happy to see my writings published at such awesome websites as Tor’s one 🙂
But thanks to Curata with their pyramid approach, I pay more attention to my content organization and promotion now. Happy to know you’ve liked my post here!
Happy Friday!
Lesley
Lesley, it’s funny to see you on Tor’s site after what happened to me last night. I was going through my messages and notifications from Google Plus, and I stumbled upon one from you from a year ago!
Somehow, I didn’t see it. It got lost in the junk.
You had asked me to contribute to some type of post you were writing.
I know it’s not this one, though! LOL
Speaking of this one, I have to say that I do not always write my posts with a specific sale-sy purpose in mind.
I like to help others, and so I do.
However, I can see now, after reading this post, that I need to re-evaluate my efforts if I want to earn more money as a freelance writer! 😉
Thanks for this! (Thanks to you, Tor.)
🙂
Thanks a lot for stopping by Lorraine 🙂
Yeah, Lesley did a super job.
Have a great day!
Tor
Hi, Lorraine!
Yeah, I remember this story. And I don’t use G+ for such things since then. 🙂
Thanks for the comment, and have a great day!
Hi Lesley and Tor,
I’m more of a marketer than a writer, but I do create content on a very regular basis. That’s why it was fortuitous to see you featured here by Tor.
I love the concept and will incorporate it into my ‘grand strategy.’
Rock on!
Kim
Hi, Kim!
Thanks for commenting on that!
Yes, agree with you concerning the concept – it rocks! That’s why I decided to share it, hoping it will help content marketers. I bet guys from Curata have already heard tons of thanks for creating this pyramid principle 🙂
Best,
Lesley
Lesley,
Thanks for this extremely useful post. I do not currently work with a team, so I am often overwhelmed by time constraints. This looks like a very clear strategy for getting some relief!
Thanks a lot for commenting, Rich.
Yes, Lesley´s post kicked b*tt 🙂
Tor
Thank you, Rich!
Yes, trying to cover all five elements of content marketing is hard. Time and energy consuming, it makes us look for new techniques to do more in less time. Glad to know my post appeared useful for you to check!
Cheers,
Lesley
Thank you for this great advice, I haven’t thought about my content strategy like this but it makes sense and I can wait to re-structurize! Tor – I see you in Barcelona!
Hey Tiina,
thanks for stopping by to comment. Lesley did an awesome job 🙂
Yeah, Barcelona will be awesome!
Have a super day.
Tor
Ho, Tiina!
Thanks for stopping by!
Wow! Barcelona! I am sure you’ll have a wonderful time there! Rock it 🙂
Best,
Lesley
Thanks, Lesley Vos and Tor
Through this post, I have come to know many things about content marketing. Especially the pyramid structure about the content marketing is very useful.
The concepts are been clear.
Hello Tor Refsland!
Great post, Thanks for sharing this post about how To Save Your Time By Using The Content Marketing Pyramid.
This awesome article has inspired me a lot which you have shared in this post. As I inform you that this awesome post helps me in my work because, recently; I have joined my new job in IT Sector and this awesome post inspired me a lot.
Thanks a lot once again…..!
Thanks a lot for commenting, George.
Lesley did a great work with that post 🙂
Have a super day!
Tor
This awesome article has inspired me a lot which you have shared in this post. As I inform you that this awesome post helps me in my work because, recently; I have joined my new job in IT Sector and this awesome post inspired me a lot.
Thanks a lot once again…..!
Thanks a lot, Sukan.
Lesley did an awesome job 🙂
Good luck with your new job int he IT sector!
Tor
Hey buddy!!!
Very nice post. i really appreciate your efforts. keep up the good work….
These are awesome tips to shine in content marketing…Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us. These strategies help us lot to create better marketing on social media and enlarges our network.
I’m sure this will help a lot to me and to other readers as well. I’ll follow your advice for sure!!!!!!
Have a nice day ahead…
Hey Jeannairon,
thanks a lot for stopping by to comment. I really appreciate it.
Yeah, Lesley did an awesome job with this post 🙂
Tor
Thank you so much for sharing such a great article, I came to know many new things after reading this post.
Awesome, Lyons. Glad that you found the article helpful 🙂
Have a super day!
Tor