Table of Contents
What is a Content Hub?
A content hub is a centralized destination for branded content that is related to a specific topic. But it’s not the same thing as your blog. A blog is a series of posts presented in chronological order. Your blog may feature content on different topics that are relevant to your readers.
A hub, on the other hand, goes beyond blog posts and may also include other brand assets – videos, white papers, or even curated content – all presented in a very appealing way.
The purpose of a hub is to help your visitors find out more about a topic in the content format they prefer. However, CELUM is thinking one step further with the ContentHub, which is designed to help SMB and enterprise companies to create, manage and deliver all your files. Get more info here.
The Benefits of Building a Content Hub
Content hubs have become very popular among brands and for a reason.
American Express was among the first brands to launch OPEN Forum to curate expert advice on trends and insights that are relevant to small business owners.
Other examples abound. IBM launched ThinkBusiness. Google runs Think with Google.
The simplicity and the visual appeal of those hubs combined with the wealth of great content contributed to the success of their experiment and encouraged more brands to invest in their own content hub.
So, what are the benefits of a content hub?
Authority
A good reason to create a content hub is to showcase your expertise in a topic. Your hub can naturally turn you into a thought leader while it makes it easier for potential customers to trust you.
The difference with the blog is that the content hub allows you to control the order of the content, which helps you highlight your expertise even more.
Another additional benefit that comes from serving as the authority is SEO success. Authority combined with quality content can contribute to your higher rankings in search engines.
It’s a win-win situation in boosting your brand’s authority.
Traffic
Focusing on a topic that your readers would enjoy increases your chances of boosting your traffic for keywords related to that topic.
For example, let’s say you promote your content on your social channels or your email list. When users land on your content hub, they can instantly discover a series of posts that could be interesting to them.
The content experience is instantly different from a blog post as they are able to spend as much time as they want on a number of interesting pieces of content that are focused on one main topic.
Moreover, there will be an increase in search traffic coming to your content hub as you rank higher in the SERPs.
A good content strategy can turn your content into an evergreen success with traffic that never stops coming in.
Lead Generation
One of the main reasons to build a content hub is to attract potential customers to your content.
A content hub can help you build a marketing strategy with several touchpoints that can lead visitors to your sales funnel. The more your visitors enjoy your content, the easier it is for them to trust you and proceed to the next steps (subscribe to the newsletter, demo request, etc)
You can improve your chances of success by adding relevant CTAs to your content to find the right balance between value and lead generation.
Beware, a content hub is not a sales page. You still want to add value through branded content that is relevant to your visitors. This doesn’t mean that you can’t engineer a journey that will showcase the right CTAs as users keep reading your content, though!
Engagement
Great content can lead to thought leadership, increased traffic, SEO success but also repeat visits to your hub.
Content hubs are ideal for keeping your readers engaged. The fact that you are in control of your content allows you to personalize it and change it as much as you want.
Also, the fact that you can mix different content types helps your visitors consume the content in their preferred way.
Thus, bounce rates can be lower than a blog page where it is sometimes harder to stay engaged enough to read multiple pages.
Audience Insights
A good content hub allows you to prove that your brand understands the needs of your target audience.
Seeing that your visitors are interested in your content means that you are aware of their interests and what they would like to read in your hub.
Moreover, you can use your hub to extract valuable insights about your audience, their habits, and the content that they’re enjoying.
You might even discover insights that you didn’t know before that could help you plan your next campaign or lead generation tactics based on your readers’ online habits.
How to improve your content production with a content hub
Are you considering creating a content hub? Let me show you a simple workflow for building it, then.
- Start with a publishing plan. Pick the topic that you want to focus on and research the content ideas that you can include.
- Perform keyword research to discover the best keywords that you want to rank for.
- Think of the pain points that you want to address through your content and the needs of your target audience.
- Work on the content architecture starting from the main page and the additional pieces of content that you’ll need to create later on.
- Think of the curated content that you want to include. Will you focus only on your content? Do you want to feature other experts on the topic?
- Last but not least, remember to be flexible. You are the owner of your content hub and you can change it as much as you want.
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It is not a static hub and you’re able to test any ideas and assumptions you may have until you find out what works best for your audience.
Takeaway
A content hub can transform your brand’s identity, and lead to leadership, engagement, traffic or boost your lead generation.
The first step to getting to all the great results is to understand your audience.
Spend the right time to organize your content architecture based on their needs.
It’s your opportunity to showcase your expertise to maintain your current clients and win new ones.
