We recently highlighted content curation as one of five ways you can reboot your content strategy this year. I’m back to dig a little deeper and demonstrate why it’s important to segment your content as part of your curation strategy. Segmentation not only helps you get a better idea of how to repurpose content, but also how you can use different voices within your organization to reach different audiences.
Flagship Road: Your Core Content
I say Flagship because these forms of content are some of your core pieces. Businesses typically invest a good amount of time into their development and as a result they have a much longer shelf life. Maybe you spend a month developing, researching, and writing a white paper – you want that investment of time to extend to the life of the actual piece of content. Start small and determine which form is a good fit for your business before you try and tackle them all.
You can build authority by using analysts or voices of expertise within your business to develop Flagship content such as white papers, research reports, and webinars. These pieces often lay the groundwork for content curation because they are more in-depth and cover multiple facets of a topic. Businesses are able to break down Flagship pieces and repurpose the information for the other two content segments, which we’ll get into next.
Constant Drive: Your Delivery Content
In this day and age, our customers are always on and easily accessible. Similarly, we need to have content that is always available to them, with consistent ways of delivering it. This definitely requires organization, but with good planning it will help you produce a steady stream of information for your customers. And having voices at every level contribute – from staff to directors to the CEO to your own customers – can help the content you create resonate with different audiences. Have your CEO write a blog, or that next email include the testimonial of a customer.
Constant content often plays the role of distributor in your overall curation strategy: it helps you communicate (or recommunicate) new and existing content. You have the opportunity to consistently highlight your content to drive more engagement. While you may have more of an initial time investment when developing your strategy for Constant content, it will pay off. Once you have a plan in place, the pieces will be easier to develop and deliver to your customers.
Quick Hits Highway: Your Mobile Content
What constitutes Quick Hit content can vary from business to business, but one thing remains true across the board: it is meant to offer easy-to-digest information. Keep this content light and not too in-depth, and when readers want something more they’ll turn to your Flagship content. Quick Hits are especially suited for today’s increasingly mobile audience. While browsing on our smartphones, what are we more inclined to view: a visual infographic or an in-depth research report? Creating infographics, videos, surveys, tip guides, and the like will help you reach this mobile audience.
Your customers will typically see Quick Hit content when they’re traveling at 70mph, so it needs to be memorable. It needs to grab their attention, whether that’s with a catchy message or a visually appealing display. You can always curate ideas for these pieces from your Flagship content and deliver them via your Constant content.
Measure the Success of Your Content Segmentation
The more you can understand how your customers consume the above content segments, the better you’ll be able to define what success metrics you need to look for. Were you nurturing leads? Did you want to drive conversions? Then as you gather this data you’ll be able to optimize your content to drive more of the results you want.
I hinted at it above, but as more content is consumed on mobile devices, the more important it is to understand which forms are best suited for the platform and how they are going to take action. Voice has become increasingly important to mobile marketing: people are now one step closer to calling you for more information. Making sure you have a phone number within your content, and being able to track where calls originate, helps you round out measuring the ROI of your segmented content. All so you can create more relevant information for your customers and deliver it on the platform they want.
Interested in taking control of your content? Check out our free white paper to learn more about how you can get more out of your content marketing: Marketer’s Guide to Proving (and Improving) Content Marketing ROI.
