How can hero content champion your business for the long haul? For a long time, businesses focused on building marketing campaigns with short-term results. Investing in ads was great decades ago when they were the only way brands could get their message in front of consumers. However, this has changed drastically over the years and we can thank web 2.0 for that. Problem is, many brands are still struggling with how to use the internet to properly connect with their core audience. They jumped on the viral content bandwagon only to burn out their marketing teams and their budget. There’s no die-hard formula for developing content that’s guaranteed to go viral. So not only are you dealing with a ton of hits and misses, you’re still not getting long-term results. While going viral may help you to get a ton of publicity for your brand (and maybe even an uptick in sales), it disappears as soon as the hype dies. New content is going viral all of the time, which means the attention of online users is consistently shifting. This is why brands should focus on delivering quality content instead. And that’s where hero content comes in. Let’s review what this is and how you can use it to better promote your business.

The Three H’s of Content

There’s a unique approach marketers are beginning to take with their content creation. This approach is what we know as the three H’s:

• Hero
• Hub
• Hygiene

So if you’re interested in learning more about hero content, then you must also learn about hub and hygiene content. Let’s begin with hero.

Hero Content

Hero content is the first piece of the 3H strategy. This can come in a variety of content forms, such as blog posts, articles, or video. The point of this content is to attract a large group of visitors to your site. So the content is designed to attract a broad group of people vs targeted groups. It’s not uncommon for brands to create hero content about an upcoming product launch or company event. For example, the brand OnePlus holds multiple events in major cities around the world. So it creates videos and imagery promoting these events, like the following:

Hub Content

Next up, we have hub content. Unlike with hero content, you’re creating for a specific group with specific interests. Without hub content, you only get a viral piece of content that fades away over time. But with hub content, you’re creating a place where your core audience can consume a ton of content. This is also shared among their groups, which helps to keep the content alive much longer than viral content. Hub content is also more consistent and entices your visitors to return time and time again to read more. In many cases, marketers have a publishing schedule that allows visitors to know when to come back to read the next post. These posts are also more in-depth and revolve around specific topics each day or week. You can pretty much think of it as an ongoing series.

Hygiene (aka Help) Content

Last, we have hygiene, which aims to attract new visitors from a specific target group. This is done by crafting content that is optimized for search engines to help them find their site. For instance, how-to articles, guides, and recipes are all topics that people search for on Google all the time. By giving out valuable information, it helps to create a positive and trustworthy image for your brand.

Putting it All Together

When you use all three of these forms of content, you’re creating a synergy. When done right, they all work together to build traffic, return visitors, and higher visibility on search engines. In a sense, this creates a content pyramid strategy that drives in a lot of traffic, then trickles out those that don’t fit your brand and it’s products or services. It’s another way of creating a content funnel.

How to Create Your Own “Hero” Content

The key to crafting your own hero content is to focus on the top goals of your business. This way, the focus of your campaign will always meet those needs (as well as the needs of your audience).

Aligning the two is crucial to driving a successful content strategy. It all starts with creating a piece of content that’ll attract and engage people. If you need to, combine your hub and hygiene content to create masterful hero pieces. For example, if you sell homes – think of the pet peeves your core customers have when shopping for a new house. Then try to deliver content that educates them about their issue and how your service can help. This works for brands that offer both products and services. Just don’t forget the main purpose of hero content – to attract as many people as possible. So you don’t want to be too narrow in your content. If it helps to build brand awareness, then it’s done its job efficiently.

Developing a Strategy Around HHH

Ready to see how the three H’s can help grow your business? Then it’s time to put together a strategy. A thorough analysis is required of your brand, what it offers, and its customer base. Only then will you be able to come up with content ideas that attract, keep, and convert your website visitors. The key is to follow up with your hero piece with content that is helpful and engaging. Encouraging people to return after all the hype is over is the real challenge. If your strategy doesn’t pull this off, then you’re wasting money on viral content that yields little to no results. Don’t let this happen to you – hire an agency that specializes in content marketing. This way, you have experts on your team who can assist you with developing your long-term strategy. In case you have any queries regarding the best content strategy for your business, we’re offering FREE content marketing playbooks customized for your business. Feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] or drop your query here. From there, you can watch your hero content save your customers and your business!