Hero content can champion your business for the long haul. The 3 H approach to content creation helps drive more traffic to your website.
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 companies could get their message in front of consumers.
However, this has changed drastically over the years, thanks to web 2.0.
Problem is, many companies 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 company (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 companies should focus on delivering high-quality content instead.
In this article, you’ll discover what hero content is and how you can use it to better promote your business.
What is the 3 H Approach to Content Marketing?
The three H approach to content marketing focuses on the ways marketers create content with the following categories in mind:
- Hero Content
- Hub Content
- Hygiene Content
What is 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 videos.
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:
What is 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.
What is Hygiene Content?
Last, we have hygiene content that 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. Providing valuable information helps to create a positive and trustworthy image for your company.
How to Create Hero Content
When you use all three of these forms of content, you’re creating a synergy.
When done right, they all work together to build website traffic, retain visitors, and increase visibility on search engines.
This creates a content pyramid strategy that drives in a lot of traffic, then trickles out those that don’t fit your brand and its products or services. It’s another way of creating a content funnel.
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 companies that offer both products and services.
The main purpose of hero content is to build brand awareness to attract as many prospects as possible. So you don’t want to be too narrow in your content.
Partner with WriteForMe to Develop Your Strategy For Hero Content
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!
Partner with the content marketing experts at WriteForMean, we are 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 hello@writeforme.io or drop your query here.
From there, you can watch your hero content save your customers and your business!