Effective Content Marketing: Hero, Hub and Hygiene

September 25, 2017

Content Frameworks ,

Content ,

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In this series, we’re going to look more closely at the Hero, Hub and Hygiene model that can be used as a strategic framework to create content to. We’ll look at each type of content in more depth, as well as some examples, where you should place it and how to make it work for your business.

Hero, Hub and Hygiene is a popular model of content marketing framework that has been adopted by a lot of brands over the past few years. Recently, there has been a paradigm shift in how content marketing should be carried out and how to leverage social media. Because of this, Hero Hub and Hygiene became one of the most popular frameworks around.

In this series, we’ll be looking at the individual parts of the Hero, Hub and Hygiene framework. We’ll include more detail about each part, as well as how you can apply it to your own content marketing strategy.

What is Hero, Hub and Hygiene?

Hero, Hub and Hygiene framework was made famous by YouTube, way back in 2014. The original framework existed long before that and is routinely used by publishers, as pointed out in this Guardian article from 2015.

However, as more and more brands seemed to be jumping on the YouTube hype, it made sense that YouTube would try and help them. By creating this framework, YouTube (and by extension, Google) wanted to sell the idea to brands that the more content they created, the more brands would get from it.

However, unbeknownst to YouTube, they’d actually created a framework that would become the basis for many successful content marketing strategies across the globe.

Hero, Hub and Hygiene

The Hero, Hub and Hygiene framework defines each piece of content you create into three distinct types. By classifying your content in this way, you can easily identify the objectives of each piece, as well as the outcome of each piece.

The three types

In YouTube’s Hero, Hub and Hygiene framework, the different types were characterised as;

Hygiene

Always-on ‘pull’ content designed for your core target

Typically this is informative and helpful content that is designed to educate your audience about your product or service, without being too salesy.

Hub

Regularly scheduled ‘push’ content designed for your prime prospect

Hub content is content that is routinely created around a specific topic or theme.

Hero

Large-scale, tent-pole events or ‘go big’ moments designed to raise broad awareness

This is your large content pieces, designed to attract hundreds of thousands of visits, as well as press coverage.

Why create content to this framework?

Having a content marketing framework is incredibly important and rather than using something like the Spaghetti Framework, the Hero, Hub and Hygiene Framework ensures that you have a sustainable model to create content to.

Without the correct strategy for your content marketing, all the content you produce can be disjointed and messy.

This framework aligns well with many businesses. In terms of budget, your Hygiene content gets the least, and Hero gets the most. This makes sense, as Hygiene content typically is written on-site content. However, Hero content is designed to create noise and costs a lot more to do so.

Over this series, we’ll look at each type of Hero, Hub and Hygiene content in more detail. We’ll look at some examples, as well as how you should plan, produce and promote your content. We’re going in reverse and starting with the simplest content to produce first – Hygiene.

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