Creating awesome content takes time and effort. With over 644 million live websites out there and around 2 million blog posts written per day, content has got to do something pretty special to stand out.
Presenting an audience with awesome content they will love and engage with is all about offering them real value.
Real value is achieved through creating content that answers your market’s burning questions, addresses their pain points and offers useful guidance and advice. Here’s where the concept of the pillar page and resource hub come into play.
Below, we take a look at these types of awesome content and the main principles behind them.
Understanding your target market is key
Before you begin to create any content, you must first understand exactly who your target audience is. There’s no point in wasting time writing content unless it is focussed on this the market you want to tap into. Only once you know who you are writing for can you create content that they will love.
Your objective is to create content that your audience will enjoy and appreciate, and in order to do this effectively, you need to know exactly who they are and what they are looking for.
To establish who your audience is, start by creating a buyer persona.
Start by brainstorming ideas around where they come from, what problems they have, the problems you solve and their similarities. Perhaps they are all the same age or work in the same industry.
Next, explore the following points around their professional lives:
- What is their job role/daily responsibilities?
- What industry do they work in?
- What challenges do they face?
- What are their daily frustrations?
- What are their goals?
Finally, look at their personal lives:
- What motivates them?
- What are their passions?
- What media resources do they use regularly?
- How do they spend their free time?
Finding out exactly who you audience is means you can tailor content towards them and publish content they will truly find useful.
So, rather than just creating content that achieves clicks, shares and page views, you will be putting out quality content that will turn your site into a trusted resource that readers will turn to for help and guidance.
Harness the power of the resource hub
This is where the concept of the resource hub comes in.
Creating content that your audience enjoys is all about offering them value. It’s about focusing on their needs over yours. Answering their burning questions, addressing their pain points and delivering more than just a sales pitch.
By compiling content into a resource hub, you can do just that.
Content within a resource hub is worth a lot to the reader. It focuses on offering them a solution to their problems or provides them with an answer to their immediate questions.
For example, we run an Umbrella Company Comparison Site. Yes, our audience are interested in comparing Umbrella Companies and yes, that’s not the sexiest business to be in. But, the likelihood is that they’re also interested in a wider variety of topics that complement the use of an umbrella and throughout the process of choosing one, they will no doubt have some questions.
So, within our resource hub we compile blogs and articles covering a range of related topics including how to improve contractor rates, what to look out for in Umbrella Company ratings and how to make the most out of your time as a contractor. We also allow people to search the hub to find articles most relevant to their most pressing questions.
Although these topics don’t exclusively promote our service, they are super helpful to the reader which goes a long way to building trust.
In offering your audience this type of content, you are giving them a helping hand. You become a trusted resource they can turn to when they need more information or a query addressing.
A resource hub transforms your business into the expert in your field. The go to place for your target audience to reach out to when they have a question or pain point.
Establishing yourself as the solution to the reader’s problem and highlighting your company as the expert is powerful enough to transform readers into customers.
The Importance of the Pillar Page
A pillar page covers all aspects of a single topic in one page.
Let’s say we run a social media management company. We would inevitably have several pillar pages spanning a range of subjects. One of our pillar pages could cover Instagram Marketing, another might focus on Twitter, and another on Facebook Marketing.
Our pillar page for Facebook Marketing, for example, would offer a general overview and questions and answers about this topic. It would be longer than a blog post, but not as in-depth.
Then, it would contain hyperlinks to blog posts and articles covering more specific, in-depth areas within this theme. These could be ‘how to write great Facebook captions’ or ‘how to master Facebook ads.’
Essentially, the pillar page answers the main, burning questions that your buyer persons are asking on a particular topic. The cluster content, meaning the additional blog posts and articles that are linked throughout the pillar page, answer more specific questions.
Not only are pillar pages important for SEO, they offer your audience a central place where they can dig into a particular topic and learn everything they need to know about it.
Not only can they gain an overview on the subject, they can explore more specific, detailed queries or questions. This is what makes pillar pages such a valuable source of knowledge for your audience.
Creating great content is all about offering value
To deliver content that your audience loves requires more than just a blog post harping on about the benefits of your products or services, it requires you to enrich the reader’s life in some way.
Pillar pages and resource hubs achieve just that. They address the interests, pain points and questions your market ask regularly. Not only is this type of content super helpful for your audience, it goes further in reflecting that you care about them. This helps form trust between you and the reader as well as adding real value to their lives.
