“No one goes to a website thinking, hmmmm, do I want a blog or an ebook?”
—Siobhan Climer, Conversion Copywriter at Orbit Media Studios
I wholeheartedly agree, but this begs the question: Why do we separate different types of content into different sections of the website?
Why are "resources" like ebooks separate from blog posts?
Which are separate from podcast pages?
Which are separate from webinars and case studies?
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I recently asked this question on LinkedIn, and it sparked quite the conversation.
If you’re looking for information on programmatic TV advertising or identity resolution, for example, wouldn’t you rather be able to view everything on that topic at once — rather than searching through multiple sections of the site?
I would, and so do many other people who chimed in:
“We moved towards this functionality at Sprout in 2016 or so, allowing us to focus on topics and use cases instead of having to click through multiple sections. Content hubs FTW!” —Nate Turner
“I think it's a smart move! There's no real need for [content types] to be separate — after all, a case study is a resource just as much as a blog post is!” —Eden Bidani
“We had the same thought. We started to combine every content type on a single page on our site. Almost there.” —Mark Huber
A centralized marketing content hub could therefore offer a much more effective B2B content experience.
What is a content hub?
A content hub is a single place visitors can go to find all kinds of curated brand content (e.g. blog posts, guides, webinars, infographics, videos, etc.).
Marketing content hubs may take the form of a complete content library, housing all of the brand’s content, or they may take the form of a deep dive on a single topic. A marketing content hub typically has functionality that allows you to easily search through all content, as well as filter by a set of brand-defined categories.
For example, a content library hub may offer filters by:
Topic (generally, evergreen pillar topics)
Industry
Content Type
Role/persona
Benefits of content hubs
The primary benefit of a content hub is delivering an experience that makes it easier for users to explore the specific topics they’re interested in (rather than navigating your content silos). This means content hubs are particularly useful for B2B markets where buyers spend a lot of time self-educating on subjects that matter to them before making a purchase.
Uberflip — the customer experience platform that is arguably the mother of marketing content hubs — explains that centralizing all of your assets in a content hub allows you to design a resource center that aligns with your buyer’s search preferences.
Randy Frish, Chief Evangelist, President & Co-Founder at Uberflip, told me:
“We all know the simplest comparison here is how Netflix organizes content in categories so we can approach our problem with an agenda. Same experience is what we're aiming to emulate in B2B.”
A secondary benefit of digital content hubs is a simplified website structure. Justin Simon, Senior Content Marketing Manager at Metadata, pointed out:
“I think back to my early years working on company websites and there was this idea that a bigger site = a better site. That thinking is starting to shift.”
Shubham Garg, Freelance Content Creator, added that having a single home for your brand’s content also makes for a cleaner and branched URL experience. This simplified website structure translates into a simpler navigation experience for your user, and can also contribute to better performance in search engines.
3 content hub examples—who’s doing it well?
What does a good content hub look like? Let’s take a look at a few to find out.
1. Uberflip
Unsurprisingly, Uberflip offers a variety of high-impact content hubs, but their primary hub is called “Resources”.
The hub promises to be “Your destination for ebooks, guides, articles, and videos on marketing strategy and content experience” and includes all types of content they publish — including blog posts, ebooks, videos, templates, and more.
Right away, it’s easy to see how to “Learn by Topic” — users can easily filter by subjects like customer experience, demand generation, and account-based marketing. And they’ve also made it easy to quickly find key content assets like events, webinars, and case studies with additional filtering options. Although slightly less prominent, search functionality is also available.
As visitors browse through the hub, it’s easy to see what, exactly, each piece is, thanks to the CTAs on each content block (e.g. “Watch Video” and “Read Article”).
When Uberflip has a particularly juicy piece of content they want to highlight, it goes in the featured content section at the top.
2. Metadata
As Mark, Head of Brand and Product Marketing, mentioned, his content team has been working to move their content into a centralized hub. Metadata’s hub tells visitors: this is “Where you come to get better at demand gen.”
First up? A big search bar to help visitors find exactly what they’re looking for.
Then, front and center again is the ability to sort by topic of interest, such as demand generation, campaign experimentation, and paid social. Further down the page, visitors can also choose to browse some of the brand’s most popular content pieces (hello, social proof!).
One thing I find interesting about Metadata’s hub is that several of the sections invite visitors to “watch”, “listen” or “read” some of their high-value content pieces. Technically, this is still breaking the content down into buckets by type — but they do so in a way that caters to how a visitor thinks of consuming the content.
3. Bazaarvoice
Bazaarvoice’s marketing content hub doesn’t offer obvious topic filtering, but I’ve included their hub here for a few reasons.
First, it’s hard to deny the visual appeal.
Second, if you scroll beyond the few pieces of featured content at the top, the hub has the rest of the content organized by what the visitor is trying to accomplish (aka their “job to be done”):
Collect content
Drive conversion
Amplify content
Optimize strategy
As a big JTBD fan, I’m all about this organizational framework! Visitors can click to “see all resources” on each content area or scroll left and right to browse on page.
Finally, while blog posts aren’t included in this “Resources Hub”, each section offers a link to “see related blog posts”.
Why aren’t more brands using content hubs now?
If digital content hubs offer a better content browsing experience, why aren’t more brands using them? There are a few reasons.
1. Internal silos lead to external silos
As content marketers, we often think about our brands’ content in silos. It takes different resources and processes to produce a podcast or a webinar than it does a blog post, for example — so we think about these content types in different buckets.
These internal silos often result in external silos, too.
Randy (Uberflip), explained:
“This is a trap that is rooted in how we create assets. Often one person creates each format, so we go to group them in that way. But when we simply ask the question, we realize how broken this is. People don't come to your site and say ‘I got this problem, show me your ebooks.’ They expect you to welcome them and know the problems they want to solve. Format may get mixed in that reply — and may even vary depending on the channel they are coming from.”
Lindsey Laughlin, Vice President and Marketing Strategist at Gravity Group, added:
“I think our content got separated like that because we started our blog, podcast, etc. at different times and people consume those types of content differently. But we've been talking about what it would look like to combine…”
2. Few people have questioned the approach
“Well, that’s how it’s always been done.”
That explanation never goes over well. For anything. And yet, siloed content is pretty much just how content has always been done. When I brought up the question of content hubs on LinkedIn and explained my reasoning, several respondents were surprised they hadn’t considered the perspective.
Diana Moreno, Marketing Director at Jansen/Adjusters International, exclaimed:
“What a good point. I never thought of this before.”
Clay Ostrom, Founder and Brand Strategist at Map & Fire, was especially inspired:
“We do that exact separation (resources vs. blog articles)…and now I’m questioning everything. This is a real 💡moment...kind of can't believe we didn't think to do it before.”
3. Tool limitations
The experiences we create are often limited by the technologies at our disposal, and popular content management systems like Wordpress have their limitations.
As Clay explains:
“Our website is built on WordPress, which, like many platforms, treats blog posts as a unique type of content – separate from pages which are used for, well, everything else. I think that really plays a role in making us think blog posts are different, so they should live in their own space.”
How to build a content hub
Thanks to the tool limitations, creating a content hub may not be the easiest task. For enterprises with deep pockets, Uberflip is a premium option that creates beautiful hubs with AI-driven content recommendations. These content recommendations allow you to take the hub experience to the next level — from curation to content experience.
Randy explained:
"When we move to a content experience, people start to trust you. ... The ability to create content experiences means we can match each buyer, at each stage, from each channel with a personalized experience."
Everyone else may be looking at some custom development work.
Clay (Map & Fire) was so excited about this marketing content hub discussion that he ended up creating one for his agency via custom development. Like many content marketers, his content was divided into his WordPress blog and a separate resource center filled with guides and exercises (built as a collection of pages and subpages).
To create his content hub, Clay used his existing WordPress backend and a custom theme frontend. He reconfigured the resource section page and created new pairings of guides + relevant blog posts, then replicated the listing for additional blog posts within that page.
Clay also added some shortcut topic links and search functionality to the page to make it easier to navigate.
While his original blog still exists, the new resource center theoretically eliminates the need for visitors to go to the old blog home page (except for people who come into it organically).
All in all, this custom content hub took a mix of some design, UX, and a bit of frontend coding to pull it all together.
I’ve taken both approaches (Uberflip hub and custom built hub). Uberflip is a lot easier to roll out, but as a SaaS platform, you’ll pay for it as long as you want to use it. If you change your mind (or cut your budget), you’ll be stuck migrating all of your content out of the platform and back into your website.
The custom development route can be a pain, but once it’s finished, you own the product (albeit, probably without AI content recommendations).
Does content organization actually matter?
The point of a content hub is to organize your brand’s content—but some marketers argue you shouldn’t bother.
Colin Steele, Head Of Content at York IE, shared his hot take, noting that content distribution plays a more important role in content discovery than on-site browsing.
“The days of people checking your site every day for your latest content are over for most of us. People follow us on social media, get our newsletters, etc., and if they see something that interests us, they click on it. They don't care what section of your site it's in, and they probably never even see what section it's in.”
He did admit there’s probably still a segment of the audience that comes to the site and browses around and that, in this case, some basic organization (plus search and filtering capabilities) is helpful to have. But we shouldn't drive ourselves crazy trying to perfect it.
Matt Cross, Growth Marketing at Knotch, took a similar stance, suggesting that we wouldn’t need to focus so much on organization if we weren’t creating so much useless content:
“The underlying issue is that companies are creating too much content. It drives the need to organize all of it to help people find it. Only 5% of content is actually driving business outcomes so rather than spend time organizing content it's better to understand what content is actually working.”
Related content: How to Get Started with B2B Content Distribution
Does a hub page make sense for your content marketing strategy?
Like just about everything in marketing, it should all come down to your target audience. Before overhauling your current blog and resource center (or continuing status quo), get input from some new customers:
Did they consume any of your content before buying?
How did they find it?
Did they browse any other content on the site?
How easy was it to find what they were looking for?
Your website analytics may also offer some clues.
How many people visit your blog home page and resource center page now?
Do they click into a variety of posts?
Use the search functionality?
If visitors are navigating to and using these pages now, they’d likely get more value from organizing your content in a content hub.
If you decide to build a user friendly content hub for your brand, take some advice from Tara McDonagh, Chief Communications Strategist at Tara McDonagh Communications, and don’t let it become a catch-all.
“I tell clients, if you don't know how it fits into your company or where else it COULD go on the site, it probably doesn't belong on the site at all — even in the content hub. Otherwise, the content hub becomes a dumping ground for all kinds of random things.”
Always ask yourself: Do we really need it?
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