We should all be building Content Skyscrapers.
I love this simple yet powerful inbound tactic.
Brian Dean of Backlinko came up with the Skyscraper Technique for content marketing. It’s as powerful as it’s elegant.
Build content skyscrapers to poach social engagement and search volumes:
It’s as if someone built the tallest skyscraper, and you decide to make a more elevated one next to them. You should get the most out of the search volumes by doing so.
Building a Content Skyscraper gives you a good idea of what it takes to succeed with content marketing in your chosen niche.
To build Content Skyscrapers (or Clusters of Content Skyscrapers), practice these techniques:
Skyscraper Technique 1: Deep Content
Deep Content
Above is an example of an online content structure that’s five levels deep.
In the example above, five layers of evergreen content are stacked:
Deep Content is centred around providing increasingly higher quality to Content Divers (clicking vertically) since they’re more valuable than Content Surfers (clicking horizontally).
As for the importance of structure and depth, the logic is the same as for Iceberg Publishing and Content Themes.
Learn more: The Deep Content PR Strategy: Win By Going Deeper
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Skyscraper Technique 2: Content Themes
Content Themes
Let’s use a fictitious example of an IT company. First, they decide on a Promise Filter for their content strategy:
Promise Filter: We make IT easy to understand.
Then, the IT company breaks their core message down into four business-critical Content Themes:
Q1 Content Theme: We make people understand the Internet of Things (IoT).
Q2 Content Theme: We make people understand business automation.
Q3 Content Theme: We make people understand cloud computing.
Q4 Content Theme: We make people understand managed services.
For each quarterly Content Theme, they produce Content Packages (to build Content Skyscrapers). Each Content Package could contain the following:
Learn more: The Content Themes PR Strategy
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Skyscraper Technique 3: Evergreen Content
Evergreen Content
What’s Evergreen Content? For a piece of content to be evergreen, it must sustain its value over time. Meaning: The content must be relevant today, tomorrow, and the foreseeable future.
While news content might have a more significant short-term impact, Evergreen Content accumulates over time.
There are different ways to leverage evergreen content. I recommend a few axioms for Evergreen Content:
Evergreen Content is also helpful in building Content Themes, Content Packages, Deep Content, and Content Skyscrapers.
Learn more: The Evergreen Content PR Strategy: Forever Is a Long Time
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Thanks for reading. Please consider sharing my public relations blog with other communication and marketing professionals. If you have questions (or want to retain my PR services), please contact me at jerry@spinfactory.com.
PR Resource: Inbound vs Outbound
Spin Academy | Online PR Courses
Inbound vs Outbound
The inbound mindset is a fundamental shift in the PR- and marketing industry.
Historically, many PR- and marketing departments have argued:
“Why should we spend our PR- and marketing budgets on ‘already acquired’ audiences?”
The truth is — it’s the other way around.
Instead of “spamming” non-existing audiences, public relations and marketing can do much more with existing online publics. 1Silfwer, J. (2015, June 11). The Publics in Public Relations. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://doctorspin.net/publics-in-public-relations/
If your Inbound Shift PR Strategy is good, you might not need to prioritise outbound PR strategies — because your inbound audience will attract outbound publics.
Drawing a line between those who know you and those who don’t know you is nothing new:
This inbound shift is just the online equivalent:
Learn more: The Inbound Shift PR Strategy: Beauty From Within
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ANNOTATIONS
1 | Silfwer, J. (2015, June 11). The Publics in Public Relations. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://doctorspin.net/publics-in-public-relations/ |
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