The Content Themes PR Strategy: Focused Birds Gets Worms

What are con­tent themes?

In this art­icle, I will demon­strate the value of struc­tur­ing your con­tent into con­tent themes and explain why you should con­sider apply­ing this strategy for bet­ter results.

As a digit­al strategist, I’ve been design­ing con­tent mar­ket­ing strategies for numer­ous brands since 2005. Using con­tent themes is a PR strategy access­ible to almost any organisation.

Let’s go:

How To Create 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. Each con­tent pack­age could con­tain the following:

• Infographics
• Blog Articles
• Whitepapers
• Social Media Updates
• Landing Pages
• Lead Magnets
• Swipe Files
• Template Files
• Content Upgrades
• Online Courses
• Podcast Episodes
• Livestreams
• Email Send-Outs
• Events
• Case Studies
• Webinars
• Video Tutorials
• Interactive Quizzes
• Press Releases
• E‑Books
• Testimonials
• Influencer Collaborations
• Mobile Apps
• Slide Presentations

Learn more: The Content Themes PR Strategy

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Start With a Core Message

First, let’s not pre­tend that a con­tent theme is any­thing ordin­ary. It’s just vari­ous pieces of con­tent around the same topic.

Simply put, a con­tent theme is a con­tent pack­age.

But there is some soph­ist­ic­a­tion to con­tent themes still. The key is first to estab­lish a core message.

If you’ve been read­ing this blog for a while, the chances are that you might have noticed that I talk about cent­ring your PR activ­it­ies around a core message. 

For instance, Red Bull’s core mes­sage focuses on action sports where people are sent fly­ing through the air. That’s their core mes­sage — they are cent­ring all their com­mu­nic­a­tions and mar­ket­ing activ­it­ies around it.

Content Themes will struc­ture your mes­saging one level beneath your core mes­sage. You divide your core mes­sage into sev­er­al con­tent themes. This will allow you to cycle to vari­ous sub-top­ics related to your busi­ness — without los­ing focus.

Focus On 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 impact short-term, ever­green con­tent instead accu­mu­lates over time.

There are dif­fer­ent ways to lever­age ever­green con­tent. I recom­mend a few axioms for ever­green content:

• Two years. To be con­sidered ever­green con­tent, I think the con­tent must be rel­ev­ant and valu­able for at least two years. It’s an arbit­rary time frame, but if an organ­isa­tion can pro­duce con­tent last­ing for two years, it will typ­ic­ally last for much longer.
• Actual interest. To be con­sidered ever­green con­tent, there must be an exist­ing volume of search engine users look­ing for the inform­a­tion. Without search volumes, the con­tent will likely be ‘ever’ without the ‘green’.
• Gentle garden­ing. Evergreen con­tent will only stay ever­green if you tend to it occa­sion­ally. To check if everything’s work­ing, add some­thing help­ful if needed, and per­haps clean out some unne­ces­sary stuff. It’s a bit like garden­ing, I find. 
• Personal touch. It’s dif­fi­cult to pub­lish some­thing unique. However, adding your brand’s ton­al­ity and flair to the con­tent is always pos­sible. The object­ive is to estab­lish trust and author­ity, so a touch of per­son­al­ity matters.

Learn more: The Evergreen Content PR Strategy: Forever Is a Long Time

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How To Structure Your Content Themes

For each con­tent theme, you pro­duce con­tent around that spe­cif­ic theme. It could be lots of con­tent, or it could be less. It all depends on your over­all con­tent strategy.

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:

• Level 1: Articles
• Level 2: Content Upgrade
• Level 3: Resource/Lead Magnet
• Level 4: Ebook
• Level 5: Online Course

Deep con­tent is centred around provid­ing increas­ingly high­er qual­ity to con­tent divers since they’re more valu­able than sur­face browsers.

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

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The Blogger Outreach Focus

Many years ago, I first tested the concept of con­tent themes myself. 

I only pub­lished blog posts about “blog­ger out­reach” for four months. I also gave sem­inars on the top­ic, cre­ated some visu­als, sent out a few emails, and ensured I nev­er pub­lished any­thing else dur­ing this period. 

I’ve described this in My Content Marketing Experiment (That Failed Miserably), and it worked so well that it got me into some trouble:

The prob­lem was that I became the “blog­ger out­reach guy.” I don’t mind doing blog­ger out­reach occa­sion­ally, but my focus has always been strategy. I should’ve picked the top­ic for my con­tent theme more wisely. 

Benefits of Content Themes

Using con­tent themes comes with sev­er­al upsides:

Planning. Using con­tent themes makes it easi­er to plan your mes­saging for the year.

Visibility. Search engines love it when you pro­duce and pub­lish related content.

Growth. You’re provid­ing valu­able and ever­green con­tent on a niche topic.

The “One Thing Only” Challenge

I’ve helped cli­ents struc­ture their con­tent mar­ket­ing into con­tent themes — and I’ve been very proud of the results.

Many brands expect it to be chal­len­ging to speak about “only one thing” at a time. 

Can an IT com­pany pro­duce a com­pre­hens­ive con­tent pack­age about busi­ness auto­ma­tion for a whole quarter? (Hint: Yes, they can!)

While post­ing a tweet is easy, you must stick to your mes­sage for exten­ded peri­ods. So, how do you talk about “one thing” for a more exten­ded period? 

To come up with good ideas, it’s help­ful to brainstorm. 

In my exper­i­ence, cre­at­ing con­tent vari­ations is much easi­er than most might think. After all, I’ve been blog­ging around a con­tent theme (i.e. pub­lic rela­tions is a power­ful busi­ness tool) for nearly two decades. 

Once you start as a team, the ideas will begin to flow, and you’ll soon find your­self in a situ­ation where you have too many great ideas.

The actu­al “one thing only” chal­lenge is actu­ally of a dif­fer­ent kind:

Content themes’ chal­lenge is con­vin­cing your organ­isa­tion not to speak about non-related mat­ters. An organ­isa­tion “chat­ters” all the time and con­vinces all func­tions to talk as one — that’s the challenge.

PR Resource: Inbound vs Outbound

Inbound vs Outbound

The inbound mind­set is a fun­da­ment­al shift in pub­lic relations.

Instead of focus­ing on try­ing to spawn non-exist­ing audi­ences, PR can do so much more with exist­ing online pub­lics. ¹See also The Publics in Public Relations (Doctor Spin).

If your inbound PR strategy is good enough, you might not even need an out­bound PR strategy.

Read also: The Inbound First PR Strategy: Beauty From Within

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PR Resource: More PR Strategies