The Content Themes PR Strategy

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.

Here we go:

Content Themes

It is good prac­tice to struc­ture the con­tent cal­en­dar around con­tent themes (typ­ic­ally four per year, one per quarter) show­cas­ing vary­ing aspects of the organ­isa­tion’s core message.

Using con­tent themes comes with sev­er­al upsides:

For easy plan­ning and boost­ing SEO with con­tent sky­scrapers, I often cre­ate con­tent pack­ages for each theme.

Content Themes Example

Let’s use a fic­ti­tious example of an IT company. 

First, the IT com­pany decide on a core mes­sage for their con­tent strategy:

Core mes­sage: 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.

Learn more: The Content Themes PR Strategy

The Core Message

A core mes­sage is the found­a­tion­al concept for all mar­ket­ing and com­mu­nic­a­tion strategies. 

Unlike a slo­gan, which can be seen as a catchy, often super­fi­cial tagline, the core mes­sage is a deep­er, con­sist­ent nar­rat­ive that con­veys a brand’s fun­da­ment­al val­ues and promises.

Core mes­sage = the fun­da­ment­al idea or prom­ise that a brand con­sist­ently com­mu­nic­ates across all plat­forms, defin­ing its val­ues and what it stands for in every inter­ac­tion with its audi­ence. ¹Silfwer, J. (2024, May 2). The Core Message. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​c​o​r​e​-​m​e​s​s​a​ge/

Slogan = a catchy phrase or series of words used in mar­ket­ing and advert­ising to quickly cap­ture atten­tion and accur­ately encap­su­late a brand’s appeal or mission.

Together, the core mes­sage and the slo­gan ensure all com­mu­nic­a­tions and mar­ket­ing activ­it­ies are aligned, rein­for­cing the brand’s iden­tity and mis­sion across all platforms.

Please note: Seen as a prom­ise, the core mes­sage must reflect the organ­isa­tion’s main advant­age over com­pet­ing organ­isa­tions. All mar­ket­ing- and com­mu­nic­a­tion activ­it­ies must rein­force this sen­ti­ment more clearly than any efforts by their competitors.

Core Message Examples

These examples show­case how the core mes­sage com­mu­nic­ates a more pro­found, ongo­ing mis­sion or cus­tom­er prom­ise. In con­trast, the slo­gan is a catchy, imme­di­ate hook that com­ple­ments and enhances the core message.

Red Bull

Apple

McDonald’s

Microsoft

Ikea

Nike

IBM

Spotify

Learn more: The Core Message

Content Packages (What To Include)

When estab­lish­ing con­tent themes, it’s best prac­tice to pro­duce con­tent pack­ages for each theme (to build con­tent sky­scrapers).

You should strive to pro­duce vari­ous types of top­ic-spe­cif­ic con­tent that will:

A pack­age could con­tain the fol­low­ing types of top­ic-spe­cif­ic content:

Learn more: Content Packages (What To Include)

Evergreen Content

What’s ever­green con­tent?

Evergreen con­tent is an inbound approach to build­ing core mes­sages, con­tent themes, con­tent pack­ages, deep con­tent, and con­tent sky­scrapers.

For a piece of con­tent to be ever­green, it must sus­tain its value over time. This means the con­tent must be rel­ev­ant today, tomor­row, and the fore­see­able future.

While news con­tent might make a more sig­ni­fic­ant short-term splash, ever­green con­tent accu­mu­lates online impact over time—which requires patience.

Now, forever is a long time. I typ­ic­ally apply these arbit­rary rules to determ­ine what con­sti­tutes ever­green content:

Learn more: The Evergreen Content PR Strategy

Deep Content

Deep con­tent is focused on provid­ing increas­ingly high­er-qual­ity inform­a­tion to con­tent divers (as opposed to con­tent surfers).

In the example, five lay­ers of ever­green con­tent are stacked ver­tic­ally on a quarterly timeline:

Example of a five-lay­er deep con­tent structure:

This inbound logic is sim­il­ar to ice­berg pub­lish­ing and con­tent themes regard­ing struc­ture and depth.

Learn more: The Deep Content PR Strategy

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. 

The “One Thing Only” Challenge

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

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

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

While post­ing a tweet is easy, you must stick to your mes­sage for an exten­ded peri­od. So, how do you talk about “one thing” for a longer 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 work­ing as a team, the ideas will begin to flow, and you’ll soon 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.

What should you study next?