Cluster your content! It's good for you and your customers
Coming up with new content ideas is fun, but chasing each bright idea can lead to scattered content with no connecting main thread. As a result, it's harder for your customers to find what they're looking for on your site. It's also tougher for you to know if you've covered all the topics you need to. The solution? Building content clusters!
A content cluster is a group of a collection of blog posts, articles, videos (and so on, you get the idea) dealing with one topic from different angles.
Say you are a pet supply store owner, and your customer is looking to buy only the best possible food for their beloved pooch.
Your content cluster around dog food might then include topics such as:
What kind of nutrition does a dog need?
Allergies, diets, special needs - how to choose the right food for your dog
How to support healthy growth with the right puppy food
Consider these things when picking food for your elderly dog
And so on.
You might also combine these bits of content into a pillar content or pillar page, a webpage designed to answer all your visitors' questions about the topic at hand – dog food, if you're an aspiring pet supply store owner.
Here's what a pillar page looks like in the wild.
Content clusters help you build trust and keep visitors engaged longer
Have you ever fallen down a Wiki rabbit hole? It's a prime example of how clustered and linked content works to keep visitors on a website longer. While it's near-impossible and probably not even necessary to compete with almighty Wikipedia, you can take a page from their book.
By building content clusters, you're building an informative library of content for your customers.
By doing so, you'll make their lives easier. They can find all the information they are looking for in one place. This will help you build trust with your customers, which in turn will help you create long-lasting relationships with them throughout the whole buying process.
Content clusters help your visitors find just what they need.
In addition to longer, trust-based customer relationships there are more immediate benefits. Content clusters do wonders for your SEO visibility and make content planning much easier. Whether your problem is too many ideas or too few, when you plan your content in this way, you'll have a tool to prioritize or base new content ideas on.
How can you start building them?
You'll have a head start if you already have a content strategy and know your buyer personas. You'll already have a handle on what your audience is looking for, in what form, and in which channels.
If you don't have an existing content strategy, the best way for you to start might be to have a sit-down with your salespeople and call a few existing customers and ask what they think would be interesting and useful topics.
After gathering all the information you can, here's how to build your first content cluster:
Pick a topic
Do some research: interview sales personnel and customers, search keywords, look at Google searches - what are people asking? What are your customers asking?
Form subtopics based on what you found: answer commonly asked questions using popular keywords
Start creating content! (Remember, this takes time - don't rush it!)
Create a pillar page or a few
Don't forget to link your content!
Are you all excited to create content clusters, but still missing the content bit? No worries! Read my tips on how to publish content fast.
