How to Use the Spider Web Content Marketing Strategy

By Brooks Conkle

Let’s talk content marketing strategy, particularly what I like to call the “spider web” strategy. It’s important as you begin creating more and more content for it to all connect. It will start small, but will eventually grow into a beautiful content web.

Now, before we get started, I don’t want to assume we’re using the same definition for content marketing. My definition of content marketing goes something like this: the process of creating valuable pieces of content as a way to educate others and eventually do business with those people.

Here’s a specific example: Maybe your business sells a bread-making machine. So your company creates content that educates people on bread making—and maybe info about how bread making works and information on the best kinds of bread. You also write articles on the best types of cheese to melt over your bread, and produce videos on making bread for sandwiches.

People learn from you, and after they trust you as a credible source, a percentage of those people buy your bread-making machine. This is content marketing.

In this article, we’ll discuss different aspects developing an effective content marketing strategy by building out a web for your business.

What platforms should you create on?

There are a lot of platforms:

• 500 million or so blogs
• 37 million-ish YouTube channels
• 800 million active TikTok accounts
• Over 1 million podcasts

And don’t forget Twitter, Quora, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Houzz, Facebook, and Instagram.

So where should you begin? Start with where your customers are. That’s easy to forget, as we usually want to start with what we use personally.

Figure out where your customers gather their information. Do they converse on Twitter? Is searching for videos on YouTube their jam? Are they in Facebook groups having conversations? Maybe they're networking with each other on LinkedIn?

You need to be on multiple platforms, but it doesn’t have to happen overnight. Use a strategy that works for you and your team. With every platform, there’s a learning curve and you have to develop a rhythm. Once you’re in the rhythm, you can move on to the next.

The speed that you expand will depend on whether you're a solopreneur or have team members to help you grow. For my business, it's been ever-evolving for the last five to six years. I didn't always have a podcast, a YouTube channel, a blog, and a TikTok account. And I wasn't always growing all of them simultaneously. I slowly began to create on different platforms. Now that I have help from my team, I’m able to better do this as well.

You may already have a team. If so, you can launch on multiple platforms. If you are a solopreneur or have a small team, start small and build that web over time.

Make your website your web center

Except in very few cases, the center of your spider web is always going to be a centralized website. For most businesses, it’s the nexus where everything happens (exceptions might be direct selling via landing pages or direct from social ads or similar).

If you're going to get an order online, for example, it will happen on your website. If someone's going to pay to consult with you, they’ll book on your website. Maybe they're going to pick up the phone and call you, or send you an email and contact you online to do business. Chances are, they’re doing so from your website. If not, I can guarantee they’ve at least been to your website to do their preliminary research on your brand before reaching out.

What's your content marketing strategy budget and timeline?

Do you need to grow quickly? Do you have money to invest to get help? If money's tight, maybe you can hire a writer to help you create the first draft for blog posts, and then you can go back later to finalize them; a video editor can help you create the final files after you’ve recorded the meat of your content. But even if you run a company with resources, it doesn't mean growth is going to happen overnight—it's just going to happen faster for you.

More articles from AllBusiness.com:

• How to Win New Clients and Prospects with Seminars and Webinars
• The Secret to Making a Great Product Video
• 4 Things You Need to Do to Start a Successful YouTube Channel
• 9 Tips for Promoting Your Brand on YouTube

When it comes to a content marketing strategy, I like to work on a five-year horizon. Everything that I am creating (like this article) is meant to be on a five-year growth plan. People typically overestimate what they can accomplish in a year, but they tend to underestimate what they can conquer in five years. So create on a long-term horizon.

It's also one of the reasons why I try to create evergreen content. I want someone to be able to read this post years from now and gain value from it. Maybe the platforms will change—what if YouTube buys TikTok?—but evergreen content allows the same strategies to be used. You can take these strategies and apply them, for example, to voice search, which is a growing vertical.

Spin your web

When you visualize a spider web, you see lots of connections right? So, for example, one of the things that I do on my blog is to connect an article with YouTube. When I write an article, like ideas to make $300/day, I also create a YouTube video, and I embed that YouTube video on that blog post. I also link to the blog post in the description directly on YouTube.

So, in that example, maybe someone was searching YouTube and found my video, but because of my direction, they then clicked to read the full article. Now maybe they’ll find my podcast, which is linked from my blog. On my podcast, I direct folks to my website to hear more episodes—maybe they’ll find my resources, my TikTok or my YouTube channel.

In my TikTok profile, I link back to my website and YouTube. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn Profiles also all direct folks to my website.

One. Big. Giant. Spider. Web.

Ready to try the spider web content marketing strategy?

You don’t have to have all the answers upfront. As you grow, you’ll be able to better connect the web.

I hope you gained some insight and ideas on how to benefit from a spider web content marketing strategy for your brand. Now go start weaving.