There Are Two Kinds of Content Strategies: Publications and Libraries

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A year and a half ago, Jimmy Daly of Animalz wrote a popular article explaining that there are two kinds of content strategies, publications, and libraries. It got a lot of us thinking.

The Publication seeks to build an audience of repeat visitors by consistently and frequently publishing topics of broad interest to industry, promoted to subscribers and followers.

The Library seeks to build relevance on more narrowly focused topics with deeper, more interconnected articles, discoverable through search and there when the visitor needs them.

We’re going to expand on Jimmy’s thesis here, starting with this visual breakdown showing the main differences:

So here’s what it comes down to…

To news or not to news? 

That’s the big content strategy question. And it’s answered when you create your content mission statement. If you haven’t done this yet, you can create yours using this template.

It’s a question of topics, which is that middle part.

• You are running a publication if… [Content Y] includes the words news or trends, latest or recent.
• You are building a library if… [Content Y] doesn’t have any of that, then it’s probably all educational and evergreen, as in, it is relevant for a long time.

Let’s look closer at these two types of content strategies.

“The Publication” Content Strategy

What is happening? That’s why your readers are paying attention to you. They click and read because they want current information that is relevant to their industry.

Promotion and traffic patterns

Because your content is about the latest information, social media and email marketing are your most important promotion channels. They aren’t searching for it. They’re tapping, not typing. So, the key is to get them to follow and/or subscribe.

Publications need subscribers

Here’s an Analytics account for a publication. Notice the spikes. Notice the traffic mix.

Social and email are high bounce rate channels, which explains why publications have higher bounce rates than libraries. And because social and email work so well, publications get a lot of mobile traffic.

Key success factors: Speed and frequency

Publications move quickly. You need to jump in fast and report on trends, add a new spin to the topic du jour. And to condition your subscribers and followers to keep opening your emails and following your streams, you need to publish frequently and consistently.

Continue to the full article here.