To truly stand out and provide value to your audience, you need to build a content strategy that hooks your audience and provides real value. One strategy I've found successful is developing 'Cornerstone Content' - but what exactly is cornerstone content, and how can it form the foundation of an effective content strategy?
What is Cornerstone Content?
Cornerstone content refers to comprehensive, authoritative, and high-quality pieces of content that cover a broad topic in depth. These pieces are typically longer-form and they serve as primary pillars for campaigns. These longer form pieces of content can then be split into smaller nuggets to be shared online. They are designed to provide significant value to your audience, establish your expertise, and most importantly drive traffic to your campaign.
The Role of Cornerstone Content in Your Content Strategy
User Engagement: Long-form content tends to engage users more deeply than shorter pieces. It provides valuable information and entertainment and is not trying to sell an offer, more-so give your customers a reason to engage with your content.
SEO Benefits: Search engines favor high-quality, comprehensive content. Cornerstone content is typically rich with keywords and provides thorough coverage of a topic, making it more likely to rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs). This improves your visibility and drives organic traffic to your site.
Link Building: High-quality cornerstone content is more likely to be linked to by other websites. These backlinks are crucial for improving your site’s authority and ranking in search engines. Also, when you are able to split longer content into smaller nuggets, each linkback from these posts helps to maintain a comprehensive linkback strategy.
Foundation for Other Content: Cornerstone content acts as the foundation for your entire content strategy. It provides a solid base from which you can create related pieces of content, such as blog posts, infographics, videos, and social media posts, all linking back to the cornerstone piece.
Building a Multifaceted Content Strategy with Cornerstone Content
Identify Key Topics: Start by identifying the key topics that are most relevant to your audience and aligned with your business goals. These topics should be broad enough to allow for comprehensive coverage but specific enough to address your audience’s needs and interests.
Create Comprehensive Guides: Develop in-depth, long-form guides or articles on these key topics. Ensure that your cornerstone content is well-researched, well-written, and provides significant value to your audience. Use visuals, such as images, charts, and infographics, to enhance the content and make it more engaging.
Optimize for SEO: Incorporate relevant keywords naturally throughout your cornerstone content. Pay attention to on-page SEO elements, such as meta titles, descriptions, headers, and internal linking. Make sure your content is easy to read and navigate, with a clear structure and logical flow.
Promote and Share: Once your cornerstone content is published, promote it through various channels, split it into nuggets and get the word out! Share it on social media, include it in your email newsletters, and reach out to influencers or other websites in your industry for backlinks. The more visibility your content gets, the more effective it will be in driving traffic and establishing your authority.
Create Supporting Content: Develop a range of supporting content pieces that link back to your cornerstone content. These could be shorter blog posts, videos, podcasts, or social media updates that cover specific aspects of the broader topic. This approach not only drives traffic to your cornerstone content but also provides a cohesive and comprehensive content experience for your audience.
Update Regularly: Keep your cornerstone content up to date with the latest information and insights. Regular updates ensure that your content remains relevant and valuable to your audience, maintaining its effectiveness in driving traffic and engagement.
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