12 Examples of Hub Content To Note and Explore

How are you pushing content out to your target audience? Do you use regularly scheduled social media posts or weekly newsletters? Chances are, if you engage in any kind of push efforts to share your blogs, articles, and videos, you may already create hub content for your audience and not know it. But if you’re not, have you browsed examples of hub content from other creators to spark ideas for new pieces? In this article, we cover:

• What Is Hub Content?
• Are There Best Practices for Creating Hub Content?
• What is the Hero-Hub-Hygiene Strategy?
• 12 Hub Content Examples

What Is Hub Content?

Hub content is regularly scheduled content that provides a reason to subscribe to a channel or service and keep coming back. You may also schedule hub content to appear at regular intervals throughout the customer journey, like with a drip campaign. Hub content is also good for producing material for vertical markets, like webinars, and formatted series like interviews.

For example, think of hub content like a television show. Episodes come out every week on a predetermined schedule. They inform people about the next part of the story and share just enough information to make you want to come back next time. Hub content, similarly, builds a loyal audience of subscribers and works to educate the audience whenever possible. This could increase your brand awareness and loyalty and contribute to more leads and sales for your business.

Are There Best Practices for Creating Hub Content?

According to Think with Google—a resource for tools, data trends, and consumer insights—there are ways to determine if you’re creating hub content and using it to your advantage. The best hub content:

• Creates a strong editorial voice and has a unique style
• Uses a single or easily identifiable personality across all content
• Has a consistent brand image or visual aesthetic
• Communicates on a regular and clear release schedule, with weekly updates recommended
• Develops an active promotion strategy through social media, cross-promotions, and incentives for subscribers to share content

What Is the Hero-Hub-Hygiene Strategy?

Hub content is part of a greater content strategy called Hero-Hub-Hygiene. YouTube and Google developed the framework back in 2014 as part of the YouTube Creator Playbook for Brands. Its purpose is to help creators understand the different types of content they can make and who each type targets. The options include:

Hygiene or Help

Going by one of two names, this category targets the most specific set of people, those who have questions or need help to solve certain problems. Some refer to hygiene content as “pull” content because it’s meant to draw people to your channel or site to learn more about what you do or sell. Examples of this type may include product tutorials, how-to blog posts, or frequently asked question (FAQ) sheets.

Hero

Image via Unsplash by @samich_18

Hero content targets the largest group of people, the entire general population. It’s considered “go big” content because it’s meant to raise brand awareness and get people to know your company exists. Most companies create hero content less frequently. To continue with the television show example, this type is your mid-series, season, or series finale type content. Examples may include product launches, annual conferences, anniversary content, or similar special or yearly occurrences.

Hub

Within this strategy, hub content sits between the hygiene and hero types. It’s meant for a medium audience that may contain both your loyal followers and people still learning more about your brand. Content creators develop it regularly and push it out directly, such as through an email list, or indirectly, through things like social media.

12 Hub Content Examples

Here are some examples of hub content from across different mediums. Because this framework initially applied to YouTube creators, many of the examples come from or connect back to that platform. Though they may be most prevalent, hub content extends beyond videos. We hope you’re able to find some inspiration in this list of examples:

1. CopyPress Newsletter

Our CopyPress newsletter is a great example of hub content that’s not tied to a YouTube video. What can you expect from us? Outstanding pieces about marketing, content development, and advice for business-to-business (B2B) companies looking to get the most out of their marketing budgets and services. Samples of what you might see if you subscribe include:

• Series content like our Creating Buyer Personas newsletters
• Resource recommendations, like this one with links to our CopyPress blog
• Information and tips to learn more about important areas of marketing and how to make them work for you, like this email about local SEO

Are you ready to have all this info delivered right to your inbox? Sign up for our free email newsletter today!

“CopyPress gives us the ability to work with more dealership groups. We are able to provide unique and fresh content for an ever growing customer base. We know that when we need an influx of content to keep our clients ahead of the game in the automotive landscape, CopyPress can handle these requests with ease.”

Kevin Doory

Director of SEO at Auto Revo

2. Moz Whiteboard Fridays

Former Moz guru Rand Fishkin created Whiteboard Friday (WBF), a blog and vlog video series, back before the company even started selling software. Its informational content helps train people in search engine optimization (SEO) on topics like How To Create 10x Content, prioritizing the best keywords, and easy link-building tactics. This works as hub content because it’s released on a predictable schedule and has a recognizable style. Moz also promotes the post on their other channels, such as through email reminders and on social media.

3. Christy Carlson Romano on YouTube

Christy Carlson Romano is a former Disney child star and Broadway actress. Her latest endeavor is making YouTube content about her life and past in Hollywood and New York City. She capitalizes on the 90s and 00s nostalgia, discussing things that made her famous. One of her popular hub content segments is her vlog, where she talks about life and her time growing up and working in the television and film industry. Another is Christy’s Kitchen Throwback. In this series, she invites other former Disney and child stars to cook with her.

When sharing content, most of Christy’s vlog videos come out at regularly scheduled intervals. They take advantage of YouTube’s premiere feature, which allows creators to schedule and promote episodic premiers with their content. This can help take your hub content to a new level by not just pushing the content out to your audience, but creating new ways to remind people to come back and watch it first or watch it live.

4. This Old Marketing Podcast

Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose of the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) run the This Old Marketing podcast. Each hour-long episode includes several segments like:

• Content marketing in the news: Stories about this week in the marketing industry, with commentary
• Rants and raves: A one-minute rant about a tricky industry topic and a one-minute rave about the best new findings or practices
• Example of the week: A dig into the CMI archives to discuss a past example of good marketing and how it still applies today.

The hosts also take questions by email or Twitter to answer on the podcast, making the experience more interactive for listeners.

5. Adam Savage’s Tested

Adam Savage, the former host of MythBusters, has moved on to his next grand adventure called Tested. The website is one giant example of hub content. It features pieces in multiple mediums, like videos and podcasts, that premiere regularly and cover topics like one-day builds or the Tested from Home series. The content cross-posts among the main website, YouTube, and other social media channels. While the posting schedule is less regimented than some other hub content, like Whiteboard Fridays, updates are still regular enough to make each series episodic. This shows that even if you don’t have the bandwidth to produce content on a tight schedule, anything consistent can work.

6. Marketing School Podcast

The Marketing School Podcast is the brainchild of digital wizards Neil Patel and Eric Siu. It covers topics on marketing, advertising, content, and tech. Each episode is brief, between five and 10 minutes, providing just enough information without taking up too much of your time. The duo releases a new one daily, making the updates much more frequent than some other forms of hub content. The key here is being able to determine how engaged your audience is and the length and frequency of content that will resonate with them.

Related: 7 Podcasts for Content Marketers To Follow

7. Grow With Jo

Johanna Devries is a fitness instructor and personal trainer focused on helping people, especially women, from all backgrounds and body types get in shape. She’s also an advocate for enjoying exercise and living a healthy lifestyle. Though Jo has an app and workouts for purchase through her website, her YouTube channel houses her hub content.

She breaks down many of her popular free workouts into series, such as the Torch in 10 for targeted, fast bursts of exercise. With the Dance Party Workouts, each video themes around specific music genres or artists. Jo uses YouTube’s premiere feature and alerts for videos. She also gives out prizes to viewers who attend each premiere to incentivize her subscribers to watch the content right when it drops.

8. Ask the CMWorld Community and CMI Team

Ask the CMWorld Community and CMI Team is a live-stream YouTube series from the Content Marketing Institute. Host Amanda Subler looks at conversations with industry experts to answer some of the biggest questions from the Content Marketing World conference audience. Topics include things like tips to improve skills and ways to put emerging trends into practice with your own company. Episodes last between 10 minutes and a half an hour, which probably means they recognize that their target audience wants information in shorter bursts versus longer form.

9. TED-Ed YouTube Channel

TED-Ed is a resource for students, educators, parents, and anyone with a curious mind. The YouTube channel, in particular, has curated educational videos and collaborations with animators, teachers, and innovators. Its hub content breaks down different topics into video series like elections in the United States, or Think Like a Coder. The channel also has other archived series that are more like traditional hub content, such as the TED-Ed weekend student talks, which follow the traditional TED Talk interview and speech style.

10. Creator Club Podcast

Creator Club host Katie Steckly started as a YouTuber and over the years expanded into sharing other forms of content. This podcast teaches creators and business entrepreneurs strategies in content creation and social media marketing. Creator Club is a “workshop-style” podcast, making it less like talk radio and more like a course, class, or training session for those new to marketing and those looking to increase their skills. If you have a marketing team, this would be a great podcast to listen to together in the office.

11. The Menu Show

Amanda Natividad is the Vice President of Marketing at SparkToro, an audience research startup. She’s also been a tech journalist and a test kitchen cook. Her new YouTube series The Menu Show combines all her career paths to create a live talk show for B2B creators. With each episode, Amanda and a guest discuss B2B marketing topics and they also cook together, combining something both fun and informational. The live stream, as she claims, airs almost every Friday at 11 a.m. Pacific Time. During the show, Amanda and her guest respond to comments from viewers, making this a strong series for engagement.

12. Marketing Makers

Marketing Makers is a combined YouTube and blog series from the Content Marketing Institute. Robert Rose, Chief Strategy Advisor from CMI, runs the monthly show. You may also remember him from the This Old Marketing podcast. Marketing Makers educates people about the industry and how to better their businesses or careers by learning more about both basic and in-depth subjects. Segments for the series include:

• In the lab: This segment explores the evolution of traditional marketing and how it led to more modern practices.
• In the field: This segment contains interviews with content marketing professionals to explore how people use the lab concepts in the real world.
• In the future: This segment looks ahead as to why the lab concepts may matter as content marketing develops and what might come next.

Are you inspired to create hub content yet? Let CopyPress help you along your journey. Start a free call with us today to learn how we can create and develop or share your hub content with your target audience in the right place at the right time.

Christy Walters

CopyPress writer

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