Hub + Spoke Designs
For social media strategy
For social media strategy
Hub + Spoke Social Media Integration Models are custom designed strategies where a central “hub” platform is determined to be the main focus marketing and the “spokes” are various other platforms used to funnel traffic to the main hub for “conversion” as you define it.
Generally you choose the hub because it is either capable of converting sales (i.e.: online store), it has the most opportunity for conversion (i.e.: most information/technology in place for conversion for your target) or it offers relationship building until conversion is possible. If you are a traditional brick and mortar store, you may have invested in a website that drives traffic to your store, so it makes sense for your hub to be your website. Your website may have email sign ups, newsletters, sale notifications, etc. Many companies have converted to content strategy based hubs like blogs to keep them at the top of search engines and take advantage of open source CMS platforms like WordPress. You may not even know they are “blogs” because many look like websites.
Your spokes are other online opportunities to capture your target audience in searches and funnel them to your hub or engage them in other ways and keep them moving through your own personal “web” online. If you take 100% of a target audience, all 100% of them may not want to spend all their online time with you on your website. I would doubt 50% of them would. Some would like to read articles related to your industry, some would like to keep up to date via Twitter, some via Facebook, some may like to watch videos…
As you may guess, the first step to creating a successful hub + spoke is really understanding your target audienceand their needs. Once you create your hub + spoke, you’ll need to create an editorial calendar to keep them engaged for it to be successful. Secondly, you need to understand that every platform has it’s own “rules of engagement” in order to be successful. Copywriting and creating content for each of the platforms and integrating them successfully requires thought and skill.
Language that works on a website is not appropriate for Facebook. People use LinkedIn for different reasons than Twitter or Facebook, and while tempting to utilize a widget to translate the same message from one platform to another, conversions are low because people using the platforms can’t relate to weirdly truncated messages or consider it spammy. I know, widgets are cool, easy and fast, but this isn’t about you. It’s about your target audience and when you think of their needs and create content strategies properly, you will be rewarded richly.
Here you see a hub + spoke Social Media Integration designed for Re/Max. (Details of the actual strategy and implementation are excluded.)
Generally you choose the hub because it is either capable of converting sales (i.e.: online store), it has the most opportunity for conversion (i.e.: most information/technology in place for conversion for your target) or it offers relationship building until conversion is possible. If you are a traditional brick and mortar store, you may have invested in a website that drives traffic to your store, so it makes sense for your hub to be your website. Your website may have email sign ups, newsletters, sale notifications, etc. Many companies have converted to content strategy based hubs like blogs to keep them at the top of search engines and take advantage of open source CMS platforms like WordPress. You may not even know they are “blogs” because many look like websites.
Your spokes are other online opportunities to capture your target audience in searches and funnel them to your hub or engage them in other ways and keep them moving through your own personal “web” online. If you take 100% of a target audience, all 100% of them may not want to spend all their online time with you on your website. I would doubt 50% of them would. Some would like to read articles related to your industry, some would like to keep up to date via Twitter, some via Facebook, some may like to watch videos…
As you may guess, the first step to creating a successful hub + spoke is really understanding your target audienceand their needs. Once you create your hub + spoke, you’ll need to create an editorial calendar to keep them engaged for it to be successful. Secondly, you need to understand that every platform has it’s own “rules of engagement” in order to be successful. Copywriting and creating content for each of the platforms and integrating them successfully requires thought and skill.
Language that works on a website is not appropriate for Facebook. People use LinkedIn for different reasons than Twitter or Facebook, and while tempting to utilize a widget to translate the same message from one platform to another, conversions are low because people using the platforms can’t relate to weirdly truncated messages or consider it spammy. I know, widgets are cool, easy and fast, but this isn’t about you. It’s about your target audience and when you think of their needs and create content strategies properly, you will be rewarded richly.
Here you see a hub + spoke Social Media Integration designed for Re/Max. (Details of the actual strategy and implementation are excluded.)
