A few years back, content marketing pro, Jimmy Daly, 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 an 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.
Let’s look closer at these two types of content strategies.
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.
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.
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.
Our annual blogger survey shows the power and effectiveness of high frequency blogs. The bloggers who publish 2-6 times per week are 50% more likely to report strong results.
Pro Tip: Uploading a press release does not make you a publication. The idea is to BE the press, not to RELEASE information to the press. Really, no blog should ever post a press release. It’s far better to turn that press release into an article before publishing.
The design of publications is a bit different than the design of libraries.
Publications are difficult and expensive to maintain, which is why most of us are building libraries.
How can I do this? That’s why your readers are paying attention to you. They click because they want utility. They want to learn. They want practical, how-to information and advice.
Because your content answers questions and is evergreen (it time travels well) search is a big opportunity. SEO is key. Align your content with keyphrases and make it easy to find.
SEO is library science
This solves a huge problem inherent to blogs: the reverse-chronological order. Blogs are basically huge piles of posts with the most recent on top. It’s an ever-growing mess. Fine for publications but bad for libraries.
Google helps solves the problem of organization. It doesn’t matter much if the blog is disorganized, as long as the content is search optimized and the technical SEO is good.
So in the end, libraries get huge amounts of traffic from search. Here’s an Analytics account for a library. Notice the rhythm of weekday traffic and low spikes. Notice the traffic mix.
This is an amazingly efficient way to create visibility. A high-ranking article may attract hundreds of visitors every day for years. But the downside is the over-reliance on search. Beware that big, looming SEO trend: declining click-through rates from search.
But even if search traffic declines, there’s another benefit to best-page-on-the-internet content: it attracts links, especially when it’s original research. This is the cornerstone of the content strategy framework for SEO, which is the key to B2B lead generation.
Pro-Tip: Create a start here page. Clear blog categories are critical for libraries, but a page that welcomes the visitor to the blog is the ultimate in categorization.
Libraries have detailed, practical, often exhaustive articles.
Again, the blogger survey shows this clearly. Bloggers who publish long-form content get better results.
But wait. We saw that frequency correlated with success. How is it possible to publish a new 2000 word best-article-on-the-topic every day?
It’s not.
The bloggers who write long-form posts are building libraries. The bloggers who post daily are running publications. These are two different content strategies.
The experience for visitors is a bit different for libraries.
Related: How to design a blog
Libraries are inherently more efficient because each piece of content works harder over time. But they still take dedication, time and possibly money.
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Robert Rose, THE CONTENT ADVISORY“Look for great visual storytellers! Someone that creates unique and engaging content. All the algorithms point to social signals and conversations these days. Are people responding to their posts beyond a quick like?” |
They are the key to unlocking website traffic for every content strategy. But the headline isn’t really just one thing.
There are title tags, H1 headers, subject lines and social media posts, and each should be tailored versions of the article “headline.”
Every headline is a balancing act, but the balance depends on the channel and the content strategy.
*To see a list of those 3-word trigrams and for all of our best advice on headlines, read this article.
There are a few things that every content strategy needs. Every blog can benefit from:
It is its own, third type of content. Where does this fit in? More common in publications than libraries, but it can fit anywhere. And it’s very effective.
Strong opinion is the key difference between thought leadership marketing and regular content marketing. Brands that take a stand are more likely to attract an audience and trigger action.
A or B? This or that?
It’s helpful to break things down. If you found this useful, here are some other posts that make simple distinctions. It’s a fun, fast way to learn.
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Very helpful, thanks for sharing. I’m familiar with the content publishing strategy. And I understand the importance that readers pay attention to you, so that they go to the page, read and stay with you. Therefore, the current information must be relevant and interesting. Since I’m not very good at writing, I chose one of the companies on this resource https://www.writingjudge.com/ I arranged everything properly and the result was not long in coming. I haven’t worked with the “Library” strategy yet, but it’s very interesting to get acquainted with this information.
I heard about the other types of strategies, as well. Didn’t you do it earlier?
Can media platforms effectively cover a wide spread of topics within an area (publication) but not tie themselves to the news cycle (library)? We do data storytelling around evergreen issues in Southeast Asia, and our stories take a while to produce because of the data visualizations we do—but because we cover several topics, writing content based on practical utility or how-to’s doesn’t seem possible. Would love to hear your thoughts on how to work around this impasse!
Thanks for the great tips! Is it possible to have a blog that uses both the publication and the library methods? I’m thinking of different blog categories and how they could be used to achieve this.
What do you think about a blend of the Publication and Library types? For example, I try to show a strong bias for Library and “How To” type articles (which I try to update and optimize when possible), but also add some Publication type articles reviewing how industry trends are developing short- and/or long-term (which I don’t frequently try to update)?