Without a subject, volume stands in for direction
An organisation publishing weekly with no stated themes is producing evidence of activity. What it ends up known for accumulates by accident, and accidents rarely accumulate into anything.
Market Core · Object
Content
Everything the organisation publishes: what it is about, what shape it takes, what it costs to make, when it goes out, and how long it stays useful afterwards.
The term
What it is
Content is three decisions usually taken in the wrong order. Most organisations settle the format first, then the schedule, and only afterwards discover that nobody can say what any of it is about. The subject is what makes the other two answerable, and it is the one most often left implicit.
A body of content is worth more than the pieces in it, and only when the pieces have something in common. Fifty good articles on fifty unrelated subjects leave nothing behind; fifty on four subjects build a position a reader can name without being prompted.
The economics are dominated by two things nobody estimates. The approval step usually costs more than the making, and how long a piece stays useful varies by a factor of a hundred between formats that are budgeted identically.
Pillars are what the message hierarchy becomes in public. The hierarchy itself — the one message that must land, and what supports it — is set out once, in the Brand Core: Brand Narrative · Message architecture
Why it earns a place
What goes wrong without it
The plan is met by lowering quality, not volume
A calendar built without a production estimate is a wish list. When it meets a busy month the schedule is held and the work gets thinner, because the schedule is the half anyone can see.
Lifespan changes the economics entirely
A piece that works for three years and one that works for three days can cost the same to make. Budgeting them from the same line is the most expensive ordinary mistake in this object.
One level in
The modules within content
Five working areas. The first says what the content is about, the second what shape it takes, the third what it costs to make, the fourth when it goes out, and the fifth how much life is left in it afterwards.
Production
What each piece costs to make, including the research, review and approval that dominate the total, and how much the organisation can actually get out of the door.
LearnThe calendar
The publishing rhythm, what is scheduled against it, and the fixed points in the year worth planning around. Set at a level the organisation can hold through a difficult quarter rather than at its best month.
LearnReuse and lifespan
How long each piece stays useful, and how much of it can become something else. The cheapest content is almost always something that already exists.
Learn
Across the framework
What it touches
- Brand CoreThe verbal and visual systems govern how every piece is executed, and what the pillars may claim is set by the message architecture.
- Customer JourneyA format’s job is defined by the stage it serves and the transition it is meant to cause.
- Business CoreContent is made by people with finite capacity, and approval is a process step with a queue in front of it.
- Time CoreThe publishing rhythm sits inside the organisation’s wider year and competes with it for the same weeks.
Beyond the framework
Models worth knowing here
The Omnigoal says where this belongs and what it touches. It does not tell you how to think about it — other people have done that, and done it well. These are theirs.
The content marketing matrix
Dan Bosomworth & Smart Insights · 2012Content placed by what it is for — to entertain, inspire, educate or convince — and how close the reader is to buying.
Two axes: emotional against rational, and awareness against purchase. Its use is as an audit rather than a plan. Almost every content library, plotted onto it, turns out to be crowded into one quadrant, and the empty quadrants are usually the ones the audience needed.
- Reach for it when
- When auditing what already exists, before deciding what to make next.
- Where it stops
- It classifies formats and intents; it says nothing about quality or distribution. A balanced matrix of unread material is still unread.
Dan Bosomworth, The Content Marketing Matrix, Smart Insights, 2012.
STEPPS
Jonah Berger · 2013Also known as The six principles of contagiousness, Contagious
Six properties that make a person pass something on, written as things to build in rather than as an explanation afterwards.
It argues that what travels is not what is best but what carries something for the person doing the passing: status from being the one who knows it, a cue in ordinary life that brings it back to mind, feeling strong enough to move someone rather than merely please them, visibility that lets others copy the behaviour, usefulness worth forwarding, and a story the message can ride inside. The value is as a check applied before publishing rather than as a theory — each of the six names something concrete that can be designed into a piece instead of hoped for.
- Reach for it when
- When content is well made and read by nobody, and the question has become what would make one reader send it to another.
- Where it stops
- The evidence comes largely from things that did spread, which cannot show how much material had the same six properties and sank anyway. Word of mouth is also a modest share of most brands’ growth, and designing for shareability can quietly cost relevance to the people who were already going to buy.
Jonah Berger, Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Simon & Schuster, 2013.
The 70:20:10 content mix
Published by Coca-Cola; adopted widely · 2011Seventy per cent of effort on the dependable, twenty on what is promising, ten on what might not work at all.
A budgeting rule for a calendar rather than for a piece of content. Its function is protective: the ten per cent is the only part that produces anything new, and it is the first thing cut when a quarter looks difficult — so it is written into the plan as a proportion rather than left to survive on merit.
- Reach for it when
- When setting a year of publishing, and when experimental work keeps being postponed to the next quarter.
- Where it stops
- The proportions are a convention, not a finding. What they usefully enforce is that some deliberate share is set aside for risk, not that the share is seventy, twenty and ten.
Published as part of Coca-Cola’s “Content 2020” strategy, 2011; widely adopted since.
These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.
Every model in the framework, and where each one belongsAsk what the organisation is known for. If the answer comes back as a list of formats rather than a list of subjects, the pillars have never actually been decided.
The other objects in the Market Core
Market Opportunities
Define the size and accessibility of your market to uncover realistic opportunities for growth and success in your business.
LearnCompetitors
Analyses the competitive landscape to inform strategic decisions and identify opportunities for differentiation.
LearnTarget Audience
Focus on the specific segments within these target markets that marketing campaigns or messages are designed to engage directly.
LearnCustomer Journey
Define and structure the key stages of your customer’s journey, detailing the actions that guide them from awareness to loyalty.
LearnMarketing Channels
The platforms and methods used to promote and communicate with potential customers.
LearnSales Channels
The various pathways through which a company sells its products or services to customers.
Learn