7. Why A Content Pyramid?
Short description: the base is simple stuff you do a lot, and as you move upward, you invest more and create less. You don’t have to know what all the layers will look like out of the gates. Knowing just how lean-and-mean content can be and still have a chance of success is how you build a strong base of your pyramid. Figuring out a clever bottom-of-pyramid does two things:
It gives you a format for the kind of low-lift, high-frequency content that turns your brand into a regular part of your audience’s life
It helps you learn, and serves as a content version of a minimum viable product. You don’t know if your assumptions about what people want are correct, so how can you invest the least-possible resources into testing those guesses. Over-invest, and learning from failure becomes onerous. Under-invest and even good ideas fail, teaching you the wrong lessons.
As you see content work and find patterns among your winners, then it becomes time to up your ante. Maybe that’s as simple as coming up with the branding and packaging to turn an article series into a franchise. It might mean commissioning video. How you pour gas on winning ideas should be driven by your understanding of why they win, and how to help them win more.
Ultimately, the tip top of the pyramid are those marquee content moments that your brand owns so deeply that they become inextricable from it. These provide one of the biggest competitive moats in content, because they are the hardest for someone else to replicate. The strongest top-of-pyramid content also pays the bills, because it has developed organically through your audience-oriented development process. Done wrong these are an expensive campaign, done right they are a clarion call for why your brand is unique.
