The Content Marketing Pyramid could be rightfully called the “ABC” of content marketing efficiency. Why? Because it teaches us how to “read” the efficiency of business efforts and better grasp the meaning of metrics analysis.

From top to bottom the content marketing pyramid moves from dense, high-value content to less pretentious content forms. Although we may feel inclined to evaluate it downwards, the actual road that a business needs to take is from the bottom to the top.

1. The content at the bottom of the pyramid is easier to produce, publish and promote. Writing a blog post is less demanding than writing a press release or a white paper.
2. The content at the bottom of the pyramid has a higher frequency of production and publication. Blogs may be updated daily, but press releases cannot be produced at the same rate.
3. Books and ebooks are the most demanding and costly to produce, publish and promote. They are also the rarer form of content available, precisely because of the creation effort involved.

Direct implications of the pyramid for businesses

In order to properly develop content marketing strategies, the company needs to have full awareness of what lies at the basis of their content marketing pyramid. What is the easiest, most relevant form of content to produce?

Curated content is great to begin with – companies share such content that they have not created themselves. Businesses use curation services to display information relevant to a topic, service/product or area of interest. It’s a cheap solution for a company that wants to engage readers without much staff time and high costs.

Blog post articles are the next step. Such original content may often begin with a reader’s question asked about the curated content published on social media. Writing short pieces of original content functions like a great “introduction” to longer pieces.

Webinars move you up one step further on the pyramid. If you notice increased interest for certain blog posts (i.e. a large volume of comments), you can explore those topics in a webinar, which, in turn, will generate leads and email signups.

Ebooks could be created based on the data provided by the webinar or by combining several related blog posts. People who sign up for the newsletter could download the ebook as a freebie.

Simultaneously working on various levels of the pyramid

Each of the mentioned above steps clearly shows that the path along a solid content marketing plan starts with the very basics and gradually continues to the more complex and demanding content production and publication. In many cases, the content marketing strategies will demand working in parallel on several levels of the pyramid. Even if you already have written ebooks or even printed books, you still need to engage visitors on social media and use tweets for blog posts.

It’s an ongoing cycle that takes you up and down the pyramid. Yet, if you learn how to “ride” the content marketing pyramid, and avoid the bumps in the road, it becomes a vehicle that will take you to success.