Anatomy of a Wheel: The Hub and Spoke Model

Say you’ve got somewhere to go and you’d like to get there sooner rather than later. You could run instead of walk, you could ride a horse, or you could use some kind of simple machine—a wheel—to help you do the work and get there faster.

Whether you know it or not, you’re probably already using the power of the wheel to reduce friction and gain leverage in the online marketplace. And, you can hire freelance writers to help turn that wheel. The concept is simple: you surround your online business (your hub) with juicy offsite content (your spokes) and watch the wheel turn.

Start with the Hub

Your hub is an online destination that belongs to you—a place where you conduct business. Whether it’s a website, a blog, or a landing page, it should be someplace that your customers can do business with you or a place equipped to capture leads from prospects.

Add Some Spokes

Your spokes are made up of all of the satellite content that feeds visitors into your hub. Spokes are press releases, tweets, Facebook posts, YouTube videos, Pinterest pins, Instagram photos, Google+ posts, and so on. It can be a challenge to keep your wheel turning, because spokes require a lot of content. But you have to turn the wheel to get where you want to go!

Beware Flat Tires

Think of some of the profiles on Twitter that you used to follow. You jumped on board because of an interesting tweet, but soon realized that there wasn’t much more where that one came from. It’s easy enough to start following someone who tweets the same content over and over again, and it’s just as easy to unfollow them.

Spin, Baby, Spin!

Wheels do a couple of things that make your job easier. First, they reduce friction. They let you roll your load along smoothly on a wheeled cart instead of dragging it over the gravel road, so you can give your prospects information they want and need instead of hammering them with the hard sell. You can entertain them and seduce them into liking you—and perhaps even Liking you. Wheels also provide leverage, which means that you can do more work without actually doing more work. The bigger the wheel, the more bang for your buck.

To build a bigger marketing wheel, you need more spokes. Think of the world’s biggest Ferris wheels—it takes a lot of spokes to keep those babies structurally sound. And when it comes to marketing, more spokes—and more leverage—means more content.

Feed the Machine

The hub and spoke model of online marketing drives customers to your business, builds your social graph, and pays long-term SEO dividends. But all that content requires time and expertise. Freelance marketing writers can play an important role by helping you feed the content machine—high quality and consistency, baby!