How To Create An Effective Content Bucket Strategy for Your Blog

by | Mar 11, 2022 | Content Marketing

Creating content can be a daunting task, it can be time consuming, and it’s often difficult to know where to start. There are many different types of content out there, and it can be hard to know where to start when creating your own content. In order to create effective content, you need to identify your content buckets.

These are the main areas of your site or blog that you focus on and produce the most quality content for. Once you know what these pillars are, you can start producing more targeted and relevant content that will keep your readers coming back for more.   

Note: content buckets are also known as content pillars, content themes and content categories.  It doesn’t matter what you call them.  Use whatever term feels good to you.

gray steel bucket on brown wooden bucket

What are Content Buckets?

Content buckets are a way to organize and manage your content in a way that makes it easy to find and use. They can be used for anything from creating an online portfolio to organizing your blog posts.

Creating content buckets is an important part of creating cohesive brand messaging. Each content bucket should be specific to a certain topic, but they should all connect to an overarching message or idea.

There are a few different types of content buckets and to make it easier, think of content buckets as categories. You can create a content bucket for a subject, and then create sub-buckets for each article, video, or podcast you’ve created related to that topic. This way, you can easily find all of your content related to a specific subject matter.

For example: 

If you’re a blogging coach, you might create a content bucket called “Blogging Tips” and then create sub-buckets for topics like “Headlines” “Blogging Tools,” and “Topic Ideas”

If you’re a teacher, you might create content buckets called  “Lesson Plans,” “Classroom Ideas,” and “Tools for Teachers.”

Once you have identified your content buckets, you can create content that is relevant to each one. This means targeting your readers with specific information and ideas that will appeal to them. 

What are the Benefits of Using Content Buckets?

  • It makes it easy for your readers to find and use your content.
  • It helps you target your readers with ideas that appeal to them.
  • Helps you focus your blog on specific topic areas
  • It can help you increase traffic to your website or blog.
  • Helps you create content that is informative, useful and relevant
  • It can help you improve the quality of your content overall.
three person pointing the silver laptop computer

Research Your Audience:  What Type of Content is Your Audience Looking For?

Before you can create an effective content bucket strategy, you need to understand your audience.  I’m sure you’ve come across the terms “Idea Customer Avatar/Profile” or “Target Audience”.  This is knowing who you’re creating content for, so your messaging is crystal clear and the reader isn’t confused.

Think of your reader and ask yourself: 

  • What type of content do they want?
  • What topics are they interested in?
  • What are they searching for on Google?

Once you know this, you can begin to craft content that specifically targets those interests.

Let’s have some fun with this exercise:

  • Your sitting in a coffee shop and your reader comes up to you and says “can I ask you a question?”  Because you’re so gracious, you happily say sure and invite them to sit down.
  • Your reader asks you the first question (write it down).
  • Let’s pretend you answered her and she says “can I ask you another question?”  write it down.
  • Now repeat this by writing down every single question you can think about that your reader would ask you.  Do this until you can’t think of anymore.
  • Look at the questions. Do you see common themes?
  • Grab another piecer of paper and organize these questions into theme (content buckets).
  • Now can you further group those content buckets even tighter?  Ideally if you’re starting out, try to cap it at 4-5 content buckets so the content you put into those buckets are crystal clear.
  • The exception is only if you have a ton of blog posts already written or if your niche warrants more than 5 content buckets.
  • Create smaller buckets or sub-categories to really organize your content.   If you’re new to blogging, do this step only when you have at least 5 blog posts for each sub-category.  Otherwise, for now, just group everything into your main content buckets.

Here’s some more examples of content buckets with smaller buckets or sub-categories: 

  • You have an entertainment blog.  Your content buckets could be:
    • movies
      • Action
      • Comedy
      • Drama
      • Fantasy
      • Horror
      • Mystery
      • Romance
      • Thriller
    • music
      • rock
      • jazz
      • heavy metal
      • pop music
      • classical
      • disco
  • You’re a chef that has a membership subscription for weekly meal plans.  Your content buckets could be:
    • Breakfast
      • eggs
      • sandwiches
    • Lunch
      • Fast and Easy
      • Vegan
      • Picknic Style
    • Dinner
    • Appetizers
    • Soup
    • Salads
    • Main Course
      • Beef
      • Poultry
      • Pork
      • Seafood
    • Side Dishes
      • Vegetables
      • Rice
    • Desserts
  • If you’re a finance coach, your content buckets might include: industry news, trends, Crypto, and how-tos.  You may not need sub-categories.

How to Use Your New Content Buckets

Regardless of the technlogy, any good blogging platform gives you the ability of creating categories for your blog.  

Create your content buckets and assign your existing blog posts into these content buckets.  

If you have a lot of existing blog posts, you may want to leave those alone and start assigning new blog posts to your content buckets or spend some time each day re-assigning a few until they are all organized.  This will be tedious but the benefit outways it.

yoga instructor writing a blog post on her laptop

Using Content Buckets to Shape New Blog Posts

Using content buckets is not only a great way to organize your blog posts, but it makes it easier to create blog posts when you have a topic already in mind, instead of starting with an empty page. The key is to use buckets that fit the topic you are writing about.

For example, let’s say you are a yoga instructor and in your class you notice that a few students have trouble with some of the poses because they are overweight.   You’re thinking of writing a blog post about losing even just 10lbs will make yoga easier. 

Looking at your content buckets, you have these setup:

  • Yoga Wear
  • Yoga Poses
  • Workout Tips
  • Nutrition Guides
  • Meditation

You see that the closest content bucket is “yoga poses” and “nutrition guides”.  So to make sure your content is on point, you can write your blog posts as follows:

Choosing yoga poses as your content bucket, you could write a blog post about some of the poses that are suitable if you’re overweight.  This doesn’t help the students who are in your class following along with other students.

If you choose the “nutrition guides” content bucket, you can write a blog post that focuses on nutritional information and how just losing even 10 pounds can make a difference. You can also include a sample meal plan and some simple exercises they can do at home. Finally, if you create a blog post about yoga poses for overweight people, link to that post on your nutrition guides optimized post.

woman in teal shirt holding brown short coated dog

Content buckets helps keep your thoughts in check and helps you say no to certain blog post ideas.

Example:  you’re a basic obedience dog trainer and your content buckets could include:

  • dog breeds
  • obedience training
  • dog wear
    • collars
    • leashes
    • toys
  • dog health and nutrition

But you notice that a lot of inquires come in about the best dogs to buy for families.  Is it worth creating a content bucket for “adoption tips”.  If you feel that it would provide value for your readers obviouslyy it does and it’s relevant), you could modify the name of the “dog breeds” content bucket.  

Let’s say you get inquiries on how to train dogs for personal protection.  This type of training is not the same as obedience training, and it’s very specialized.  You don’t have a content bucket for this topic, but you do offer this service on special request.  You’d be better off writing content for this on a landing page or special services page instead of on a blog post.

yellow and white round plastic

Conclusion

Content buckets are a great tool for bloggers because they help you create blog posts that will resonate with your audience. You can use them to create a variety of blog post topics, and it’s also a great process to use when you’re in a creative rut because you just have to look at the content buckets you set up and brainstorm a topic that fits inside it.

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *