Developed by YouTube, the hero, hub, help strategy recommends that brands create three types of content:

HERO – You’re ‘go big’ brand/campaign moments that happen once or twice a year.

HUB – Episodic content, in a repeatable format, uploaded on a set schedule. This should be 80-90% of your brand’s videos.

HELP – Answering consumer questions or participating in trends. (because YouTube is the second largest search engine). This commonly takes the form of ‘how to’ content.

But, why does this content strategy work?  I break down the reasons.

WHY DOES HERO, HUB, HELP WORK?

For the sake of simplicity I think you can break it down into three main categories:

1. It taps into what the YouTube algorithm prioritizes (ie recency and search)
2. It  leans into viewer behavior and our inability to retain too much information
3. It makes life simpler for creators – with an established format you streamline workflow

THE ALGORITHM

YouTube prioritizes new content above old.

As a result, there’s a demand on creators to publish content at a high frequency. This is something that Matt Gielen spent a lot of time deconstructing and explaining in his post – Reverse Engineering The YouTube Algorithm: Part II. In that post Gielen sites a paper from Google which explains why this is the case:

Many hours worth of videos are uploaded each second to YouTube. Recommending this recently uploaded (“fresh”) content is extremely important for YouTube as a product. We consistently observe that users prefer fresh content, though not at the expense of relevance.

The implications of this is simple – you need to make more content to keep your channel relevant.

What’s the best way to create content frequently? Using the ‘hub’ strategy, ie content that is “episodic, and something that’s easy to replicate.”

Another major factor to keep in mind is that YouTube looks at your watch and search history – YouTube is looking at the these behaviors and searching for patterns.

Essentially, every action you take is teaching YouTube who likes what content. If you’re a channel owner you want to use this knowledge to clearly define the viewer you want and create extremely consistent content so that YouTube knows exactly who wants to see your videos.

For example, if you you create videos around surfing and you get a bunch of 30 year old males who live in one California coastal town to tune in every video. It’s safe to assume that guys of the same age, same demographics, who live in the next town over will also like it.If one day, that channel posts a ‘My Little Pony’ video then it will result in that original demographic stop watching and new demographic coming into the channel – this is confusing for YouTube to reconcile.

Which demographic should the channel be promoted to? By creating content which appeals to varied audiences, YouTub e is not going to prioritize content from that channel.

YouTube is selling ads – they want to keep people on the site longer.

As a content creator, you want to tell them, by being as specific as possible with your content, who likes your channel. Once again – the best way to accomplish this is through the ‘hub’ style, episodic content.

THE VIEWER

Why does the hero, hub, help content strategy work from the viewer standpoint?

The answer is simple – there’s so much content you need to be clear what your channel stands for. There’s 500 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute. And YouTube is just one site – you’re actually competing for competition against the entire internet – an infinite sea of content.

You’ve gotta be memorable to stand out, and the best way to accomplish that is to be simple and clear.

Ask yourself – What does my channel stand for? Am I uploading at the same days and times of week? Will a viewer know what my entire channel stands for if they watch one video?

If you can remove as many variables as possible, you’re going to make it much easier for people to keep coming back. Think about it this way – what if they don’t the see the subscribe notifications? If you are every single Wednesday at 2:00, they’re more likely remember that than if sometimes you upload Wednesday and other times you upload Saturdays or if you skip a week.

Like the saying goes K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple Stupid.

THE CREATOR

So why does the hero, hub, help model work so well for content creators?

Perhaps the biggest reason is that by apply hero, hub, help, where ‘hub’ is the majority of your content – you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Coming up with ideas is fucking hard. On top of that, coming up with new sets, new talents, new production crew, base on the creative, all these things, it over-complicates the process.

You really want to stick to a format that you can realistically do day in day out, whatever your schedule is.

The other reason hero, hub, help works so well for content creators is that YouTube tells you what works. By going into the creator dashboard you can see audience retention on individual videos and you can see for yourself exactly where people watch and lose interests – peaks align with people watching more of a video and troughs align with where they drop off.

As a result, you, the content creator can make incremental changes over time to improve your content.

I once saw a panel with Harley Morenstein of Epic Meal Time and he spoke to how he applied these learnings to his own channel. In his analytics he was seeing peaks every time they whipped out more bacon, so they just added more and more to the channel – now bacon is one of the things Epic Meal Time is best known for.  

Oftentimes, brands and content creators want that ‘viral’ hit and the idea of making incremental changes seems unappealing. Although, it may not seem really sexy at first, over time it really adds up. The most powerful force is compound interest and that’s what these changes. Over the course of a year or two years, they make a big, big difference.

To recap why hero, hub, help works so well – you want to train YouTube and teach the platform who exactly likes your channel. The way to accomplish this is by creating ‘hub’/episodic content around a very specific topic in a consistent format. You want to make it easy for viewers to remember your channel by maintaining that consistency we discussed and posting on a set schedule. Lastly, you want to make these little changes over time and leverage the insights that YouTube provides and apply those insights to your hub series.

I was fortunate enough to do a panel on influencer marketing with Zach King, as well as give a seminar on one of my favorite topics – the Hero, Hub, Help content strategy. Below is a video of the Hero, Hub, Help talk (thanks so much to Franklin Graves for filming!).

In it I discuss the basics of the hero, hub, help content strategy (which you can read about in previous posts of mine – here, here, and here) as well as why it works and how it can be applied to social platforms beyond just YouTube.

Below is the full description of the talk and link to it on the Vidcon website. I’ve been writing a bit more lately and should have more posts coming soon!

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Hero, Hub, Help: Content Strategy for Brands

“Let’s make a viral video!” is not a strategy. Cultivating a community for ongoing conversation is the real key to the success of brands online. YouTube has developed and evangelized the Hero, Hub, Help content strategy for their own platform, but the framework can (and should) be adopted across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and beyond. In this talk Brendan Gahan will show how brands like Nike and GoPro use Hero, Hub, Help to grow their own social media footprint and explain the strategy’s underlying principles, so that others can apply it effectively across platforms.

In this post I’ll outline YouTube’s Hero, Hub, Help content strategy. It helps brands grow on YouTube. It’s a helpful framework that any brand should implement if they want to grow their community of viewers and subscribers.

The Hero, Hub, Help framework breaks out content into three key categories – Hero, Hub, and Help content. All content on a brand’s channel should fit within these categories. If it doesn’t, then don’t do it.

At its core, Hero, Hub, Help can be defined as:

HERO – The brand’s ‘go big’ moments (once or twice a year)
HUB – Recurring episodic content (majority of your channel)
HELP – Pull consumers in through search & trends

HERO CONTENT
Hero content should be Super Bowl Big!

These videos are major brand moments – product launches and major announcements. These should be limited to no more than a couple of times a year.

A great example of “Hero Content” is Budweiser’s iconic “Lost Puppy” commercial.

The ad premiered at the Super Bowl in 2015. This sixty-second spot cost cost six million dollars to air. The brand even created the custom cover of “500 Miles” which is available on iTunes. It was Budweiser’s ‘go big’ moment and they pulled out all the stops.

The ad was promoted heavily across YouTube and had a massive PR push. It paid off. On YouTube the ad generated over 30 million views

Another great example of hero content is Pepsi’s viral video “Test Drive”. Pepsi tapped Jeff Gordon, one of their biggest athletes, to go undercover. He went to a used car dealership and asked to take a car on a test drive. With the used car salesman in the passenger seat, Jeff Gordon drove like a bat out of hell. The used car sales man freaked out and hilarity ensued.

“Test Drive” did phenomenally well, it original generated over 70 million views (please note, the original video has since been removed by Pepsi – the video embedded above is a re-upload).

Pepsi put a lot of effort behind this. They got one of their biggest athletes  involved. They put a ton of PR and media behind it, and it paid off.

Hero content is all about pushing content out to support the most important brand initiatives.

Ask yourself, what are the two or three most important activations? These should be considered your Hero moments.

Additional Hero Content Examples

HUB CONTENT
Oftentimes, brands expect every piece of content needs to go ‘viral’. That’s not a realistic goal. Brands need to be careful about how they allocate resources, not everything needs to be a hit. This is where hub content comes into play.

The purpose of Hub content is to build a community. You wan to keep subscribers engaged. It’s answering the question – How do you keep people coming back?

Hub content should be episodic, and easy to replicate. Oftentimes brands think they need to reinvent the wheel. This is incorrect. You want to niche down and focus on a specific format. The reason for this is if you’re going to ask people to follow you, they’ve got to know what to expect.

Look at the popular YouTubers. All of them have a clear format that they follow. They rinse, repeat and evolve that format slowly over time versus creating content around a million different formats.

For example, Dude Perfect does trick shots. The Fine Brothers do React Videos. The Try Guys literally just try new things each video. You want to create a format around a relevant niche and then stick to that.

A great example of branded Hub content is the “Nintendo Minute” series.

“Nintendo Minute” goes live every Thursday like clockwork. It’s got the same hosts, Kit and Kayla, who are two Nintendo employees.

The show format is consistent. Kit and Kayla are on a couch, the two play games, and discuss what’s new and interesting within the Nintendo gaming community.

The production is very simple. The hosts are on a couch without a fancy set and there is a single camera set up to record them. This makes it easy for Nintendo to replicate each week without expending a ton of resources.

Nintendo Minute proves how successful Hub Content is for brands. Nintendo has produced over 350 Nintendo Minute videos, which have garnered over a 1 billion views.

By maintaining a consistent hub format your subscribers know what they’ve signed up for. Oftentimes brands vary their content too much. When this is done they pull in subscribers because of one style of video then lose them because they post something different.

Additional Hub Content Examples

HELP CONTENT
Help content is an SEO strategy. Help videos should be answering the question – “How are we (as a brand) going to help our consumer find what they’re searching for?”

Brands should not indiscriminately produce videos simply because their target audience is interested in something. Help content should be created based on where the the brand has expertise and popular search terms.

Home Depot does a great job with Help Content.

Of Home Depot’s most viewed videos, the top thirty are Help videos. The most successful video on their channel is “How to Tile a Bathroom Floor.” Other top performing content on their channel includes – ” How To Replace or Install a Toilet,” and “How To Replace or Install a Ceiling Fan.”

These aren’t sexy topics.

However, the videos are beneficial to the brand and consumer. The consumer gets their questions answered. The brand (in this case Home Depot) can highlight their products and services.

Additional Help Content Examples

THE TAKEAWAYS
Brands should be looking to the successful YouTubers and learn from them. What they’ve done so well is understand the importance of focus. Every successful creator has a hub series at the core of their channel. That hub series is what defines them and what they build a community around.

Currently, brands are far too focused on every piece of content being a ‘hero’ video. That just isn’t feasible.

Passionate communities take time to build. Be consistent. Focus on a clearly defined ‘hub’ format and with time your channel will grow.

[Click to read my updated post on this strategy under it’s new name of ‘Hero, Hub, Help’]

The concept of “always-on marketing,”creating a steady stream of content, is something brands and agencies have adopted with Facebook and Twitter. In recent years, brands and agencies have even created newsrooms to produce content in real time to respond to current events and customer trends. As production has become cheaper and more accessible the principles that applied to text and images on Twitter and Facebook are being carried over to, and, implemented on YouTube. Consequently, the perception that “viral video” is key to a brand’s content strategy is slowly diminishing.

[Check out my hub, hero, hygiene infographic here]

In many ways the viral video strategy mirrored the traditional ad production model –invest heavily in an expensive TV spot and then promote, wait several months,then go through the process all over again. In adopting the Hero, Hub, Hygiene approach, brands have the latitude to create their campaign and viral content, but it also emphasizes the creation of content series, giving consumers a reason to keep coming back. Successful YouTubers have been implementing this strategy since the platform’s early days. They’ve communicated to their audiences a regular posting schedule so that new content isn’t a surprise that may or may not be discovered, but something that the audience can reliably look forward and return to.

THE HERO, HUB, HYGIENE APPROACH EXPLAINED
I like to picture this strategy as a content pyramid with three core layers. At the top is the Hero content: this is your beacon seen by the masses, but most of the content you create can’t, and won’t, fall into this category. From there you have your hub content – there is far more Hub content than Hero, but often is a content series, or video created around brand events and/or product launches. Lastly, the foundation of the content pyramid is the hygiene content. Hygiene capitalizes on existing user interests and is designed to pull users in based on search.

HERO CONTENT
Hero videos are large-scale events or programs that drive mass awareness – oftentimes around product or event launches. This is the top of the pyramid –Hero content builds awareness at a much broader scale to reach the mainstream. According to YouTube, Hero content is something that’s done on average 1-2 times a year for a brand and will still entertain and inspire the viewers with emotional storytelling. An iconic example of Hero Content would be Red Bull’s Project Stratos. For those who missed the biggest digital event of last year, Red Bull’s Project Stratos drew worldwide attention for sendingFelix Baumgartner’to the edge of space, where he then jumped from his hot air balloon and set the world record for the highest freefall jump.  The event was livestreamed, and the video of Baumgartner’s record-setting jump has over 36,000,000 views and drove thousands of new subscribers in just over a year.

HUB CONTENT
Hub videos are meant to entertain and keep an audience coming back. According to YouTube, this content should be “regularly updated,” “valuable and engaging,” and should incentivize people to “subscribe – like – follow” Looking at Red Bull’s channel through the lens of YouTube’s Hero, Hub, Hygiene framework, an example’s of  Red Bull’s hub videos are the behind the scenes and training videos leading up to the official Project Stratos jump. Another great example of hygiene content on Red Bull’s channel is their “Who is JOB” series. “Who is JOB” is a reality web series on its fourth season, that documents the life of pro surfer, Jamie O’Brien and his adventures with friends. In creating a series, Red Bull has established a way to focus its content creation around relevant consumer passion point (in this case, surfing). The fact that it’s a series allows Red Bull to more easily create a volume of content, and engage subscribers regularly.

HYGIENE CONTENT
Hygiene videos are created around the core interests relevant to the ideal viewer or target consumer.  Oftentimes this content is specifically created to capture viewers searching key terms related to the brand. It’s worth keeping in mind that even if your brand isn’t creating the extreme sports content that Red Bull does, it can still create highly relevant hygiene content. For example, if you’re a computer software company, your content could be how-to videos helping your consumers navigate your product. People tend to find hygiene videos through search when they’re looking for answers to a specific question. Although not your typical ‘hygiene’ content, Red Bull’s  “Who is JOB” series could be categorized as hygiene because series is highly optimized for Red Bull’s target consumer’s interests – a cursory search for ‘surfing’ reveals a number of “Who is JOB” videos.

HERO, HUB, HYGIENE CASE STUDY – THE SHAVING INDUSTRY
Within the shaving industry, Dollar Shave Club is considered to be the king of online video. They exploded on to the scene in March of 2012 with a disruptive pricing model and hilarious video, which immediately went viral. Today, the original Dollar Shave Club viral video, “Our Blades Are F***ing Great” has 14.5 million views, nearly one hundred thousand likes, and 13,000 comments. By all accounts, the video is a success and has been critical to Dollar Shave Club’s success. However, the reality is for every Dollar Shave Club, there are thousands of attempted viral videos that are total duds that never managed to capture an audience. In many ways the Hub, Hero, Hygiene framework allows brands to relieve themselves of the pressure of having to create the next big viral hit, so they can focus on a long-term community-building strategy. This is something that Gillette has excelled at. Gillette has taken the opposite approach of Dollar Shave Club, and as a result has generated more subscribers – cultivating an engaged community that it can continue to tap into.

GILLETTE’S YOUTUBE CONTENT STRATEGY
Gillette launched its primary YouTube channel in May of 2009. Since that time, Gillette has posted 895 videos, garnered over 24 million video views, and accumulated 22,000 subscribers on its main channel. It’s worth noting that Gillette has multiple channels dedicated to specific markets, including Spain, Peru, Mexico, India, which collectively have an additional 750 videos, tens of thousands of subscribers, and millions of views.

HYGIENE
There are 51 how-to videos on the Gillette channel, ranging from the obvious (“How to Shave”) to the more obscure, such as “How To Shave A Pencil Thin Mustache.”  All of these how-to videos are providing value to their target demographic and are evergreen pieces of content – they’re not time sensitive. In the YouTube Brand Playbook, YouTube invites brands to consider the following when trying to come up with Hygiene content:

What is your audience actively searching for regarding your brand or industry? What can serve as your 365-day-relevant, always-on, PULL content programming? E.g. product tutorials, how-to content, customer service, etc.

In Gillette’s case, each of these how-to videos has been created around key search terms that their target demographic (adult men who are shaving), would be searching. This is classic Hygiene content strategy. For example, Gillette’s “How to Shave – Shaving Tips for Men” video has over 1.5 million views, one thousand likes, and nearly 500 comments. It’s a simple instructional video with voice over and basic motion graphics to transition from each step. Undoubtedly, Gillette’s content marketing team looked at YouTube and Google’s keyword tools and identified that there are an average of 44,000 searches on YouTube, and nearly a million on Google each month. Gillette’s “How To Shave” videos now appear on the first page of search for Google and YouTube search results, and are supported with advertising. Of the 895 videos on Gillette’s main channel, approximately 70% of Gillette’s videos could be classified as Hygiene content and include consumer product reviews and testimonials in addition to the aforementioned how to videos.

HUB CONTENT
Gillette has also invested heavily in creating Hub content — compelling content series that are entertaining, tapping into their target consumers’ passion points. A number of examples of this type of content live on Gillette’s channel and many incorporate their sponsored athletes and celebrities. For example, Gillette created a series of videos, “What Women Want” which feature Q&A sessions with supermodels Kate Upton, Hannah Simone, and Genesis Rodriguez. In the videos, the supermodels discuss their POV on manscaping and male grooming habits, and gives advice to male viewers. The content was created specifically to promote the Gillette Fusion ProGlide Styler, a “three-in-one shaving tool that trims, shaves and edges for whatever body hair style she likes.” Other Hub content on Gillette’s YouTube channel include their Gillette Body Ready fan interview series. To support the launch of the Gillette Body razor, Gillette tapped three of its pro athletes — professional skateboarder Ryan Sheckler, Olympic gold medalist in beach volleyball Phil Dalhausser, and national CrossFit champion Jason Khalipa — to participate in surprise Q&As with a their fans. The fans were invited to chat with their heroes and learn what they do to get their bodies ready for their sports. The “What Women Want” and “Body Ready” videos are great examples of Hub content because they’re centered around the Gillette consumer passion points – athletes, sports, and models — and are created largely around new, timely product launches.

HERO
Like any brand, Gillette has its mainstream Hero content intended for the masses. Being a sponsor of multiple high-profile athletes such as Ryan Suter, Clay Matthews, and Ryan Sheckler has enabled the brand to leverage them in key tent-pole moments. Gillette’s Hero content include its launch of the Gillette Fusion Pro Glide (this video has since been taken down). which was promoted heavily throughout the 2013 NFL season and features Green Bay Packers linebacker Clay Matthews. The 60-second spot, title ‘Clay Matthews Conditions’ (this video has since been taken down) ran on TV and was promoted heavily on YouTube, accumulating over 200k views. More recently, Gillette funded a documentary,“The Kissing Experiment: Are We Killing The Kiss? ”(this video has since been taken down).

The video was part of a larger brand campaign and invited men and women to visit a site, where the documentary was housed.There, women were polled on what they preferred most – clean shaven or men with facial hair (perhaps unsurprisingly, the results of the poll stated that most women prefer clean shaven).As a Gillette spokeswoman positioned it, the campaign “was strictly to drive awareness to the conversation.” These mass awareness campaigns are the archetype of Hero video content. It’s the content meant to be seen by the masses. As YouTube positions it in the brand playbook:

What content do you want to PUSH to a big,broad audience? What would be your Super Bowl moment?A brand may have only a few hero moments in a year, such as product launch events or industry tent-poles.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
While Gillette has done a great job in capitalizing on search and generating a great deal of content following the hero, hub, hygiene framework, there’s also a great deal of missed opportunities. The brand could generate content on a consistent schedule, do a better job implementing end cards and annotations consistently, and curate more of what goes on to their channel. That said, by iterating and continuing to produce content they’ll continue to learn more of what does and does not work for them which will undoubtedly tee them up for long term success.

PARTING THOUGHTS
There are 100 hours of content being uploaded to YouTube every minute. As a result, it’s imperative that content provides value to consumers in order to gain traction. Remember, on it’s own, the Hero, Hub, Hygiene framework can’t guarantee success.

It’s easy to view advertising as a formula with a clear process to follow to become the next Red Bull. But beyond the Hero, Hub, Hygiene strategy, Red Bull, and Gillette and others understand the audience they’re communicating to, and know what their audience will find entertaining. It’s also incredibly important to implement the best practices, optimizing thumbnails, titles, tags, descriptions and creating end cards.

Not every brand needs to focus on entertaining its audience; in fact, oftentimes content that is strictly entertaining is not going to be the most valuable to the target audience. In Gillette’s case, they provided value by supplying useful information that their target consumers were already looking for.

Many brands are creating content that is so overwhelmingly transparently self-serving as to be off-putting for consumers. Hundreds of thousands of dollars don’t solve the issue either. Driving views to your video may boost your view count, but if engagement drops off after the first 5 seconds, is that content valuable? I’d argue you’ve effectively created content that acts as a “leaky bucket” which is inefficient in its inability to convert consumers to subscribers (or even get them to watch a full video) and in its inability to make a lasting impression with consumers – which may alienate them entirely.

Going forward, brands can’t rely on capturing lightning in a bottle with a viral video. Instead, a brand channel needs to have a solid foundation of Hero, Hub, and Hygiene content to draw viewers in and turn an audience into a community. This allows them to iterate and optimize for success over time.

[Bonus: Click here to download my analysis of how one brand channel grew from 0 to 400,000 subscribers implementing this strategy.]