Your Blog Desperately Needs a Flagship Content. Here is Why

Starting a blog or launching a new site could be challenging. You might be asking yourself what the best and fastest way to get things rolling is: receive tons of traffic, build your email list and acquire many customers.

The first thing that probably comes to mind is content marketing. Or maybe it's the first thing that pops up in search results when you're trying to figure the best marketing strategy in your case.

Content marketing is popular, and it works, but it may not be a sustainable strategy for many blogs and businesses.

This issue leads to the concept of supply and demand. The basic principle of economics says that when supply exceeds demand, prices fall.

Simply put, by creating content, you're investing your time and resources in it so people can read this content for free. So basically, you pay people to visit your blog and read your articles. And this actually creates a bubble.

We never had such an abundance of content and accessibility as we have now.

People used to starve for content in times of dial-up internet. We've had bits and pieces shared on forums and chats, and that free exchange of information was golden.

It's not the case now with millions of blogs, social media, and video content.

When you invest your time in content creation and publishing, you're basically investing in people who read your blog.

It's a form of networking, but actually, you don't bother people with irrelevant questions and dialogs right here and right now. You build relationships with your audience simply by writing in your blog, and as a bonus, it's an async communication.

Time passes, and there is more and more new content available on the internet.

But people can't consume all the content available on the web, even if it's free. We simply don't have that much time on a day-to-day basis.

The supply significantly overtakes the demand,

The  exploding amount of content makes it increasingly difficult for brands and makers to deliver their content organically to their fans and potential customers.

There is just too much stuff to consume now.

Eventually, a content marketing strategy where you and other bloggers create as much content as you can will not be viable at some point. Or maybe it's now in oversaturated niches.

Creators competing for limited attention means more choice and better content. Also, according to various stats, the attention span is declining over time.

A flagship content might be a solution to the problem.

Pirates know that the flagship is the biggest, fastest, and most impressive piece of content of an entire fleet.

Imagine your blog as a fleet, and your blog posts are your ships. The best and most popular blog post in your blog or in a category is your flagship content.

Flagship content is a form of the foundation for your content. It's the most extensive knowledge you can possibly create, including infographics, video, and other add-ons.

Here are several important characteristics of flagship content.

Size

Big size content delivers a lot of information focused on one topic  but that's not usually a piece of detailed information. It can be a list of 100 things, 100 ways of doing something, or 100 examples.

The bigger the list, the better. However, the size of your content must be reasonable.

It's no longer important to make it super long to compete with high-ranking sites. There is always a question: "Does it make sense to make your content that long?".

The faster you can explain the topic and share a value, the better.

A good example of big-size content is an ultimate checklist or a set of checklists that cover a certain activity.

You might want to create an extensive list or a catalog of items, but this is not in the range of a narrow niche. This is where breadth content might be good.

Breadth

Breadth is usually about how many related subjects you are covering with your content.

How do you create content that a lot of people want to share?

You can create a broad list of tools or solutions within one blog post. Conduct extensive research and Q&A sessions. Gather as many questions as possible to your topic and related topics and as a result, write a huge blog post that covers everything. So that your audience might want to know about a certain issue and possible obstacles, helpful advice, stories, and so on.

Create a vast library with practical examples that explain an ongoing trend.

Build a catalog of niche products that might include similar products, or products often bought together, sets, kits, and packages with multiple products inside. Best value deals can also be a part of a catalog like this.

Breadth means you want to incorporate enough related topics into your content to have sufficient coverage.

Breadth Content Hot Tip

Your content will be more informationally dense if you can convey significantly more information and use just a few more words than competitors.

Not the same as the depth

Breadth is the opposite of depth of content, but you can achieve great results if you can create a flagship piece of content that can go in two dimensions: breadth and depth.

Depth

The biggest issue with breadth content is that you can't really write about a particular topic or go too much into details because it's mostly about plenty of related topics.

On the other hand, depth content is more about choosing one topic and going deep into details.

Depth is about understanding complex issues.

It uncovers some hidden truth that lies below the surface that's visible to the majority of people.

Often times published scientific studies that have a deep analysis inside can be a good example of in-depth content.

However, it's quite hard to read most scientific publications due to the heavy use of terminology and scientific vocabulary.

A thorough content, as a rule, has more value than the shallow one.

Content depth answers the question of how comprehensive the coverage of a specific topic is.

A large word count has nothing to do with content depth.

Length

Length is not the same as size. Skyscraper content or wring 10x content to beat another blog, as a rule, is not the best approach.

Such content bloated with unnecessary sentences and words doesn't make sense. It often discourages people from actually reading to the end and understanding the topic or the message you're trying to deliver.

A long explanation using too many words might not perform as well as a short and visual example that gets to the point within seconds.

Lengthy content is good when it's necessary.

The best alternative is dense content centered around core topics.

Length only does make sense if it brings joy to readers. It's prevalent for fiction writers.

In some cases, business and psychology blogs can also be fun and quite lengthy at the same time.

Final words

Studies show that flagship content with high depth, breadth, or even both performs better than other types with thin content and high reliability on referral and social media traffic.

Dominate your core topics and write about linked subject matters.

Think about information density and how much information you convey using fewer words instead of word count.

Flagship content is the best way to invest your time in content creation because it attracts many readers over time, and this effect lasts longer than in every other type of content.