When I talk with small business owners about the need to create content, and lots of it, I often try to get them to think about the creation of a strategic body of work.

If content is to become the foundation of your overall marketing activities, as a way to be found, educate and build trust, then you have to think big picture about what your content will look like collectively rather than piece by piece.

I think one of the best ways to think about all of your needs for content is to think like an author might as they write a book. In order to write a book that holds together you must have a central thesis, focus on a handful of supporting themes and then outline the various chapters that will eventually fill out the work.

Using this kind of framework as your guide, your writing, even if it’s just today’s blog post, can always build on the total body of work and automatically adds to something bigger than the bits of daily writing.

This is how you continually reinforce your central themes or, putting it in practical marketing terms, your most important keyword phrases. This is how you turn several blog posts into an ebook and an ebook into a lead converting seminar.

This is how you make every word you write serve your long term business objectives.

The folks at Eloqua and JESS3 created a very useful infographic that helps visually illustrate this total body of work strategy and also sheds a light on the various marketing purposes of every type of content, and how to look at content creation from an operational viewpoint.