Create Content Themes That Match Your Values

  • Why do I need content themes?
  • How do I come up with them?
  • How many do I need?

Content marketing is a great way to get new customers and help people form an opinion about you business.

But you have to make sure everything you’re sharing online [blog posts, social media updates, images, etc.] reinforces your business values. That’s why it’s smart to come up with content themes.

Good news: Your current and potential customers are already giving you theme ideas by posting and sharing content they’re interested in. You just need to look for the topics that match your business values.

For example, imagine Esther runs cardio cooking – a fitness studio where people cook and burn calories simultaneously.

She promotes her brand values as: “we believe busy young professionals need a fun way to eat well and exercise at the same time.”

Let’s try and match those values with the things her customers post about.

Please answer YES or NO

2nd and 3rd post matches her business values.

The post that match Esther’s business values are about healthy recipes and exercising. She should use these as inspiration for her content themes.

Strong content themes help guide your online posts to be the connection between your company’s beliefs and your customers’ interests.

You should stick with 3 to 5 themes which act as guardrails. Most of the content you create should live within them.

Your themes should also be different enough that they don’t overlap, and specific enough to show you POV and actually be interesting.


Let’s check out how sweetgreen and Trunk Club combined customer interests and business values to create strong content themes.

Sweetgreen is farm-to-table restaurant dedicated to organic cuisine and sustainability.

They describe their brand values like this: “we exist to create experiences where passion and purpose come together.”

Meanwhile, their customers post about music, eating right, and staying in shape.

Sweetgreen created purposeful themes inspired by their customers’ passions, like Pairing Music & Food, Farm-to-Table, and Community Fitness.

These guardrails then helped them come up with interesting and engaging content.

For Pairing Music & Food, they post photos with music and veggie puns, create educational and fun posts about the benefits of music, and host the Sweetlife Music Festival.

For , they share stories of the farmers they work with and post infographics about sustainability.

For Community, they started a Sweetgreen passport feature that helps people find local fitness opportunities. They also post about exercising and eating right on social media.

TIP

You can draw people to your content with a hashtag. For example, Sweetgreen uses the popular #farmtotable.

It’s better to adopt a hashtag your audience is already using. It’s much harder [and usually less successful] to create a unique one, hoping it catches on.

Trunk Club is a service that helps men discover clothes without ever having to go shopping. Personal stylists hand-select clothing based on members’ preferences.

Members can get personalized trunks delivered to their doorsteps. They pay for what they like, and send back what they don’t.

Trunk club’s values center on creating a personalized experience for each member and providing them with quality clothes that fit great.

Their customers are interested in things like productivity, travel, and life outside of work.

The sweet spot between Trunk Club’s values and their customers’ interests become these themes: Expert Guidance, Travel & Versatility, and Members & Their Stories.

For Expert Guidance, they post tips on taking care of clothing basics like jeans, celebrate the art of shining your shoes, and show how to master the more difficult parts of men’s fashion.

 

For Travel & Versatility, they recommend the right outerwear for any climate, share ideas on the best clothes for carry-on bags, and they give tips on how to be fashionably adaptable.

 

For Members & Their Stories, they blog about their members’ lives with their “I’d Rather Be” series and show different ways members pursue their passions and do what they love.

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