A simple code keys into a new social media infographic. Yellow is for content. Red is for channels. D means data rich. Four points cover the spectrum: awareness, consideration, centralized and decentralized. How best to interpret this?

In New Content Marketing Infographic: “The Content Grid” Joe Chernov, the new director of content marketing at Eloqua, says The Content Grid is, “. . . a simple framework for content — or ‘inbound’ — marketing. That is, it plots content type and distribution channel across two dimensions: who should create it (a single owner or the entire staff) and how it should be distributed for maximum impact on the sales funnel.”

Thanks to Alix McAlpine, Director of Marketing at JESS3*, a creative interactive agency, for the link to Joe’s post and this explanation: The Content Grid is a visual guideline that plots out two things: 1) who should create content marketing and 2) how it should be distributed for the biggest sales impact. It’s an open license, so if you like it you can keep it, tweet it, blog it, as much as you wish.

Get The Content Grid jpg.

Press releases appear on the left, in the awareness circle. Other types of content mentioned include “viral” videos, articles, widgets, interactive demos, wikipedia articles, analyst reports, how-to-videos, whitepapers, customer videos, webinars and case studies. Our client communications often include analog communications like advertisements, brochures, proposals, direct mailers, speeches, welcome kits, presentations, newsletters and magazines that have digital crossover components.

It would be interesting, to me, to see how the grid works in real life applications. Our approach is to harmonize social media and marketing communications throughout the company. Infographics like this illustrate the power of strategic communications and validate the need to have a corporate social media marketing, PR and communications plan. That’s why I’ll be using this infographic in my social media marketing and PR communications presentations.

What do you think? Do you use a type of content grid in your business? Do you focus more on the types of channels, delivery or the content? Where is your customer or community in the conversation?