Content pillars provide key themes that will dictate what you share and talk about as a brand. Specifically for social media in your strategy they will provide a platform and structure for what content you share on which platforms.
Typically when we look at content pillars they tend to have what we call "bedrock" content which is a key and core piece of content that’s connected to it. I’ll get onto that a bit more in a bit ....
Essentially you want to look at your content pillars as being a large river that has many possible streams coming off it providing you with a map of related and relevant content.
The key benefit of having content pillars is that they will help you stay focussed and it will also help you make sure the content you share is relevant and resonates with your target audience or personas.
Content pillars play a bigger part than just what to share on social media. They also allow you to connect your keyword strategy together with your SEO (search engine optimisation - how search engines rank you in their search results), SEM (advertising on search engines to show up top of results as an ad) and website content back to your social media content. Linking back to what I have mentioned before... social media is part of a bigger picture and not a be all and end all solution.
That being said the best content pillars will always provide a foundation for your brand to become a thought leader or potentially a problem solver in your space.
Content pillars should be born off of your core brand pillars. Now, brand pillars are those that essentially guide your brand voice and presence across all platforms and channels and encompass the look and feel of your brand, the positioning of your brand, how your brand is perceived, your values etc.
So, back to the content pillars. The pillars you create shouldn’t be overly specific. You should aim to have around 3-4 pillars that encompass many streams coming off of it (excuse the river analogy again I did warn you about my analogies...). How to decide on these pillars should be dictated by but not limited to ...
1 - Your brand pillars.
2 - Your target audience and what they’re asking for, speaking about, seeking.
3 - Your offering, service or product.
Now we know about the content pillars and how they need to be defined let me jump back into what I mentioned a little bit earlier which was "bedrock" content…. Essentially for each content pillar you will have what we call a bedrock piece of content, think of it like a master piece of content, that can be broken down into bite-size pieces of content which in turn introduces separate and relevant concepts of content to your target audience within that pillar.
Let’s say for example that you have a content pillar that focuses on brand messaging. Your bedrock content can be your brand guidebook which lays out your values, your tone of voice, your culture …. That is then what you will break down into small bite size content concepts which will shape the content pieces that sit under that content pillar.
One tool that I will recommend you use if you are stuck for content is called answer the public. Let’s say you are a telemarketing company and you don’t know what your audience are seeking in terms of answers, new messaging, content pieces… simply go onto here and type telemarketing in and it will show you a spiders web of the what, how, when, why and so on questions that people are actively asking around that topic. Use that and those questions to shape what content you write.
Tying this all back into social media... Planning is of course essential for social media so you can remain consistent! Essentially the foundation to your social strategy must be your content pillars. As I mentioned before you can have everything set out in your strategy but if you do not have a clear content strategy with outlined content pillars per platform then you may as well not bother with the rest of it to be frank! 😱
These will be the deciding elements to what you share on which platforms. Now, that’s key as your content pillars are one thing but weighting them per platform is another and by that what I mean is that let's say you are across LinkedIn, instagram, and Facebook.... Your content on LinkedIn will be more so tailored to messaging that’s thought leader focussed, insightful, industry led whereas on Instagram it might be more brand focussed with culture led messaging.
Depending on your goals and your business structure (again tying back to the initial brand pillars) will depend on your content pillars and then the content pillars weighting. As an example... if your pillars are brand messaging, user-generated content and sales .... having a weighting of 40% brand messaging, 30% user generated content and 30% sales messaging might work on Instagram for your brand but for LinkedIn the weighting split per content pillar will be different. You need to shape the content pillars you have now created to fit each of your chosen platforms.
Want to discuss further how to create your key content pillars to excel in your social media strategy?! Contact me today & let's set up a chat!
Comments