How to define your content pillars for your content strategy

As a social media marketer, are you tasked to produce tons of content? I hear you. At one time or another, have you ever experienced difficulty in thinking of content ideas for your social media content strategy? Content pillars can make your job a whole lot easier.

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Content pillars don’t just make ideas easier to come by, they give structure to your content strategy, so that each social media content that you post is cohesive, consistent, and relevant to your target audience.

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They make it easier for you to organize your social media posts into categories for a more focused, consistent, and strategic social media calendar.

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First things first. What is a content pillar?

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A content pillar is a set of topics or themes that you use for creating social media posts for your brand. In social media parlance, they are also called content buckets. These will make up the foundation of your content strategy.

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Just make sure of these two key points in crafting content pillars:

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• They should be consistent with your brand purpose, positioning, values, tone, and overall look and feel on social.
• They should contain content that is relevant or  popular with your audience.

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Why are content pillars important?

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Content pillars are important so that you can create meaningful brand content–so that the content you post has a clear purpose.

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They make your brand content organized . They can help you achieve consistency in churning out content for your social media channels. It makes planning for your social content calendar a breeze!

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If it’s hard to think of fresh concepts at any point in your content ideation process, content pillars can easily help you identify relevant topics for your brand. So this makes you  spend less time thinking of ideas for your brand strategy, and allows you more time to think of awesome theme-based content for your brand.

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How do you define your brand’s content pillars?

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It’s easy with these steps:

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1. Identify your brand’s audience persona and profiles

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You need to know exactly who your brand is speaking to. So it is well advised to have a set of clear audience personas on hand for your brand. Take note of these key guide questions to identify the content that your audience wants to see, this will make it easier for you to create your content pillars::

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• What topics are they interested in?
• What social media platforms do they use?
• What are their values?
• What topics are valuable and educational to them? 
• What will affect them? 
• What will address their pain points?

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2. Identify your core topics

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Consider the insights from the people who work for your brand and your brand’s SEO data. Use Keyword research. These topics must match your service. Search for what your audience cares about and often search for, and then solve the problems with your content.

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Key guide questions:

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• What problem are you solving?
• What product are you offering?
• Who is your target audience?
• What are the pain points of your target audience?

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3. Do research on competitors’ content

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Study your competitors’ activities so that you can get a clearer perspective of your brand’s target market.

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A good way to do this is to pick out at least three to five of your competitors and check out what content they post on social media and see what has the most engagement. Determine the content gaps, gaps in their posting schedules,fill up the gaps around them.

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4. Study your brand’s Social Media Analytics

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Take the time to analyze your brand’s social media metrics and performance, as they can give you ideas for what content works.  

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Take note of these guide questions:

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• What types of content are your followers engaging with?
• What content performs well?
• What is not working well?
• What can it improve on?

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5. Repurpose and Retarget your Brand’s Content

You need to analyze how different content formats attract different people. Repurposing and fine tuning content for a different set of audiences  according to the social media platform is a wise idea.

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For example, you can fine-tune your content from a blog with in-depth content, and repurpose it into an instagram post, enhancing it with an attractive photo to resonate with your insta followers. 

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And then repurpose said content into a video tutorial to post on youtube so that it is easily searchable and shareable.

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6. Create a Content Calendar

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        Saving the best for last. Creating a content calendar is usually the best thing  about social media  

        content pillars. The calendar contains a weekly outline of :

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• The content you are posting
• Your target audience
• The social media platforms you are using

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The Content calendar will be your guide map of your posts, articles, infographics, social media graphics, videos, and all other content you will create.

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In creating your content calendar, make sure you include the post type and date for publication, plus desired keywords so that you remain consistent in your posts across the various media channels.

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You also need to ensure that your content is optimized, as well as the frequency at which it is posted, so that the right content effectively reaches your target audience, at the best time of their availability.

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Great content is built with a combination of  audience research, analytics, and proper timing. Optimizing for conversion using content pillars is a very sound strategy.  

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So are you ready to define your content pillars for your brand content strategy?

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