Content Pillars: Why you need them

Have you ever looked to create content but didn’t know where to start? Maybe you realized that the content you have been creating lacks direction and impact! We’ve all been there before, never fear though there’s a solution that will help you find your lane in content creation and feel confident while you’re creating it! What your content is missing is common themes or topics that your audience will grow to expect from you over time. These are called content pillars. Today we will chat about how content pillars are a vital foundation to your content creation process!

What is a Content Pillar?

So what exactly are content pillars? Some experts refer to them as content buckets or content categories. Regardless of what you prefer to name them, content pillars are landmark topics that you’ll cover! Later defines content pillars specifically as “3 to 5 topics your brand will consistently discuss, amplify, and create content for on social media.” Think of content pillars as an extension of your niche categorized for your audience. 

The content pillars form the basis of a successful content marketing strategy. As with the physical foundation, pillars are needed to support the overall goals of your content strategy. They help ensure that your efforts are evenly distributed across all goals, from awareness to potential customer generation and transformation. Without a pillar of content, content has no direction, reducing reach, engagement, and brand awareness.

Social media strategist Christian Galbalto mentions the importance of making your content pillars with your niche in mind. “A good way to think about this is an upside-down pyramid. The more focused and niched you are in the beginning, the easier time you’ll have to grow an audience of people who trust and love you. And then you can expand to other subjects.”

Why Does Pillar Content Matter?

You’re probably wondering why you should create content around your pillars? Why is pillar content the key to an effective content strategy? For one thing, content pillars allow you to focus on your core goals. Creating content around your content pillars resonates with consumers at every stage of the purchase cycle. When you have solid content pillars, you’ll create content that's specific to each part of the goal-achieving process. 

Content pillars enable content marketers to provide consistent value to their readers. By naming the pillars of content on topics that are most relevant to your audience, you can focus on your area of ​​expertise. On the other hand, ignoring your content pillars and brainstorming content ideas on the fly will spread you too thin. As a result, your content will come off as chaotic, your readers will notice it, and your content will lose its value. 

Valuable content leads to increased followers, exposure, and engagement, all of which lead to higher conversions. In addition, valuable content built on solid pillars can streamline marketing activities and enhance the power of relevant search engines.

What Are Some of The Benefits of Pillar Content?

These days, the majority of search phrases consist of 4 or more words. What does this mean? People are searching with more detail because they don’t want to wade through multiple sites to find an answer. They value accuracy and immediacy. That said, Google is working hard to deliver. Welcome to the age of pillar content, which can increase your online presence. 

Kantaloupe explains how pillar content and internal linking to cluster content will help you bolster search engine optimization (SEO):

Improved Relevance

Content pillars are a great way to organize and optimize your web content. They allow you to see what opportunities you have to create more content that fulfills the unmet needs of your target audience. It also leads to a cleaner website experience, allowing easier navigation for website visitors interested in getting more information on a particular topic. From an SEO perspective, this makes it easier for Google to determine what your content is all about, helping provide the most accurate response to today’s more detailed search queries. It’s no surprise that internal linking for SEO is one of the reasons why pillar content works so well.

Increased Authority

When executed well, pillar content can enhance your authority as a thought leader in your industry. While Google’s search algorithm is constantly evolving, one thing is certain: High-quality content doesn’t get old. When you position yourself as a credible, trustworthy source on a topic, the rankings will follow. 

More Backlinks, Shares, and Traffic

Lengthier content is reigning supreme. According to SEMrush’s 2019 “State of Content Marketing” report, content with more words earns 4 times the number of shares and 3.5 times the number of backlinks than shorter articles. The report also found that these longer reads also benefit from the most unique monthly page views on average. This is just another reason to get a jump-start on your pillar content.

How to Create Content Around your Content Pillars and Themes

Once you understand how content pillars affect social media marketing, you'll probably want to create your own. Remember that the purpose of a content pillar strategy is to provide consumers with valuable content. Therefore, you need to focus on your audience, keyword research, and content calendars. Consider these steps to create a content pillar for your social media content.

Understand your target audience 

Before you can set up your content pillar, you need to understand your audience. If you haven't done so already, use audience research and analysis to create one or more customer personas that best represent your audience. If you don’t know what a customer persona is or how to create one, we talked about how to create customer personas here in this blog post!

These questions help shape the pillars of content and social media posts and shed light on the brand's proper tone and voice. Consumers want to identify with the voice of your brand and feel connected to your posts. Therefore, it's important to understand how your target audience works on social media. 

Identify the Needs of Your Target Audience 

Once you understand who your target audience is, it's time to identify their needs. Which issues can be addressed with the content? How can I improve their lives or persuade them to buy products and services that improve their lives? Pay particular attention to social listening at this stage. In most cases, the needs of a typical viewer will be reflected in social media posts and commonly searched keywords.

Create a Content Calendar 

With the content pillars at hand, you can move on to the content planning phase. Content plans create blueprints for the blog posts, articles, infographics, social graphics, videos, and other content you want to create. Before creating content, implement a content calendar that includes post type, desired keywords, and publication date to maintain your brand's presence on social media. When you know your content pillars it makes planning your content easy and almost seamless. You know what topics you can share your expertise on and what resonates with your audience.

Convert Existing Content into a New Format 

Finally, by converting existing content to a new format, we always continue the content cycle. For example, you can turn an article about the future of digital marketing into visual content such as infographics and videos. Alternatively, you can turn a high-performance video transcript into a new blog post. Keep in mind that high-quality content can take as many forms as long as each form can snuggle under one of the pillars of content. If you want to learn more about how repurposing content can work for you check out this blog post! 

Content pillars will be your best friend during your content creation journey. Not only will they help your content get seen by search engines, but they also help your audience navigate the information they need to stay inspired and feel their best. When you start implementing your content pillars, you can expect great results and an easier time planning out your content! Do you use content pillars? How have they helped you!

Always in your corner,

The Content Queens