Social media has revolutionized the way brands interact with their customers. However, with so many social platforms, channels, and audiences, getting lost in the crowd is easy. That's where a content pillar strategy comes in handy. In this post, we'll explain a content pillar strategy, why it's important, and how to create a killer strategy that aligns with your brand's goals and resonates with your audience. We'll also discuss the five types of content pillars and provide a sample content pillar calendar.
What is a Content Pillar Strategy?
A content pillar strategy is a comprehensive and focused approach to social media marketing. It is a framework that guides your brand's social media content efforts with clear themes, topics, and messaging that resonate with your audience.
Why is a Content Pillar Strategy Important?
A content pillar strategy is vital because it provides your brand with a clear and cohesive message across social channels. It establishes your brand as an authority, helps with audience engagement, and drives brand awareness. Creating content pillars that convey a message, tell a story, and achieve goals makes your brand stand out from the crowd.
How to Create a Killer Content Pillar Strategy
Creating a content pillar strategy involves several fundamental steps:
Step 1: Find Your Audience
To start, identify your audience and learn about their interests, motivations, and preferences. Find out what they value, where they frequent, and which social media platforms they use. Develop personas that describe your audience's demographic information, buying behaviors, and how they interact with social media.
Example: Let's say your brand deals with organic skincare products that are targeted toward middle-aged women. Then, your target audience would be women between the ages of 30 to 55 who have concerns about aging and are looking for a natural solution. Your goal may be to increase brand awareness and engagement among this demographic.
Step 2: Understand Your Goals
Define the goals and objectives of your social media content marketing campaigns. Your objectives may differ from expanding your audience reach, boosting website traffic, boosting sales, or increasing brand awareness. Define KPI's that can measure your progress, goals, and objectives.
Example: As an organic skincare company, a key objective would be to enhance website traffic and augment sales. Measurable KPIs may consist of organic reach, impressions, engagements, and click-through rate (CTR).
Step 3: Select Your Content Pillars
When choosing your content pillars, it's important to consider your brand message and your audience's interests. Focus on areas that align with your brand values, industry, or social lifestyle to create content that resonates with your audience. Choose one or three pillars that best represent your brand and appeal to your target market.
Example: Our organic skincare company could focus on content related to topics such as skin care for aging skin, living a natural lifestyle, and green beauty.
Step 4: Create Your Pillar Content
Build pillar content that focuses on your selected themes and messaging. This content should be comprehensive, informative, and valuable to your audience. For example, a post on the benefits of organic skincare would be a great pillar content item for an organic skincare brand. Additionally, create content that encourages engagement, such as polls and quizzes.
Example: For our organic skincare brand, we can generate content related to topics like suggesting natural skincare products, offering skincare advice for mature skin, and discussing eco-friendly beauty trends. We can even conduct a poll to find out which natural product is the most useful for anti-aging purposes.
Step 5: Complement with Supporting Content
Build supporting content pieces around your pillar content. These pieces add additional value, strength, and relevance to your primary content. They could be product reviews, how-to videos, or instructional content that complement your pillars.
Example: To support our organic skincare brand's content pillars, we can post product reviews and tutorials on how to use natural products. We could even create interviews with beauty experts discussing the importance of using organic ingredients in skincare.
Step 6: Promote Your Content
Promote your content through social media channels, influencers, and paid advertising. Test different ads, track your results, and modify as needed. Focus on building relationships with influencers that match your audience demographics and interests.
Example: To promote our organic skincare brand, we can post content on social media platforms popular among our target audience (e.g., Instagram, Twitter) and explore the possibility of working with influencers to reach more potential customers. We can also use targeted advertising campaigns on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook Ads to ensure our content reaches the right people.
How to Create Content Pillars
Now that you have your strategy in place, it’s time to get started on creating your content pillars. This can be anything from blog posts to videos, podcasts, or infographics. Utilize the four steps below to create compelling content and bring your marketing strategy to life.
Step 1: Research & Brainstorm
Start researching topics related to your product or service and think about what would be valuable to your customers. Brainstorm ideas that are related to the topics you've identified and make a list of potential content pieces to create.
Step 2: Visualize Your Content
Create visuals for each piece of content. This could involve sketches, storyboards, mood boards, or layouts. Think about how you can create visually appealing content that will stand out from the crowd.
Step 3: Create Your Content
Gather all the elements for your content and start creating. This could include developing written copy, recording audio or video, taking photographs, etc. Have fun with it, and be creative to ensure you deliver eye-catching content.
Step 4: Refine & Publish
Review your content and make any necessary revisions. Once you're happy with the final product, it’s time to publish! Share it on all your channels so that people can find and enjoy it.
Example: Let's get back to our organic skincare company for a moment and consider how we could create content pillars. Our pillars could include topics such as natural beauty products, the importance of organic ingredients, eco-friendly beauty trends, and advice for mature skin. We could also create polls and quizzes to engage our followers and encourage them to share their opinions and experiences.
Once we have our ideas in place, it's time to start creating! We can create visuals like storyboards and mood boards, gather all the elements needed to bring our content to life (including written copy, imagery, audio, etc.), refine our content until it's perfect, and then publish it on all our social media channels.
Remember that content pillars are an important part of your social media strategy. If you focus on creating valuable, shareable content that your audience finds interesting, you’ll be well on your way to building a successful social media presence.
Understanding The Five Types of Content Pillars for Social Media
One of the key components of this strategy is choosing the right type of content pillars. There are five types of content pillars that businesses can choose from, including educational, informative, entertaining, inspirational, and promotional. Each type of pillar serves a specific purpose and can help businesses achieve different goals. By understanding the characteristics of each pillar, businesses can create a cohesive social media content strategy that engages their audience and ultimately drives results.
1. Educational Content Pillars
This type of content pillar aims to provide your audience with informative and educational content that helps them solve a problem, learn something new, or enhance their skills. It can take various forms, such as blog posts, how-to guides, tutorials, and webinars. Educational content pillars establish your brand as an authority, build trust with your audience, and position your products or services as the solution to their needs.
2. Informative Content Pillars
This type of content pillar aims to keep your audience updated and informed about recent trends, news, and developments in your industry. It provides valuable insights, statistics, and research that help your audience understand your brand's uniqueness, strengths, and expertise. Informative content pillars inspire your audience to engage with your brand, share your content, and learn more about your products and services.
3. Entertaining Content Pillars
This type of content pillar aims to engage and captivate your audience by providing them with fun, interesting, and shareable content. It can take various shapes, such as memes, GIFs, videos, quizzes, and games. Entertaining content pillars evoke emotions, create buzz, and generate brand awareness among your audience, especially the younger generation.
4. Inspirational Content Pillars
This type of content pillar aims to inspire and motivate your audience by sharing stories, quotes, images, and videos that align with their values, aspirations, and dreams. Inspirational content pillars establish an emotional connection with your audience, create loyalty, and drive action, such as purchasing, subscribing, or referring.
5. Promotional Content Pillars
This type of content pillar aims to promote your brand's products and services through advertising, contests, offers, and testimonials. Promotional content pillars increase your brand's visibility, attract new customers, and retain existing ones. However, it is essential to balance your promotional content with other types of content pillars to avoid appearing too salesy or pushy.
You should practice using all 5 types of content pillars in your social media content strategy. Doing so allows you to create a comprehensive, holistic approach that resonates with your audience and increases engagement. To ensure success in this ever-changing digital landscape, businesses should invest time and effort into understanding their target audience and creating relevant content that meets their needs.
How To Create A Content Pillar Calendar for Social Media
Once you have identified the content pillars that resonate with your audience, creating a content pillar calendar is time. This will help you plan ahead and ensure that you are consistently creating valuable content for your followers.
Here are a few tips to help you create an effective content pillar calendar:
1. Decide on frequency
Decide how often you will be posting each type of content (daily, weekly, monthly). This will depend on your resources and the size of your audience.
2. Plan ahead
Plan out topics and ideas for each type of content pillar in advance. This will help you be more efficient and organized when it comes to creating content.
3. Reuse content
Don’t create new content every time you post; instead, reuse popular or old content that resonates with your audience.
4. Schedule posts
Use social media scheduling tools to automate your content pillar calendar and ensure you regularly post on time.
5. Monitor results
Monitor the performance of each type of content by tracking engagement, reach, clicks, impressions, etc. This will help you understand what works best with your audience and adjust accordingly.
Example: For our organic skincare brand, we will be posting informative content every Monday, entertaining content every Wednesday, inspirational content every Friday, and promotional content once a month. We have planned out content topics for each type of content pillar and will use a social media scheduling tool to automate our content pillar calendar.
Our informative content can include tutorials, tips, reviews, Q&As, and more. Our entertaining content can include memes, GIFs, videos, quizzes, and games. Our inspirational content can include stories about customers who have used our products with great success, quotes from influential figures in the industry, images that convey powerful messages, and videos of skincare tips. Finally, our promotional content can include exclusive offers and discounts, contests, giveaways, and product announcements.
By following these tips and dedicating time to creating a content strategy that resonates with your audience, you will be able to create a killer content pillar strategy for social media that is both effective and engaging. Good luck!
If you need help creating content pillars for your social media strategy, contact us at Featuring Fabulous Media. We can help you create content that is relevant, engaging, and aligned with your business goals.