What is a content pillar?
Content pillars are the core themes or topics that guide the content you choose to post to your social channels for your brand. Think of them as the foundation of your social media content strategy. Most successful brands have three to five content pillars that guide everything they post, helping to shape their brand identity and ensure their content is consistent and recognizable.
Why are content pillars important for social media?
Without content pillars, your social media content can feel scattered and inconsistent. Content pillars give you a direction, ensuring that every post supports your broader goals (your pillars). They also make it easier for your audience to recognize you and what understand what your brand is about, while also helping you stay organized and focused when planning your content.
We’d recommend reading though this Reddit discussion on why people use content pillars for they YouTube strategy.
How to develop your own content pillars
Creating your own content pillars starts with understanding what you’re passionate about and what resonates with your audience. Here’s a quick guide to get you started:
- Assess your interests: Identify topics you're passionate about and have a reasonable knowledge of.
- Identify your core themes: Choose topics that align with your brand and that you’re passionate about.
- Understand your audience: Focus on what your audience cares about and the challenges they face.
- Create your content pillars: Pick three to five broad topics that will guide your content.
- Build a content bank: Collect a content bank filled with post ideas, articles, videos, etc. for each pillar to streamline content creation.
- Engage and analyze: Regularly interact with your audience and monitor the performance of your posts to see which pillars resonate most. Use this feedback to refine your strategy.
And remember, you can use tools like Buffer to keep all your content pillars organized and ensure you’re consistently delivering high-quality posts across all your social platforms. With Buffer’s Tags feature, you can easily tag your content based on your pillars, giving you a clear overview of how often you’ve posted for each pillar and how well each one is performing.
