How to Use Content Pillars in Social Media
What you will learn
- What is a content pillar in social media
- Steps on how to create social media content pillars
- What are the benefits of using content pillars in social media
What is a Content Pillar?
Social media marketing uses content pillars to align the content you post with a predetermined theme or topic. By capturing the essence of your brand in these ‘themes’, also known as content buckets, your mission and vision will be indirectly conveyed to customers.
In other words, many specific themes in a brand reflect the content your online audience finds most relevant and captivating. It is vital that the content pillars that you choose are consistent with your brand’s values.
What are Pillar Pages?
Pillar pages provide a comprehensive overview of a topic in the most effective way possible. With no more than 2,000 words, pillar pages help create content suitable for a brand’s target audience.
Content pillars and pillar pages are handy tools in marketing. Nevertheless, understanding how they work is essential before using them effectively. Let’s get started.
Why are Content Pillars and Pillar Pages Useful for Social Media Marketers?
One of the most important objectives for social media marketers is gaining followers. Having more followers is a sign that the brand is on the right path. This shows that the brand is growing, and growth is what keeps them alive. But how can brands attract more people?
When it comes to digital marketing, you must provide valuable content. Your content attracts more followers, exposes your business to more people, and engages them. All of this benefits you and your brand.
To make this possible, you must organize and prepare your content. Content pillars will help social media marketers remain focused on their brand’s purpose and values.
How to Create Content Pillars in Social Media
Get ready to create content pillars and start using them, as we have created a list of tips to help you achieve it!
1. Get to Know Your Audience
To properly start planning your content pillars, you need to know your audience. If this is unclear, you won’t know where to start or if you are on the right track.
How can you identify your followers? Start doing interviews or surveys. This way, you can collect valuable data: what they like, what they don’t like, what they would want to learn, and so on. It gives you an understanding of what you must focus on to bring value.
You can use some questions to get started:
- What does my target audience expect from my brand?
- In which ways can my brand’s social media content help my target audience?
- Which topics do my target audience want my brand to work on?
- Which platforms are my target audience using?
Knowing your audience is the first step to reach them!
2. Identify 5 Pillars of Content
Now that you know your audience, you need to start creating your content. Take a look at this:
These five pillars are used to categorize social media content. How do they work? Let’s imagine your brand sells handbags and purses. You might want to divide your content pillars like this:
- Promotional pillar: promote a new product.
- Educational pillar: share facts about handbags.
- Community pillar: share news about your products.
- Entertainment pillar: make entertaining content or share entertaining things about your products.
- Engagement pillar: interact with your followers.
This way, you have plenty of content ideas to work on, but it still needs to be organized!
3. Planning with a Content Calendar
Once you’ve got the ideas of the content you want to create, you need to organize them. Instead of thinking about what you should post each day at the last minute, try making a content calendar for each month of the year and balance out the use of your pillars to generate engagement. This way, you can organize and have your upcoming works ready to post.
Creasquare content calendar
There are different ways to create your content calendar. You can do it the traditional way, which is writing it down on a piece of paper and making a physical planner or printed calendar, or use Excel spreadsheets or Google Sheets (shown in the example above), or you can even use a social media tool like Creasquare to create your content and draft your post directly in the app before you schedule it.
I encourage you to try out Creasquare content calendar to plan your posts and automate your process, it really makes a difference!
4. Check Out Your Competition
If you have your content created and organized, it is most likely that your competitors have it as well. For that reason, it is a must to check on your competition and see what works for them.
Seeing how they develop themselves and the marketing techniques they use can inspire you and also help you in the development of your content pillars.
Take notes on what your competition is doing, what they are not doing, and what they are trying to improve.
5. Pay Attention to Trends and News
Besides paying attention to your followers’ interests, you must be up to date with what’s happening around the world.
Trends and news can help you stay relevant in social media. One way of knowing what is trending is by checking Google Trends. See what the world is searching for on the internet and think if you can relate it to your work.
6. Take Advantage of Social Media
Social media has many tools that can help you interact with your followers. The more apps you use, the better.
For example, creating Reels, photos, and carousels on Instagram can help with the growth of your brand. At the same time, using Instagram ‘polls’, ‘questions’, or ‘quizzes’ on stories will strengthen the bond with your audience due to the interaction between your brand and them.
Another social media example that is quite trendy and can help your brand become more relevant is TikTok. This social network has become an incredible marketing tool that offers new ways to reach customers. Creating videos of 15 seconds to 3 minutes can attract your target audience if you learn how to use the TikTok algorithm to your advantage. If the content appeals to your audience, your growth will be assured.
What Results Do Brands That Use Content Pillars Get?
As we have seen before, there are many benefits of using content pillars on social media. Let’s see how these two brands use content pillars and how they benefit from it:
Above, we can see Starbuck’s Instagram account. This brand is known for coffee and unique beverages. Even though they are a renowned brand, they still have to use as many marketing tools as possible to keep attracting more customers.
On their Instagram account, they share many things. Starbucks is a brand that correctly uses the five pillars we have seen before. They share product updates, share entertaining posts such as videos from customers or create music playlists for different seasons, and more.
People who follow the account, which, as you can see, are many, are notified if there is a new product, can interact with the brand, and entertain themselves while being informed. Followers will share this post between them and even send it to friends who do not follow the account, and might actually follow them now if they see something they like.
This marketing brand is in charge of managing its clients’ marketing activities, and its objective is to attract consumers, increase sales, strengthen branding, and generate market value.
As we can see in the photos, this brand is heavily relying on the engagement pillar, apart from giving information about the brand. They interact with their followers and invite them to participate in what they do.
Creating a relationship with your followers is something quite unique that will make you sustainably stand out. Like any other relationship, it guarantees feedback on the things you do. Whether the feedback highlights something good or bad about the brand is always helpful. It helps you to make changes in the way you are doing things, to understand your audience more, and to keep on growing.
Get Inspired!
It is no news that some content pillars won’t work for some companies but will for others. For example, content pillars related to life advice are probably better for companies that link to it and have an audience that will do that as well. In contrast, a real estate agent would probably lean on clients’ opinions and testimonials as content pillars.
Still, knowing more about content pillars can inspire you to make your own! Here we have a few examples of what content pillars could include.
Self-care and inspiring advice:
Product promotion:
Using humor to attract the audience:
Conclusion
Using content pillars to align the content you post with a predetermined theme or topic is easier than it seems. By following our tips above, you will soon be growing your aptitudes to deliver relevant content on social media. The key factor to achieving it is by organizing your content correctly and posting consistently to test out your content. Content pillars will help you remain focused on the brand’s purpose.
Don’t be afraid of learning: start creating your own content pillars now!
You should be all set for a great start. Check out our other articles here to discover more tips to grow your content creation business!
