Elements of a Content Strategy: The Content Pillars

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Every component I include in my content strategies feels like a necessity.

But if I had to choose my favorite…. 

It would be the content pillars. 

WHAT ARE CONTENT PILLARS?

I define content pillars as your 2-5 core topics that every single piece of contentbubbles up into.

They’re one of the most important pieces of the content strategy puzzle. Without content pillars, how do you know what to talk about? Picking topics will be like throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks. 

Ideally, each content pillar checks ALL the below boxes: 

  • Questions from your target audience that you can answer

  • White space in the competitive space that you can fill

  • Education that supports your offering or services

Try to find the 3-5 content pillars that check all 3 boxes. If you’re coming short, it’s ok to look for the content pillars that check 2. 

WHY DO I NEED TO IDENTIFY CONTENT PILLARS?

According to Hubspot’s 2022 State of Content Marketing: 

"The top challenges marketers face with content marketing are creating content that generates leads, finding ideas for new content, and creating content that receives high levels of online engagement." 

To me, each of these challenges bubble up to this: 

It’s hard to know what content will resonate most.

Content pillars identify the topics that your audience wants most and your business is best poised to share.

AKA: They identify the topics that will resonate most. 

Added bonus: Once you have content pillars in place, you don’t have to ask yourself “what content will resonate most?” with each piece you create. 

Brainstorming concepts for a pillar is — dare I say it — much easier. At least, I’ve found that to be the case! I find brainstorming with light guardrails (i.e. a content pillar) much more effective than brainstorming when the door is wide open.

 
 

Want to learn more about how to build out each element of a content strategy? Sign up for my free content strategy course.