How to Create Pillars that Guide Your Content Marketing
Ever find yourself staring at your laptop screen wondering what you’re supposed to write or assign next?
Maybe you have a laundry list of potential content marketing topics but nothing is feeling right. Or maybe you’re starting from scratch to come up with next month’s editorial calendar.
Either way, staring at a blank Google Doc waiting for inspiration rarely helps.
Instead let your content pillars be your guide.
What’s a Content Pillar?
A content pillar is simply a way to categorize relevant topics within your content marketing strategy. Pillars keep you organized and also guide your topic distribution to help you maintain consistent, relevant, and balanced content across channels.
Most businesses use 3-4 content pillars. Here’s a typical breakdown:
Pillar 1 - Product/Service
Pillar 2 - Proof of Use
Pillar 3 - Industry News
Pillar 4 - Mission
Let’s take a tour of what each of content pillars includes.
Pillar 1 - Product/Service
Pillar 1 represents all the content that relates directly your product or service. It includes pieces that show how to use your product, its features and benefits, explanations as to why your customer needs to use your product, and other product- or service-related information.
Pillar 2 - Proof of Use
The second pillar is full of testimonials, case studies, customer stories, and other examples of customers using your product or service out in the real world. Focus on the impact of your product on their businesses and their lives. User generated content falls under this category, too.
Pillar 3 - Industry News
Just like it sounds, Pillar 3 is all about sharing relevant industry articles, news, and information. This pillar also includes your business’s unique outlook on the future of your industry, hot takes on trends, and editorial content.
Pillar 4 - Mission
This is where you show your company’s personality, your culture, your purpose. Share your mission, a glimpse behind-the-scenes, what a typical day at HQ looks like, the WHY behind your businesses, team updates, and other company-focused topics.
Balancing Your Content Pillars
Creating content for some of these pillars might be super easy for you and others might be more of a struggle. The key is to strike a balance in a way that resonates with your audience no matter where they are in their buying journey.
How do you do that? By adding weights to each category.
For example:
Pillar 1 - 60%
Pillar 2 - 20%
Pillar 3 - 10%
Pillar 4 - 10%
This means that 60% of your content is product focused, 20% consists of use cases, 10% are articles or posts about your industry, and 10% is about your company.
These percentages will look different depending on your business, your audience, and where your company is in terms of brand awareness, product popularity, and other factors. BUT typically your product is weighted heavily while your company mission content is very light.
Ready to create your content pillars?
Once you decide on your content marketing goals and established your target audience(s), you’re ready to plan out your content pillars. These pillars will inform the rest of your content marketing strategy and stay with you as your continue to develop a content calendar, publishing schedule, and beyond. Sounds like a big lift (and it is) but oh so worth it when you see how pillars make planning your content so much easier.
Need some help? Trail Mix Marketing is at your service! Let’s chat about your brand and your content needs.