You’re creating heaps of content all day, for different channels, different projects and clients. It's easy to get overwhelmed and lose focus.
This is where social media content pillars come into play. They help you create structure in your social media strategy, and make sure you never run out of content ideas.
Let’s take a look at how to create social media pillars for your business or your clients.
FYI: With StoryChief you can automate and analyze all your social media accounts, so you can focus on creating great content. We support scheduling to Facebook, Twitter (X), Linkedin, Instagram, Instagram Reels, TikTok, Pinterest and many more. Try it free! 🙌
Table of contents
- Identify your target audience
- Choose your platform
- Brainstorm topics and keywords
- Create high-quality content
- Promote your content
- Repurpose content
- Create content themes
- Measure and analyze results
- Tip: Pre-made reports for your social media content pillars in StoryChief
What are social media content pillars?
Social media content pillars are key themes that a brand wants to focus on and communicate to its audience through its social media channels. These themes form the foundation of your social media strategy, ensuring consistency and coherence in your messaging.
These themes will generally fall under the following categories:
- Promotional content
- Educational content
- Inspirational content
- Entertaining content
For each category, brainstorm audience interests and your expertise to come up with multiple relevant themes or topics.
Here is an example of what an educational content pillar for ‘content marketing’ could look like:
Why are social media content pillars important?
Social media content pillars provide a strategic framework for your social media marketing efforts. By establishing clear content pillars, you can ensure that your social media content is consistent, focused, and aligned with your business goals.
By identifying content pillars, you can create a roadmap for the type of content you want to create and share. This makes it easier to plan and execute social media campaigns, while maintaining a consistent brand voice across all platforms.
Content pillars are crucial for SEO, building brand awareness, increasing engagement, and driving conversions. By creating high-quality, informative, and engaging content around your content pillars, you can attract more followers, increase your reach and influence, and ultimately drive more traffic and leads to your website.
FYI: With StoryChief, reporting and analytics are seamlessly integrated into one powerful tool, making it easier than ever to track and optimize your content performance. Get started today. 🙌
How to create social media content pillars?
Now we’re ready to move on to the steps you need to take to create social media content pillars.
1. Identify your target audience
Before you start creating any content, it's essential to identify your target audience. Who are you trying to reach? What are their interests, pain points, and needs? Understanding your audience's persona is crucial to creating content that resonates with them and drives engagement.
For example, if you're a fitness coach targeting women between the ages of 25-35, your social media content pillars might include blog posts on:
- "10-minute workouts for busy moms"
- "Healthy meal prep ideas for workdays"
- "Tips for staying motivated during the winter"
2. Align your content to the social media platform
Once you know your target audience, you need to choose the most suitable content distribution channels that are most relevant to them.
Each platform has its unique strengths and limitations, and your content should align with the platform's best practices and user behavior.
- For example, if your target audience is mainly on Instagram, your social media content pillars might include visually appealing posts, behind-the-scenes footage, and user-generated content.
- On the other hand, if you're targeting professionals, LinkedIn is more suitable for sharing thought-leadership articles and industry insights.
With StoryChief, you can easily publish and tailor your content for multiple social channels without copy-pasting or logging in to each channel separately.
3. Brainstorm topics and keywords
Once you have identified your target audience and chosen your platform, it's time to brainstorm topics and keywords.
You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Moz to identify high-volume, low-competition keywords that you can target.
For example, if you're a marketing agency targeting small businesses, your social media content pillars might include topics like:
- "How to create a winning marketing strategy"
- "10 cost-effective marketing ideas for startups"
- "The ultimate guide to social media advertising for small businesses"
However, we know the struggle of keyword research and creating content that performs. It's important to consider the content quality, length, and appropriate use of keywords. StoryChief enables you to analyze your own and your competitors' content, helping you identify high-value keywords to incorporate in your content, giving you an edge over your competitors and increasing your organic traffic.
4. Create high-quality content
Now that you have your topics and keywords, it's time to create high-quality, engaging content. Your content on social media should be informative, entertaining, shareable, and visually appealing.
For example, if you're creating a blog post, you can use eye-catching images, videos, and infographics to break up the text and make it more engaging. You can also use storytelling techniques to make the content more relatable and memorable.
5. Publish and distribute your content
Creating great content is only half the battle. To maximize your reach and engagement, you need to promote your content through various channels. You can share your content on your social media profiles, in email newsletters, or through influencer marketing.
For example, if you're promoting a blog post, you can share it on your social media profiles and tag relevant influencers or brands to increase its reach. You can also use paid social media advertising to boost your content's visibility and reach a wider audience.
Using a content planning and social media marketing tool for this is highly recommended. With StoryChief, you can easily plan and publish your content across multiple channels without the need to copy-paste or log in to each one separately. Try it free.
6. Repurpose content for different platforms
When creating a social media content pillar, it's important to consider the different platforms on which you'll be sharing your content.
Different social media platforms have different requirements and limitations, so you may need to adapt and repurpose your content for each platform.
For example, you might create a long-form blog post as your main piece of content pillar, but then repurpose it into shorter, more visual formats such as infographics, videos, or social media posts.
This allows you to reach different audiences on different platforms and maximize your content's reach and impact.
7. Create content themes
In addition to creating a central content pillar, you can also consider creating content themes that are related to your pillar topic. These themes can help you to create a more diverse range of content and appeal to different segments of your audience.
Here is an example:
- Content pillar: Social media marketing
- Theme 1: Facebook advertising
- Theme 1: Twitter best practices
- Theme 1: Instagram marketing
By creating content around these themes, you can cater to the interests of different audience segments and keep your content fresh and engaging.
Then it’s time to plot these themes on your content calendar. StoryChief has a content calendar that allows you to keep track of content progress and performance.
8. Measure and analyze your results
It's essential to measure and analyze your social media content pillar's performance to refine your strategy and optimize your results. You can use tools like Google Analytics or StoryChief to track your audience growth, engagement, impressions and traffic. Try StoryChief free for 7 days and discover your best content practices.
For example, if you notice that a particular topic or platform is driving more engagement and traffic than others, you can double down on that strategy and create more content around it.
Tip: Access pre-made reports for your social media content pillars in StoryChief
With the campaign feature in StoryChief, you can organize and track performance for each of your chosen content pillars.
Campaigns allow you to:
- Get a quick content overview
- See performance and reports at a glance
This allows you to make data-driven decisions on what pillars to prioritize, as well as stay organized while executing your social media pillar strategy.
StoryChief has a dedicated tab that provides insights for your articles and social posts. This tab offers an aggregated overview of your content performance, eliminating the need to use multiple analytical tools or gather data in spreadsheets.
“StoryChief makes it easy to visualize growth, metrics, and results of your marketing efforts. It’s easy to show the value and ROI of your work to management.” - Joe Spisak, CMO at Soapbox
Examples of social media content pillars
Let's take a look at some real-life examples to inspire your strategy:
Hubspot
Hubspot's social media content pillars include blog posts, e-books, webinars, and courses on topics like inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. Their content is informative, data-driven, and visually appealing, making it shareable and engaging.
Salesforce
Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software company. Their social media content pillars include digital transformation, customer success stories, and thought leadership on the future of business technology.
Buzzfeed
Buzzfeed's social media content pillars include viral quizzes, listicles, and videos on pop culture, news, and entertainment. Their content is highly shareable and appeals to a wide range of audiences, making them one of the most popular social media brands.
Conclusion
Establishing social media content pillars is essential for developing a strong social media presence, gaining endless inspiration for your content, and maintaining an overview of your marketing efforts.
With creativity, consistency, and data-driven insights, you can create social media content pillars that drive engagement, build brand awareness, and generate leads and conversions.
Build and execute your content pillar strategy using StoryChief. Get started free.