Feeling swamped by endless content creation? You're not the only one. Managing various projects, channels, and clients can be tough. But don't worry, there's a solution: Social Media Content Pillars.
What are social media content pillars?
Social media content pillars are key themes or overarching topics that a brand wants to focus on and communicate to its audience through its social media channels. These themes are the foundation and building blocks for your social media content strategy, ensuring consistency and coherence in your brand messaging. It allows for a structured approach to social media and is an essential part of your social media strategy.
These main themes will generally fall under the following categories:
- Promotional content
- Educational content
- Inspirational content
- Entertaining content
For each category, brainstorm unique audience interests and your expertise to come up with multiple relevant themes or specific 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 brand values, social media brand goals, and your desired audience.
By identifying content pillars, you can create a roadmap for the post types you want to create and share. This makes it easier to plan and execute social media campaigns while maintaining brand consistency across all platforms and reaching a bigger potential audience.
Content pillars are crucial for SEO, increasing social media audience engagement, building brand loyalty, brand awareness, and driving conversions. By creating high-quality, informative, and engaging content around your content pillars, you can attract more followers, boost your online presence, and ultimately drive more traffic and leads to your website.
FYI: With StoryChief you can automate and analyze all your social media accounts, so you can focus on creating great content. Try it free!
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.
0. Get a tailored content strategy based on your content pillars, target audience, and company URL
When you sign up for a free StoryChief trial, our AI content strategy wizard jumps into action, tailoring a content strategy aligned with your core values, target audience, brand pillars and industry trends.
This digital wizard analyzes your website, providing a personalized strategy with fresh post ideas, targeted SEO keywords, and a meticulously planned content calendar – all in minutes.
Here is an example of the content pillars it generated for StoryChief.
1. Identify your target audience
Before you start creating any content, it's essential to identify your niche target audience and perform audience research. Who are you trying to reach? What are your readers’ interests, pain points, and needs? Understanding your audience's persona is crucial to creating content that resonates with them to get the most engagement, boost comments and shares.
For example, if you're a fitness coach targeting women between the ages of 25-35, your social media content pillars might include blog content on:
- "10-minute workouts for busy moms"
- "Healthy meal prep ideas for workdays"
- "Expert tips for staying motivated during the winter"
Related article: B2B Content Strategy Template (+ Free Strategy Tool)
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 with the biggest relevance to them to boost audience attention.
Each social media page has its unique strengths and limitations, and your content types 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 high-quality images, visually appealing posts, behind-the-scenes footage, user-generated content, and carousel posts.
- 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 relevant topics and relevant 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 broad topics like:
- "How to create a Social media content 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 blog content or a pillar page, 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 top 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 content 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 specific audiences on different platforms and maximize your content's reach and impact.
7. Create content buckets
In addition to creating a central content pillar, you can also consider creating content themes or content buckets that have relevant content to your pillar topic. These core themes can help you to create a more diverse range of content and appeal to different segments of your audience.
Here is an example:
- Core themes: Social media marketing
- Cluster 1: Advertising on Facebook
- Cluster 2: Best practices for Twitter
- Cluster 3: Marketing on Instagram
By creating content around these specific 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 social media 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.
Tools like Google Analytics or StoryChief can help you track your audience growth, engagement, impressions, and traffic. 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.
“StoryChief makes it easy to visualize growth, key metrics, and results of your marketing efforts. It’s the best way 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 content pillar 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.
Build and execute your social media content pillar strategy using StoryChief
And there you have it—a blueprint to content nirvana. Social Media Content Pillars paired with StoryChief is your ticket to strong brand identity, brand recognition, and conversions. Don't just take our word for it—experience it yourself.
Ready to kiss content chaos goodbye? Dive into the world of seamless social media management with StoryChief. Try it for free and enjoy stress-free content creation.
