Understanding Content Pillars

When we talk about content, we often focus on keywords, titles and even writing styles. However, Content Pillars are often ignored or not prioritized. Today on the blog, we’re exploring a deeper understanding of Content Pillars: what they are and how they can be best utilized to serve the overall digital marketing strategy. 

What are Content Pillars?

• • First of all, what are content pillars? Content pillars are the foundational building blocks of content marketing. They’re the topics, ideas and concepts that you will use to create a consistent message across your website and social media channels.
  • These pillars will help you create a comprehensive and consistent content strategy that will grow your brand and drive sales. Content pillars are like building blocks. They can be used to create structure around your marketing efforts, which will make it easier to create relevant and consistent content that users are interested in.
  • Content pillars should be relevant to your target audience and should be based on their needs and behaviors.
  • In other words, content pillars are a way to organize your content into smaller, more digestible chunks. We like to think of Content Pillars as a way of organizing all your content available online. It’s a way of helping you create your own voice, attracting visitors and drawing in new customers.
  • Now that we know what content pillars are, how can we best utilize them?

How Do You Create Content Pillars?

• • The first step in creating your content pillars is to brainstorm topics that are important to your business. You can use these as the foundation for all of your future content creation. Once you’ve determined what topics you want to cover, you can start to develop them into more specific ideas or subtopics.
  • For example, if one of your pillars is “Customer Service,” then one of its subtopics might be “Customer Service Best Practices.”
  • Let’s look at another example of a content pillar. If you’re a manufacturer of office chairs and have an ecommerce website, your main topic might be “Office Chairs.” Underneath this topic would be different subtopics like “Task Chairs” and “Executive Chairs,” each with their own related content pillar.
  • The goal is to organize your content in a way that makes sense to visitors who enter your site through Google or another search engine looking for specific information. For example, if someone searches for “office chairs,” they may expect all the results on page one of Google’s search results page to be about office chairs — not task chairs or executive chairs or anything else that’s related because the searcher didn’t specify which type of chair he was interested in buying.

Implementing Content Pillars

Now that we know what content pillars are and how to best utilize them, let’s look at how to implement the content pillars with real examples. 

• • Education – This can include anything from tutorials and guides to courses and certifications. 
  • Promotion – If you’re using a blog as part of your content marketing strategy then promotion could mean anything from product reviews to giveaways or contests. 
  • Customer support – If you’re selling products or services then customer support is essential to your business’ success. This can be done through FAQs or even live chat options on websites like PayPal or Stripe.

Whenever you decide on a content pillar, ask yourself: 

1. 1. Purpose (What is this post trying to accomplish?)
   2. Audience (Who is this post written for?)
   3. Keywords (What words are most likely to be used by my audience when searching for this kind of content?)
   4. Channel (Where does this post belong on my website? Do I need more than one channel for this particular pillar?)

Creating and effectively using content pillars can be an efficient method for organizing your content. Each pillar is the most important point you want your audience to take away from a piece of content. By identifying your content pillars first, you allow yourself to write in a focused manner that is easier for readers to organize their thoughts and encourage them to take action.