You must post regularly to stay relevant on social media and reap its many benefits for your business. Yet, some days, you might feel particularly uninspired and struggle to create a social media post. This can turn into a vicious circle of struggle.
This is when having content pillars to reference will be a big help. They can help you stay organized and consistent and continue to create the quality content your audience loves.
What is a Content Pillar?
Content pillars are simply the topics your brand consistently creates content for on social media. Generally, a brand will have 3 to 5 content pillars to drive the bulk of its content marketing strategy.
Content pillars are a great idea because:
- They help clarify your niche. Being the expert in your niche area will help to grow your audience. When your niche is nailed down, you will have an easier time finding the people who want to follow you.
- They make planning content much more manageable. Waiting until it’s time to post the content is not the ideal time you want to be coming up with the subject. Content pillars can help you build your content calendar strategically in advance.
The content pillars you choose will be specific to your brand and can include multiple themes. They should also be tailored to your target audience.
Establish Content for Your Pillars
Sometimes, content ideas flood your brain so fast that you can’t possibly remember them; other times, you can sit for hours without thinking of a single thing to write about.
Creating a content bank for your brand is invaluable for keeping things organized and inspiring yourself when you’re not feeling it.
A content bank sounds pretty complicated, but creating one is relatively easy. Create a document with separate sections for each of your content pillars. As you think of content ideas, you can add them to the appropriate section.
You can then remove the ideas as you use them, and you will have an evolving resource of content ideas. You don’t have to rely solely on your creativity, either.
Try these tactics for finding inspiration:
- Analytics: Note your high-performing posts, including captions, visuals, and hashtags. This will help you see what content performs well with your audience and what they will likely engage with.
- Industry trends: Being mindful of things happening in your industry can also help you plan your content.
- Listen to your audience: Check out their comments and questions to find out what they’d like to know more about or what problems they’re facing that you can help with.
Plan and Create Your Content Calendar
Planning your content calendar a few weeks to a month in advance will yield the best results. Last-minute attempts will reduce the quality of your content.
There are three things you can do to make this process incredibly simple and stress-free.
- Consider important dates: Upcoming holidays, product launches, and anniversaries will likely be occasions for which you’ll want to create unique content. These should go on your calendar first.
- Macro content: Next, you’ll want to add macro content. This is your longer content, like blog posts, videos, or podcasts, and since it is a bit more time-consuming, post 1-2 pieces of macro content weekly.
- Microcontent: Microcontent is generally shorter and easily consumed by your audience. You can use them to promote your macro content or post them to add additional value to your audience.
Providing consistent, relevant, and quality content on your social media channels is key to increasing your followers and exploding your business.