Discover the Types of Content Pillars & How to Create Them

Sometimes, the content creation process faces various challenges, such as finding the time to come up with ideas and produce content. However, these challenges can be solved by creating content pillars.

In practice, several types of content pillars can make the content production process easier for your business. Through this article, you will learn about the types of content pillars, how to create them, and even tips on measuring their success. Let's take a look at the explanation until the end!

What Is a Content Pillar?

A content pillar is the main foundation for developing an overall business content strategy. If we compare it to a building, the content pillar is the pillar, while the content is the roof, walls, floors, and other parts of the building. Therefore, content pillars are needed to create structured and consistent marketing content.

Generally, a brand has 3–5 content pillars depending on the needs of the audience and the brand. Content pillars need to be developed for various types of content, including social media posts, blogs, podcasts, e-books, and infographics.

Types of Content Pillars

In general, content pillars are divided into several types, including:

1. Promotional 

As the name implies, this content pillar aims to promote products or services and encourage the audience to buy them. Therefore, content in the promotional category must present the advantages of the product over other similar products.

Although its main purpose is to increase sales, it is not recommended to create hard-selling content that always highlights price and features. Try to emphasize the value that the audience will get if they buy your product. Some examples of promotional content are testimonials, endorsements, product demos, and promo countdowns.

2. Educational

If you want to get the audience's attention, give them valuable content by presenting educational content.

Educational content can be used to explain the benefits of the ingredients or the creation process of the product. Additionally, you can also create content that discusses topics that are still relevant to the product.

For example, if you sell electronic devices such as laptops or mobile phones, create educational content about gadget maintenance tips or reviewing features that many users are unfamiliar with.

3. Conversational

The third type of content pillar is conversational, which focuses on engaging the audience with the brand. Interactive content is effective for building closeness and trust with the audience as well as increasing engagement on related platforms.

Some examples of conversational content are Q&A, polls, interactive quizzes, live chat, and users’ stories about using your product.

4. Entertainment

The entertainment content pillar covers a variety of entertaining content. It cannot be denied that nowadays many audiences begin to recognize a brand through its funny or unique content. Ultimately, many brands rely on entertainment content to attract new audiences while retaining old ones. 

Moreover, the entertainment content pillar also plays a crucial role in ensuring that audiences do not feel like they are being treated just as marketing objects. Even though it is entertaining, you still have to ensure that the content is relevant to the products offered and the brand's values.

5. Agile

If you have ever seen content that discusses the latest trends or events and something that has gone viral, that is an example of agile content pillars.

With these content pillars, brands can encourage audiences to stay relevant to current conditions. However, the form is not always something that has gone viral, but can be themed around commemorating a moment or responding to a specific event.

Read also: The Importances of Content Marketing for Business

Benefits of Having Content Pillars

Brands that have content pillars will gain many benefits, including the following:

• Connect with your audience: Basically, content pillars are created with the audience's needs in mind. By implementing them consistently, brands can always connect with their audience and avoid creating content that deviates from their needs.
• Well-defined content production: Content pillars serve as a basic framework that helps focus ideas and content direction. This is important so that every step of content production stays on track.
• Better brand consistency: By following content pillars, your content can consistently reflect your brand identity. Identity relates to how a brand addresses its audience and positions itself in the market.
• Improved website performance: Content pillars help brands create content that is relevant to their niche. Thus, search engines will consider related websites to have authority, making them more likely to appear at the top of search results.
• Easier omnichannel content distribution: Since one content pillar can be broken down into various content formats, brands do not need to come up with new ideas from scratch for each platform. With one main idea, brands can repackage content and adapt it to the characteristics of each platform.

How to Create a Content Pillar

To create a content pillar, you can follow the steps below:

1. Create a User Persona

A user persona is a fictional character that represents the users of a company's products or services. This character will help you understand user needs so you can develop the right content strategy.

User personas need to summarize user names, demographics, goals, motivations, pain points (problems experienced), and how they interact with the product. For reference, you can use data from social media or conduct a simple survey.

2. Conduct Trend and Competitor Research

After creating user personas, be sure to observe the current trends in the industry and the strategies used by competitors. In this case, there is one important thing to remember, which is not copying your competitors' strategies entirely. 

Use the Observe, Copy, Modify method so that your content is not considered plagiarism. Some tools that can be used for research include BuzzSumo, Google Trends, Semrush, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, and SimilarWeb.

Read also: Content Research Guide: 8 Tips for Writing Quality Content

3. Determine the Main Pillars

The next step is to determine 3-5 main pillars that will form the foundation of all brand content. Remember, the main pillars must be able to be developed into many content formats. The goal is for the audience to be able to consume content in various ways and for content distribution to be more efficient.

For example, you have a health drink brand. Here are some examples of social media content pillars that can be used:

• Promotional: Featured products, benefits, customer testimonials, and special offers.
• Educational: Simple habits for staying healthy.
• Conversational: Polls and light discussions about health drink consumption habits.
• Entertainment: Funny stories and relatable content about daily drinking habits.

 

Now, from the content pillars above, try to develop them into various content formats. For example, from the educational pillar above, here are some developments:

• Instagram Feed Carousel: 5 healthy habits that are commonly underestimated. 
• Instagram Reels: Morning routine to maintain stamina throughout the day.
• Instagram Stories: Interactive quiz about healthy ingredients.

4. Conduct Keyword Research and Mapping

The fourth step is to conduct keyword research and keyword mapping.

In keyword research, you need to find keywords with high search volume but realistic competition. This is essential to ensure your content is appealing to your audience, preferred by Google, and can compete with competitors. Keyword research can be done using tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs.

Meanwhile, keyword planning is mapping the obtained keywords into main keyword and variant keyword categories. By grouping them into categories, the content becomes more structured, and website performance monitoring becomes easier.

5. Creating Content Planning

Content planning is important for maintaining the quality and consistency of publications. Besides that, time, budget, and manpower can be allocated effectively.

Content planning is generally organized in a content calendar that includes upload times, content types, topics, platforms, and objectives. You can create a content calendar using Google Sheets, Meta Business Suite, Notion, or Trello.

Tips for Measuring the Success of Content Pillars 

Even though the content has been uploaded, it does not mean that the implementation of content pillars is complete. You must regularly monitor its performance and measure its success rate. Here are some tips you need to know in measuring the success of content pillars:

• Observe engagement with the audience: The success of social media content pillars is closely related to engagement metrics such as the number of likes, comments, and shares. You can find this out from the analytics feature on each platform.
• Monitor SEO performance: To measure the success of a website content pillar, pay attention to SEO performance, which includes search engine rankings, page views (amount of traffic to a page), time on page (time spent on a page), and bounce rate.
• Monitor lead generation and conversion: Look at the number of people who filled registration forms, downloaded e-books, or subscribed to newsletters. Tools that can help include Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Meta Ads Manager.
• Pay attention to audience feedback: Create polls or Q&A sessions to see what your audience thinks about your content.

 

That concludes our discussion on the types of content pillars and how to create as well as measure their success. With careful planning, content pillars can be the starting point for the success of your marketing content.

However, if you are still unsure about how to determine the right content pillars and measurement methods, it is time to collaborate with cmlabs. 

Through its Social Media Management services, cmlabs is ready to help your business perform better on digital platforms. cmlabs' Social Media Management services include content research, audience and competitor analysis, content creation, editing, performance analysis, and much more. 

If you have any questions about this service, feel free to contact us now and get the best offer!

Read also: Content Hub: Definition, Types, and Tips for Making It