Content pillars for social media: definitive guide to create them and use them effectively

The pillars of the contents for isocial mediaThey are broad topics or topics that act as a guide for the creation of content for your company's social profiles. Keep thecontent productionFocus, they guarantee consistency and help you develop authority around significant issues. These pillars represent the basis on which to build your online presence, providing a solid structure for coherent and effective communication.

What are the content pillars for social media

THEcontent pillars for social mediaThese are themes or key topics and wide -ranging topics that guide the efforts to create content for your company's social profiles. They act as a foundation for your content strategy, maintaining focused production, guaranteeing consistency and helping you develop authority around relevant issues for your reference audience.

We recommend selectingfrom three to five content pillars. Any content you produce should fall into at least one of these pillars. For example, if you own a home furniture brand, your content pillars could be:

• Inspiring interiors
• Style tips
• Color theory
• Corporate news

You can publish content relating to one or more of these topics every day. If you continue to do it consistently, interior design enthusiasts will begin to see your brand as an authority on these issues and as a reliable source of help and inspiration.

Because content pillars are important for your social strategy

The pillars of content for social media are useful because they help you:

Establish the identity of the brand

Use a set of content pillars helps people associate your brand with those specific themes. For this reason, choosing the right pillars is important. They should be topics that:

• They are interested in your target customers
• They help your customers achieve their goals
• They adapt to the mission and values ​​of your brand

For example, consider a brand that sells gardening equipment. Its target audience includes both beginner and expert gardeners who want to have a beautiful garden, learn new gardening techniques and have fun.

The brand's mission is to help gardening enthusiasts at all levels to improve their skills. Its values ​​are useful, encouraging, inspiring and inclusive.

This gardening brand could choose the following content pillars:

• Inspiration for the garden: videos, images and content generated by users showing gardens of inspiration
• Gardening for everyone: Posts that show gardeners from different contexts and communities
• Gardening tips: videos, infographics and lists with advice of experts on cultivation and gardening

Over time, the brand will be able to cultivate an identity that reflects its personality and what it cares about.

Diversify your content offers

The content pillars offer you a range of ideas to publish on, keeping things interesting and allowing you to contact more public. For example, a running shoes brand would not want to publish only on racing shoes. Instead, it could have a pillar on the tips for the race, one on community stories and one to share updates on national and local running events. In this way, the contents are diversified so that there is something for all the brand followers.

Guarantee consistency

Attenuate you to a handful of content pillars avoids you have to constantly find new ideas. This consistency can build trust with the public. And the more a brand appears reliable, the more likely it is that people buy from it. For example, let's assume that a brand that previously published on social media every day no longer published for a while. A potential customer might think that the company no longer worries about its followers and be hesitant in buying from it.

The difference between content and content pillars

Some people use the terms "content pillar" and "content bucket" in an interchangeable way. But in reality they are not exactly the same thing. The content pillars are the general topics around which your brand creates content. The content bucket are instead the large categories or types that you can use to organize your content and plan your social calendar. This means that you can cover almost all your pillars with every type of bucket. We examine four of the bucket of the most common content to better illustrate the concept:

The bucket of educational content

A bucket of educational content helps your audience to acquire the knowledge necessary to achieve its goals and establishes your company as an authority. Educational contents are a fundamental element of the social presence of Wells Fargo. And they are able to cover multiple topics through this bucket. They publish regularly on topics such as staying safe from scams and fraud and how to set financial objectives.

The bucket of inspiring content

The inspiring contents remind people what they want to achieve and help to associate your brand with progress towards those goals. Tombow publishes many inspiring contents to show its audience what extraordinary works of art can create. This inspires the brand's audience, so that they want to return again and again to see what else can do.

Wix è un altro buon esempio. Il brand condivide regolarmente post ispiratori che mostrano siti web di clienti creati con il loro strumento di creazione siti web. Mostrare ciò che può essere realizzato utilizzando la piattaforma Wix sfrutta le aspirazioni delle persone ad avere siti web dall’aspetto professionale.

The bucket of entertainment content

Creare contenuti umoristici o comunque divertenti può aiutare il tuo brand a generare più coinvolgimento ed essere più memorabile. Un rapporto Oracle del 2022 ha rilevato che il 91% delle persone preferisce marchi divertenti e il 72% sceglierebbe un brand che usa l’umorismo rispetto alla concorrenza. I social media sono il luogo perfetto per i brand per esplorare questo lato, poiché le persone sono solitamente sui social per essere intrattenute.

The Cheesecake Factory ha reso l’intrattenimento parte del suo brand. Pubblicano regolarmente contenuti divertenti o scherzosi su tutte le loro piattaforme social. La chiave è però ricordare i tuoi pilastri di contenuto. Perché i post intesi a coinvolgere gli utenti attraverso l’umorismo possono risultare piatti se non sono rilevanti per il tuo brand.

The Bucket of promotional content

Avere un bucket dedicato ai contenuti promozionali può aiutarti a mettere in mostra le tue offerte senza pubblicità a pagamento e aumentare le conversioni. Non vorresti che tutti i tuoi contenuti fossero promozionali, perché le persone vogliono anche essere intrattenute e ispirate dai social media.

But regularly share posts on the advantages of your products or services, promote outflows, etc. It is a good way to keep customers informed and encourage them to buy from you.

Look by Target: includes many promotional content on its social channels and those posts keep the followers informed. Even with promotional content, you can cover a variety of pillars. For example, the above race shoe brand could publish on an imminent race and mention that there is still time to run one of its new releases before the event. Or highlight a community story that shows someone who enters their shop.

How to create and use content pillars for social media

Let's see the nine steps needed to create and implement the content pillars.

1. Define the mission and values ​​of your brand

Having a clear understanding of your mission and values ​​provides you with a starting point to choose your pillars and ensure that they are aligned with the general objectives of your business. To define your mission, consider the following questions:

• Why exists your brand?
• What is your brand fight for?
• What distinguishes your brand from its competitors?
• What do you want to get with your brand (in addition to selling)?
• How will your brand reach your brands?

Notes the answers to the above questions. So add them to a single sentence that represents your declaration of mission. For example, Ikea's mission declaration is:

"Offer a wide range of well -designed and functional domestic furniture products at so low prices that as many people as possible can afford them".

So, define the values ​​of your brand by answering the following questions:

• What are the non -negotiable aspects of your brand (e.g. low prices, high quality, excellent customer service)?
• How do you want people to perceive your brand?
• If your brand was a person, how would you describe it?

Based on your answers, choose five values ​​that in your opinion define your brand. Here are a few examples:

• Authenticity
• Passion
• Innovation
• Reliability
• Social responsibility

2. Identify your target audience

Identifying your target audience and knowing its mentality allows you to choose the most relevant pillars of content for them, increasing your possibilities to reach them. Start by asking you which problem solves your product or service and those who draw more benefits. Suppose your company sells premium ground coffee on subscription to keep costs for customers low. The problem you solve is the lack of access to quality coffee and the people who derive the greatest benefit are the committed professionals who do not have time to stop in a cafeteria.

Then, collect some data in support using tools such asOne2target. Just insert some competitors to get a holistic look at the public of your market. You will see demographic information, on socio -economic status, on the interests and even on the preferences of social media.

The next step is to create one or more buyer person with all this information. These are profiles representing the ideal buyer or ideal buyers for your product or service. Now that you have clearly defined your brand and your audience, you can start formulating some pillars. In this case, you may have one on low -cost coffee tricks and one on morning routines.

3. Perform a search for keywords

Knowing the mission and values ​​of your brand, as well as who is your target audience, is incredibly useful for determining your content pillars. But it is still a good idea to do a search for keywords. This is because the topics that your audience looks for Google are probably of interest also on social media. You can easily search keywords using the Keyword Magic Tool of Semrush.

Enter a wide term relating to your brand and click "Search". You will probably see a long list of related terms. To restrict the field to more specific ideas, use the groups suggested on the left.

As you can see, there are many keywords related to how caffeine contains coffee. Most of them get thousands of searches every month. This could push you to have a pillar focused on information on coffee coffee (facts, comparisons, etc.).

4. Create a clear structure for your content pillars plan

You should now have a list of ideas for the pillars. That you can use to create a structured plan that will inform all your social content. First of all, write the names of your content pillars.

So, write a brief description of the types of content that you will create for each pillar. For example: videos, gifs, infographics, photos and posts. And consider the idea of ​​annotating some more specific ideas under each pillar.

5. Create and public quality content

The quality of your content is as important as the quality of your plan. Social content of good quality attract attention, guide involvement and can even lead to business results. Follow these guidelines to make sure your content is of a high level:

• Attach to the colors, fonts and tone of voice of your brand
• Make in -depth searches for information posts
• Write clear, concise and easy to read texts
• Use the best photographic equipment and videos available
• Make sure that each post provides value in some way
• So, program in advance your publications to maintain consistency

With Semrush social poster, you can quickly and easily plan your social posts through multiple platforms.

6. Repeat the contents on different platforms

Re -proposing your content on different platforms helps to maximize scope and involvement without duplicating efforts. For example, if you have created a post in Carosello for LinkedIn, you can use the same images to create an Instagram Reel. Or, you can use the text of an infographic published on Pinterest to create a text post on X (ex Twitter). Are you not sure on which channels to focus on? Back to consult your audience's social media preferences on One2Target.

7. Measure the results and brings adjustments

Measuring the performance of your content allows you to see which pillars are working well. In this way, you can create even more effective content in the future. So how can you keep track of the results?

SEMRUSH social Analytics holds a trace of key metrics such as reactions, shares and clicks. View data for you, so you can easily see what is working well and where you could improve. And it traces the services of the social media of competitors using social trackers, to see what is working well for them and how to compare. Use all this information to determine if you need to make adjustments to your pillars. For example, you may find that one or two pillars are working particularly well and decide to publish more content of that type. Or, you may find that a competitor is covering a pillar that you don't have and is generating great involvement. This could push you to replace one of your pillars with lower performance.

Raise your brand with content pillars

Pilasts of content for well -chosen social media can help you grow your brand, connect with your audience and even increase conversions.

Source: Semrush