Content Pillar Examples To Enhance Your Social Media Strategy

If you’re here, scrolling through this page instead of the million others, you probably already know that social media can transform your brand from the depths of obscurity to household fame practically overnight.

But we’re all battling on the algorithm’s frontline, fighting for precious seconds of our audience’s attention — competing for a connection, an impression or maybe even a sale.

So, are your socials taking flight or are they taking forty winks? If you’re among the 17% of social media marketers who rate creating engaging content as their biggest hurdle, this guide has got you covered. We’ll explore content pillars that unify your messaging, deepen audience connections and give your engagement metrics the boost they’re hungry for.

Wait… Why Do I Need Content Pillars?

Content pillars are the building blocks of your social strategy. They are the central themes or categories you cluster content around to build alignment between your audience and business goals.

By cherry-picking a few concepts to address on your chosen platforms, you can firmly establish your brand within its niche. This also drives deeper value for your audience, with rich and contextually relevant content. Let’s ground this idea with a real-world exercise:

As you may know, Brafton is a company designed to fuel your brand with a suite of digital marketing services. Head over to our Instagram and see whether you can find a few recurring topics based on the headlines. I’ll wait.

(Seriously, go and check. I’ll be here when you get back).

You should’ve come up with a list that reads something like:

Content marketing.
Email marketing.
SEO.
Social media.
Analytics.

If you managed to identify some or all of the above, congratulations — you’ve just defined our Instagram content pillars. Now, if you have a really discerning eye, you’ll have noticed there’s nothing in there about affiliate marketing or trade shows. Why? Because that’s not our jam; your content pillars should speak directly to the value you offer, and to the audience searching for that value. Once you’ve got that down, you can tap into the good stuff.

How Do Content Pillars Enhance My Social Media Strategy?

Focusing your strategy around pillars intensifies your brand voice and positioning. Here’s what else:

Boosts engagement: By focusing content on pillars, you crayon a direct link between your brand and your audience’s interests and needs. This, in turn, attracts more likes, shares and comments. With greater engagement, your posts’ visibility will increase, hauling your reach to new audiences.
Organization: If you get caught up during the planning stages, you can search for contextual topics around your pillars to generate greater insights and value for your audience. Once you’ve established pillars, a competitive analysis will unveil how certain social media content types perform, helping refine your strategy faster.
Time-saving: Producing content is a time-consuming labor of love, and with clearly defined pillars, you can streamline or even partially automate the process. Bonus tip: Repurpose content from a pillar page on your website across different social media channels.
Increased consistency: Both in publishing and tone, content pillars make your social media more consistent. Your audience knows exactly what to expect, cementing your brand as their go-to for specific types of content.

How Do I Choose Social Media Content Pillars?

You’ll want to find the three to five foundational subjects your brand can address across social media content — or even on your blogs. Fewer, and you’ll miss out on variety. More, and your strategy might start feeling too cluttered.

Let’s go to Imagination Land for a moment and picture your brand on one side of a river with your audience on the other; your pillars would support the bridges. The more bridges you create, the greater your opportunity for access and infallible connection.

So, for example, an airline carrier might use some of the following pillars:

Travel inspiration.
Sustainability.
Safety and security updates.
Destination guides.

Air New Zealand includes travel inspo to gorgeous destinations as one of its Instagram content pillars. This works for two reasons: First, because who isn’t dreaming of a vacation? Second, Air NZ (or a similar airline) can help make this vacation happen for you.

If you’re in the beverages sector of FMCG, you might share creative recipe ideas for your audience to try out, like The Botanist did. Not only can you enhance their experience with your product, but if they like the idea of the recipe, you’re giving them one more reason to hit ‘Buy.’

Otherwise, across a ton of industries, sustainability may be something you speak to. This example is from Panasonic, obviously because the company uses plastic in its products, but also because creating with sustainability in mind is one of its core brand values.

By empowering its audience to recycle responsibly, Panasonic positions itself as a leading name in sustainable tech while connecting with consumers at a deeper level. Of course, the eco-friendly discussion can reach almost any industry these days, including oil and gas.

Shell understands that digging up the dinosaurs to burn holes through the ozone layer will likely head out of fashion soon, and discussing renewable energy efforts is a great way to keep the brand relevant.

You can either come up with your pillars alone, collaborate with team members or reach out to your audience with a light survey to learn why they engage with your brand. What value do they specifically seek from you?

Throwing Content Pillars Into Your Mix

So let’s take a minute to ground our ideas. From choosing core themes and building a content pillar strategy to bombarding socials with tight, engaging content, this ultimate guide will move you through rollout in three (mostly) painless phases.

Step 1: Find Your Niche

It’s impossible to generate valuable insights for your audience if you don’t know what you do or who you serve.

Get clear on your brand values. What do you stand for and why? Or, to be more blunt, what do you do better than your competitors? Your unique value probs should sit front and center in your communication strategy.

Research your audience. Who is your ideal customer? Which series do they watch on Netflix? Why do they want to buy from you, not your competitors? Their demographic and psychographic traits, along with personality and interests, should be directly addressed in your pillars.

Nail your brand message. Write out a statement that reads something like “[BRAND NAME] serves [AUDIENCE] who love [NICHE TRAIT OR PREFERENCE] to achieve [AUDIENCE GOAL] with [UNIQUE VALUE PROP].

For instance, “Kombucha-cha-cha helps health fanatics who love low-calorie drinks to achieve better gut health and digestive function with organic kombucha products.”

Step 2: Plan, Plan, Plan

Choose your content pillars. This should be primarily fueled by your brand message. If you’re already active on a social media platform, check your analytics dashboard and see what worked well in the past. Keyword research around your industry or a competitive analysis will also present content pillar examples to help build out your ideas.

Create a content library for each pillar. Start by building a universe of relevant content. Cluster topics around your core themes and use content buckets to offer varied content types, which cover your themes from different angles and infuse brand personality into posts. Content bucket types include:

Educational content: Add value by teaching your audience about your pillars. Remember the post Panasonic made about recyclable plastics? That’s educational.
Promotional content: Social media is the fourth most effective sales channel, as Hubspot reports — so promote your brand with creative use cases, events, product launches and wins.
Entertainment content: We all love a good laugh, and as short-form video slowly takes over social media, make funny or insightful content types around your brand pillars.
Inspirational content: Create a vision for your audience; we’re all looking for something to aspire to. And if you can lead us there like Air NZ gets us to French Polynesia, we’re probably converting.
Engaging content: What better way to boost engagement than getting your audience involved? User-generated content, surveys and cocktail recipes all fall under the banner of engagement-driven content.

Create a content calendar. Behind every good content management strategy is a marketer who abides by their pernicious calendar. Schedule your posts, then try to batch content creation periodically. This ensures you always have enough backlog to post consistently.

Step 3: Get Busy

Implement your strategy. Start posting — and don’t forget to engage with your audience, as this will positively impact your online visibility.

Analyze how your pillars and buckets perform regularly via your analytics dashboard. You may find that your audience engages with one bucket, whereas a different bucket leads to higher conversions. Or, perhaps some of your themes are resonating better than others. This information is critical to tightening your approach.

Optimize your pillar content strategy after a few months. Following a semi-decent period, you’ll see how each content piece performs over time and which illuminated pathways you may follow to reach your pot of social media gold.

Get Strategic: Define Your Pillars

I will hand it to the content pillars: They sound pretty simple, but there’s a respectable amount of work involved. One thing is for sure though, they pack their punch in terms of impact. Embracing content pillars will help you carve out your brand voice, boost social media engagement and strategically align with your audience.

Remember — a flexible content marketing strategy is a fresh strategy, so don’t be afraid to adjust and adapt to trends and seasons as you hone your mastery.