This article was originally published by Victorian Chamber member Attention Experts.

As a marketer or business owner, you have probably heard a lot about content marketing, content calendars, posting five times a week, writing at least one blog post a month, giving value to your audience, and being consistent – the list goes on.

But how do you cover all the above if you’re a one-person team or if your marketing team is very small?

The answer is content pillars!

In this article, we want to help you understand what content pillars are and why they can help you optimise your time and organise your content without running out of content ideas.

Additionally, we’ll give you some insights into how you can create a consistent content strategy across different platforms.

We have a lot of examples and tips to reveal. Let’s dive in!

Defining a content pillar

Content pillars are predetermined topics or themes that define the brand’s content strategy.

These “themes” are generally between three to five pillars. Ideally, we recommend five pillars, and they should directly reflect what your target audience is interested in and indirectly evoke your company’s mission and values.

Each content pillar can be used for different purposes, channels and types of content.

At Attention Experts, we use five content pillars: brand offering, educational or value posts, product offering, company culture, and customer feedback.

Let’s have a look at some content pillars examples:

1: Brand offering

Content that shows what your brand can offer to its customers without directly promoting your services or products. It will help customers to believe in what you offer and build trust.

Example: Webinars, Q&A sessions, awards, PR articles, announcements, and new partnerships.

2: Educational or value posts

People always love learning something new. So finding information that is easy and well communicated will make your audience follow you and see you as a leader in the industry.

Example: Blog posts, YouTube Videos, Reels, How to Carousels, etc.

3: Product offering

Here is your chance to discuss or introduce your products or services, but find a creative way to promote them without sounding pushy or overselling.

Example: Free demos, FAQs, videos, product tours, case studies, etc.

4: Company culture

Highlight your employee’s achievements, congratulate them, and introduce them to your audience. Also, share moments that reflect your company culture and strengthen company values.

Example: Work anniversaries, employee spotlight day, motivational quotes, reels that show the office’s environment, etc.

5: Customer feedback

Show what people say about your company and products

Example: Google and Facebook reviews, product reviews, videos, etc.

In the above five examples, we have different content pillars that will work for most brands. Each pillar of the content will contain various topics suited for each brand and industry.

For example, suppose you’re a beauty brand launching a product and don’t have customer feedback yet. In that case, you can focus on brand offering or educational content instead, and highlight what the company is doing to differentiate between its competitors.

Remember that you can have between three to five content pillars; most importantly, your pillars have to represent relevant content that your target audience will engage with.

Benefits of content pillars

Defining your content pillars will empower your social media content strategy and help you build a strong identity. Your followers will quickly understand your message and know what to expect from your brand. Your audience will find more value and engage more often.

Content pillars also help guide creating specific content for a particular target audience. Since you already have chosen topics based on your target interests, you will speed up content creation and research. Then, you don’t get lost thinking about what to post or, even worse, talking just about yourself or your products.

Additionally, by identifying your content pillars, you can have a sense of organisation. It makes it much easier to create a content calendar and schedule it for all platforms.

Steps to creating your pillars

It may seem a bit complicated, but trust us, it’s not that complicated. To read how to create your content pillars, step by step, continue reading here.