Content Pillars for Social Media Success: Develop Your Plan

It’s important to use content pillars for social media to organize and develop a content strategy. They are a foundation for improving your social media presence, and we’ll share the best practices. 

You’ll find yourself referring back to your content pillars for ideas and a source of inspiration. In this article, we’ll share how to create content pillars to ensure meaningful content production. Also, you can continually optimize your core content pillars as your industry and customer interests change.

Finally, don’t forget to read to the end of the article for help growing your Instagram account. Here at Plixi, we specialize in growing IG accounts to the next level with our in-house strategies.

What Are Content Pillars?

Every brand needs content pillars in their social media campaigns to have a sense of direction. Content pillars in social media marketing are about four to six topics regularly used as the basis for content production. These ideas are the foundation for posts, and specific titles are developed from them. 

There are many advantages to organizing your content pillars strategy, which are as follows:

• Consistency: Coming up with content pillars allows you to create consistent content based on specific themes. This ensures your Instagram followers continue to enjoy the type of content they signed up for. 
• Content ideas: It’s easier to come up with content ideas when you have some pillars to rely on. For example, you can do keyword research based on the core pillars for additional ideas. When you run out of content ideas, you can always add another pillar if it makes sense for your audience. 
• Create a content calendar: It’s easier to create a social media content calendar when you have content pillars. That’s because it gives you a sense of organization and more ideas to draw from. Then, you can use scheduling software to bring the content pillars to life. 
• Increase follower count: Having an organized content strategy will increase your follower count. For example, you can increase your Instagram follower count by focusing on a set of pillar posts popular in your chosen community. 
• Get more sales: Are you growing a business with social media marketing? Then, using content pillars will help you target the right audience to grow sales. You’ll need to start by identifying the content pillars that your audience has an interest in.

How To Create Content Pillars for Social Media?

Are you wondering how to create content pillars for social media? In this section, we’ll share top ideas for how you can come up with ideas worthy of content pillars. Using a combination of these strategies ensures you’ll never run out of content. It’s especially useful for new social media marketers stuck coming up with a direction for their brand.

Research Your Audience

Your content pillars must address the interest of your target audience. Hence, you need to research your target audience to find out what type of content they want. Here are a few ideas for researching your audience:

• Competitor accounts: Inspect competitor social media accounts and look at their content strategy. Focus on competitors with established audiences. The successful ones will have done a lot of research, and you can piggyback off their success. However, don’t copy content ideas since that’s in bad taste. Instead, use the research for inspiration to generate your ideas. 
• Surveys: You can conduct surveys to get more ideas on what type of content your audience wants. This is a productive way to inform your strategy for creating social media content pillars. Take advantage of software that can handle surveys to help organize the research method. 
• Post comments: Inspect your post comments to get an overall sentiment of your content’s success. You may even come across viewer suggestions on what type of content they want to see more. It’s a good idea to look for suggestions if you’re stuck for ideas. 
• Marketing software: Take advantage of marketing software to organize your strategy around content pillars for social media. The software helps create a centralized strategy that all members can focus on. 
• Other marketing channels: You may already have detailed knowledge of what content your audiences want to consume. Hence, consider translating your content ideas for the website and email marketing content to social media.

Keyword Strategy

Keyword research must be a core component of creating content pillars. That’s because you need to concentrate your content on highly-searched keywords. Therefore, you increase your chances of meeting your social media objectives. 

From these core high-traffic keywords, you can explore long-tail keywords with more specific aims. However, these should not be the focus of your strategy. This is especially true at the start of your social media marketing journey. 

Also, you must always develop your keyword strategy to incorporate trends. Therefore, when you see a spike in traffic for keywords, you need to add them to your content strategy.

Analytics Data

You can update or add social media content pillars by analyzing your analytics data. For example, Instagram Insights is an excellent tool available for IG business accounts. Here are a few examples of how you can use the analytics data to get more ideas:

• Hashtag popularity: You can uncover hashtag search traffic and identify the most popular ones for your niche. Then, you can create a content pillar around a cluster of similar hashtags. Also, use these hashtags to get content ideas to address what your audience wants. 
• Engagement metrics: Look at the content types your audience has the most engagement with. This suggests what they like to see and would potentially want more from your account. The type of engagement metrics you can look at include likes, comments, and new followers from a post. 
• Trends: Also you can spot trends by analyzing your account data. Is your niche shifting in a new direction? If that’s the case, then you may need to add new content pillars and remove outdated ones. Social media platforms are fast-paced as the content landscape is constantly moving.

Examples of Content Pillars for Social Media

Do you want to get ideas from examples of content pillars for social media? We’ll help you get the ball rolling if you’re stuck for ideas. You can use these examples to come up with ideas that most social media audiences will find useful.

Educational Content

A large section of internet users love educational content and are actively looking for it online. Most people don’t go on social media to consume educational content but will pay attention anyway. This means you need to put the right educational content in front of your social media audience. Here are a few ideas for you to consider:

• How to use products: Are you selling products that are complicated or tricky to use? You can provide tutorials on how to use your products to increase sales and customer satisfaction. However, you must keep in mind the context of social media content. This means having a fun and casual twist on “how to” content. 
• Product use cases: You can showcase various use cases for your products. This educates your audience on the different reasons why buying your products is a good idea. You may find that sales increase with this type of content. 
• Things to avoid: You can release videos and pictures of the top things you must avoid with your products. This ensures customers use your products in the desired fashion and don’t break them.

News

You can become the source of news for topics related to your content pillars. Some social media followers will use your channels because you aggregate the news in a digestible format. This saves your audience time and allows you to build trust with them.

Furthermore, you can give your opinion on news pieces to make the content unique. Make sure that the commentary on the news is in line with your brand. Also, the content pillars will help you pick relevant topics to ensure you publish relevant content. This herpes keeps the unsubscribe rate low. 

There is an endless cycle of news for most industries and niches, so this is a viable strategy for anyone. However, it’s important to find the best news sources with reliable information. Also, ensure the news sources are fast to release content so your content is not out of date.

Content Pillars for Social Media Best Practices

Now, let’s look at some of the top best practices for social media content pillars to help you get started. These apply to any niche or marketplace that you can implement today. Adding these content pillar ideas can help create better content pillars that you can use to grow your accounts.

How Many Content Pillars Should You Have?

Are you trying to figure out how many content pillars should you have? As a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to have around 4-6 content pillars. However, it depends on the scope of your niche and the number of planned daily posts. Niches that naturally have a wide range of content will benefit from more content pillars. 

Also, you will benefit from more content pillars if you plan on releasing a large amount of content. That’s because additional content pillars will help you generate more ideas.

However, your content strategy will be spread too thin if you have too many content pillars. Ultimately, it’s your decision to choose the right number based on the different factors outlined in this article. 

What Are the Best Types Of Content Pillars for Social Media?

Are you wondering what the best types of content pillars for social media are? Considering the best pillar types helps to increase your odds of having an optimal strategy. Here are some of the best content pillars your accounts must consider:

1. Broad: Having broad content pillars ensures you can branch out many ideas from them. If your content pillars are too specific, then you’ll have trouble coming up with a lot of content.
2. Target audience: You’ll need to find content pillars that interest your target audience. This will increase the number of likes, comments, follow, and sales you will receive. Therefore, base your social media pillars on what the target audience wants to see more. 
3. Meet account objectives: You need to pick content pillars that will meet your account objectives. For example, if you want the audience to know more about your products, then choose the appropriate topics. However, you must select different content pillars if entertaining your audience is the objective. 
4. Based on research: Don’t choose content pillars based on intuition since that can lead you astray. Instead, research the content that your target audience wants to see.

Hire Social Media Agency

Consider hiring a social media agency that can create content on your behalf. They will help you organize the content pillars that have the best effect on your goals. Also, agencies can take the workload off your hands, giving you more time on other aspects of your account. 

It’s important to look for social media agencies that have experience with your niche. This ensures that you have a better chance of getting the results you need fast. Also, ask questions about their strategy to ensure you’re getting a good deal.

Finally, look at the track record of the social media agency to find one worth choosing. Pay attention to websites like TrustPilot and read the reviews. Also, consider the pricing since you want good value for money. 

Same Content Pillars for Different Social Media Platforms

It’s a good idea to have similar content pillars for different social media platforms. That’s because it will help you with content repurposing. This is the practice of using the same piece of content multiple times for different marketing channels. 

There are multiple benefits to this approach, which are as follows:

• Save money: Content development can be expensive, which is especially true if you have an ambitious strategy. Therefore, with content repurposing, you’ll save large amounts of money over the long term. 
• Content alignment: It’s important to have content alignment when using multiple social media channels. That’s because it helps create consistency to avoid confusing your audience. Also, putting out the same content on multiple platforms improves organization and data gathering. 
• Easier: You will dramatically simplify the process of content production when using content repurposing. That’s because you don’t have to think of fresh ideas for every platform.
• Faster: Your content production will be faster when using content repurposing. That’s because you can come up with one piece of content and spread it to all corners of the internet. 

Are Social Media Content Pillars Worth Using?

To conclude, social media content pillars are an important aspect of having successful social media accounts. Therefore, develop your content pillars at the start of your journey to get organized.

The best practices and examples in this article will help you create pillars that help you create content. They are a framework for success and stability to ensure consistency with your account. Therefore, you can use the content pillars for social media to take your posts to the next level.

Are you looking for additional ways to grow your social media accounts? Then, take advantage of the professional services here at Plixi. We specialize in helping Instagram users target specific accounts with our IG influencers and in-house algorithm. So what are you waiting for? Start growing and gaining Instagram followers today.