Creating content this way is not going to be effective. It’s not going to address your audience, present a consistent brand voice or tell a compelling story that will help to grow your business. No matter how good your content is, it needs to have direction to work. A content pillar is the solution.

Structuring content with a defined focus, relevant to both business and brand image with the customer in mind, is how to create content that stands out from the crowd. Content pillars are the structuring tool to use to help you achieve this. Giving your content structure gives it the strength to build-up a business brand image that increases growth, customer base, and loyalty.

Content pillars

Structural engineers use pillars in the following way according to study.com:

• To provide vertical support.
• It is structured using bricks or blocks that are built-up.
• There is a load bearing purpose.
• It has a pleasing visual aesthetic once built.

Writers use content pillars in the same way. Structuring and building to support the content creation process, pillars use multiple forms of content, written, visual, and aural. The content forms all share the same topical theme and content is structured to bear the load of a topics various discussion points. Pillars support the creation of cohesive, consistent content that builds a brand and customer relationships.

Pillars are both narrative and marketing tools for crafting content that is relevant, compelling, and effective. Giving a framework to structure strong messaging that empowers, persuades, and educates audiences around specific topics, content pillars align with business values. Supporting the story telling process, there’s a structure to the structure the pillar provides your business story.

Structuring the pillar

A content pillar provides a bespoke content creation strategy that is uniquely structured to tell your business story, capture your business values, and capture your target audience. Pillars build focused, specific, and relevant frameworks for content creation. Taking customer profiling information and business goals and values into account, the first step in constructing a pillar is to define the topic.

Topic

Defining this topic is like finding the conversation piece, the topic you want to talk to your customer about the most. It’s a topic that needs to align with your business values, brand image, story, and offerings. Your topic does not need to be niche; it can be broad as you can create relevant sub-topics within the pillar.

View topics as bespoke and dynamic entities, tweaking them is a necessary part of structuring and actively employing them as part of a content creation strategy. Including data analysis when making changes will benefit the pillar structure and generate better customer engagement.

A content pillar is used to create cohesive content across a variety of platforms, including digital and print mediums. Aligning your topic with your larger brand messaging increases the chances of conveying a successful story. Resonating with your customer across all mediums of communication is the ultimate purpose of using content pillars. The content pillar structures the topic of conversation with your customer; conversations that will take place in many forms.

Form of content

Content pillars provide a topical structure applicable to all forms of content. Providing structure through a topic, content creation is tailored to the format by meeting the storytelling needs of your customer.

Using multiple types of content will help your message to transmit to customers more effectively. For example, if your target customers are busy mums, some may prefer to quietly read of an evening, whereas others may prefer a quick video because they are short on time. You may find both mums on Facebook, a platform which lets you share reels and links to blogs. Both mums fit your customer profile and can be found on Facebook, but they have different methods of consuming content.

Content pillars help you structure a more complete and effective content strategy that will target more customers. Crafting using a pillar structure increases engagement by capturing customer attention with targeted content campaigns.

Customer profile

It is important to have customer profiles and understand your target audience when creating a content pillar. This helps you decide the best type of content to make and the best platform to share it on. While creating customer profiles is distinct from the process of creating a content pillar, profiling should inform your decisions when crafting copy and choosing topics. The topic, and sub-topics, you choose for your pillar need to resonate with your audience.

At the heart of your pillar topic, and embedded within the brand story, needs to be the value and solution your content brings to your customers. Creating content with that perspective in mind is crucial. Conversing with customers in your brand’s tone of voice consistently is an essential part of telling your story. Telling your business story with varied purpose will increase engagement and reduce the risk of repetition and customer boredom.

Content Purpose

Content purpose is the way in which you present content to an audience. Is your content going to educate, inform, persuade, entertain or sell to your audience? Including the purpose of your content in your pillar strategy ensures the creation of a diverse range of content. Content that meaningfully engages with your customers.

Communicating with your audience through a variety of purposes, aligning under one topic, helps build deeper and more meaningful customer relationships. Developing brand expertise through sharing knowledge and siting products and services as meaningful solutions demonstrates genuine consumer understanding. Affording care and consideration for your customer in your content creation strategy adds value to the customer connections you make. Your pillars should aim to build a content strategy which is not constantly pitching sales increases engagement and builds loyalty.

There is more than one are of expertise a business can share to develop customer loyalty. Just as a story has layers and depth, businesses have knowledge on more than one topic. This is why to building your content creation strategy involves the creation of more than one pillar.

Number

Businesses need multiple content pillars to build robust and engaging content strategies to add value and communicate with customers. Structuring customer communication through one content pillar alone cannot be done. Consistently talking about one topic will not retain customer attention, as topics will become stale and information will be repetitive.

Most businesses need three to five content pillars to build their strategy from. Three to five pillars help to generate content for your business that is varied yet focused. Providing a topical structure linking with your business values, pillars help businesses promote their expertise.

Continuity of voice helps in building engagement across all areas where you communicate with customers. By building three to five pillar topics to generate content you garner greater customer engagement through varied topic discussions. In using content pillars to share your compelling focused content, you craft consistent brand stories with clear values and messaging which builds trust. In cohesive storytelling, the weight a well-constructed pillar bears is immense.

Structural support for storytelling

Pillars stand tall providing a firm structural support for effective storytelling. Providing a topical focus to be shared through all mediums, content pillars focus narrative output. Business employees who work on content creation can collaborate more effectively working to the structure of a content pillar. Using a content pillar focuses storytelling by providing clear expectations for purpose, form, and content. This helps to create a consistent brand image.

Content pillars allow businesses to choose how to distribute their stories while maintain a clear and consistent voice and conversation with customers. This helps to build meaningful relationships with all customers as a business becomes a brand leader and trusted subject matter expert. Customers turn to businesses who demonstrate expertise and solutions which meet customer needs successfully. Sharing business stories that have consistent messaging helps to build this trust and relationship.

Stories answer customer queries in relation to the topic presented in the pillar. The structure of the pillar within the stories should however be imperceptible. The structuring process is for strategic purposes only. The focus on presenting specific content topics and formats is an indiscernible process to your customer. If it is visible it affects the aesthetic of a content pillar and can lead to dissonance.

Aesthetic support for storytelling

Business storytelling, although structured, should have an indiscernible structure as the words craft a compelling narrative with a natural flow. Points about your topic should naturally follow on, like a conversation. If the structure is showing, it’s like talking about the weather to be polite and avoid silence.

Readability is part of the aesthetic support and is not to be confused with a visible structure. Content should be easy to read. This means it is scannable, separated with paragraphs and headings, avoids dense masses of text, uses short sentences, and an active tense. This makes content more effective.

Visibility of the pillar structures creates dissonance in your brand messaging. Customers can see the plan and that does not foster authentic relationships. Similar brands telling better stories and providing more compelling authentic content poach customers who become disengaged by business narratives.

Dissonance

Dissonance in content pillars is not uncommon and it comes from not having a full understanding of one component part of your pillar, such as target audience.

It is crucial to think of your content pillar as a living and malleable structure that you can adapt. If you are consistently missing the mark with your content or finding yourself with customers who expect a different service than you offer, your content may be communicating with the wrong people for your brand.

Use analytics and data to inform your pillar and the sub-topics you build your content around. A conversation can always be redirected, but the longer it goes on, the harder it becomes to get back to an original point. It is important to reassess your data and amend your content regularly.

Dissonance can also occurs within a pillar when building out sub-topics. Sub-topics need to relate back to the main topic, whilst maintaining core business values. Creating content which strays too far from your topic and goes off on a tangent will cause dissonance.

Hypothetical example

You create a pillar on the topic selling dog food. Within this pillar you create numerous sub-topics about different dog breeds needing different dog food. Then you create a funny meme about different breeds. You are straying too far from your pillar. This will create dissonance in your brand message and you will attract customers interested in learning about dog breeds rather than dog food.

Your pillars help to situate your brand in your niche and to establish you as the go to for customers. Confused messaging can impact your business negatively, as can a structure which bores customers and decreases engagement through predictability and poor messaging.

The benefits of using pillars

The benefits of using content pillars for your creation strategy are extensive. Using content pillars impacts your brand cohesion across all areas: teamwork, audience communications, customer retention and loyalty, brand awareness for new customers, and brand growth. Pillars provide a roadmap to follow which is dynamic and easy to implement. Some of the many benefits of employing them include:

• Inspiring your content ideas.
• Shaping your consistent brand messaging.
• Showcasing the strength of your brand messaging.
• Articulating the brand story in diverse ways that create meaningful customer engagement.
• Making it easier for teams to work on different parts and come together having created content which has the same topic and direction.
• Storytelling is easier for your team who become stronger with a clear shared vision.

Conclusion

Don’t just sit down and write. Content will be scatty and hard to follow for your customers. No matter how good your content is, if it isn’t part of a larger strategy for communication it won’t generate results. Next time the clock is ticking and you sit down to write, you will know what to write about because your content pillar will have the topic for your engaging story waiting. Delivering the brand vision and topic through a targeted and engaging story, you’ll transport your customer to join you on a topic specific trip around the Parthenon.