5 Steps to Using Content Pillars for Content Efficiency

 

I’m a huge fan of this concept: you create one awesome piece of content that’s truly engaging, useful, and delightful for your audience and then break it up into different sized chunks and deliver across a variety of mediums. This content tactic is called a “Content Pillar Strategy.”

 

Think about it, would you rather:

 

• Spend 20 hours a week inventing new blog post topics with average traction

-or-

• Spend 40 hours in one week creating an awesome content piece, then 5 hours during the next 8 weeks making it come alive and promoting it

 

The reason I love this so much is that I don’t want to worker harder than I need to. I want to extend the reach and impact of each of my pieces of content and don’t want to get on a treadmill of creating mediocre pieces every week just to watch a few visitors trickle in for each one. I’d rather spend the extra time to create something really good and then distribute it across the web so that as many people as possible have the chance to see it.

 

Let’s break this down and see how we’d implement the Content Pillar strategy from start to finish.

 

 

There are a variety of formats you can build out your content story in, and this goes hand in hand with choosing the theme (that’s next). I can’t put it in better words than how Kapost defined a content pillar:

 

“A content pillar is a substantive and informative piece of content on a specific topic or theme which can be broken into many derivative sections, pieces, and materials. Examples of content pillars include eBooks, reports, and guides.”

 

So you’ll be creating a longer form guide or ebook that’s for an audience that wants to dive deep into your research. Then from there you’ll create derivative pieces in more digestible chunks.

 

 

Choosing the topic of your content piece should come from a known source of pain or joy of your current audience. At least on your first few pieces, then you can be like Steve Jobs and tell people what they want.

 

Here are some sources of inspiration:

 

• What types of questions keep coming up from your audience for your customer support?
• When you share content on social media, what themes get the most traction?
• If you have an FAQ page, what answers are the most popular?
• Are there any big changes in your industry coming up that your audience is passionate about?
• What innovative topics are your early adopter customers talking about the most?