Creating content for social media is crucial for your brand to stay relevant, but this content must be of consistent quality.

In the long-term, it is high value content that will hook your target audience and keep them coming back for more.

Understanding your target audience is the first step to creating content pillars your customers are interested in. It’s these pillars that will help guide your social media strategy and provide inspiration for spin-off content that keeps your audience engaged.

What are Content Pillars?

Content pillars are topics that resonate with your target audience.

They are the topics your typical buyer would be typing in to various search engines. Understanding your target customer is key to defining your pillars. The easiest way to start organising your content around your main thematic pillars is by creating a few large pieces of bedrock content.

Read more: The Beginner’s Guide to Content Pillars

What is Bedrock Content?

A piece of bedrock content is a longer piece of content focused on your pillar themes. It should be engaging and encourage some kind of conversion, whether that is to buy a piece of jewellery or pick-up the phone and give you a call. This larger piece of content can then be the inspiration for many smaller pieces of content, creating a spider web of relevant material (that Google will love).

Read more: How to Create the Perfect Piece of Bedrock Content

Social Media Content Pillars from Bedrock Content

A natural place to start for your social media content pillars is the bedrock content on your website. These have already been curated with your brand in mind and should be relevant to your social audience. Creating social media spin-off content derived from your original bedrock content is the best way to keep a clear brand message throughout. The following fictional example illustrates how this can be done:

The Brand:

A fitness instructor targeting young females aged 20-40 interested in fitness and mindfulness.

The Unique Selling Point:

Customers attend three classes and they receive a free 30 minute guided meditation class

The Content Pillar:

The Essential Guide to Meditation

The Bedrock Piece:

A long-form article outlining the history, importance and practice of meditation

Youtube Content:

Short videos of meditation techniques and methods, as well as customer testimonials about the importance of meditation in their own lives

Instagram Content:

Weekly meditation top tips, Instagram Stories hosted by your experts, behind-the-scenes of classes, breathing techniques…

Breaking down the main bedrock piece into smaller pieces of content across various social media channels keeps the message consistent. It also allows followers to delve deeper if they are interested in finding out more.

Your content pillars for social media don’t necessarily have to be exactly the same as your pillars for content marketing. For example, on social media you may add a ‘Daily Hacks’ pillar that focuses on helpful and brand relevant DIY videos for your customers. These short videos lend themselves to social media, rather than your blog, and are therefore part of a unique content pillar for social media.

Why This Requires Planning

To have an effective presence online, your brand’s social media content needs to have a purpose and align with your overall brand message. This can be especially tricky if you’re creating content for multiple social media channels as each platform needs different content types that speak to different users.

Although there are essentials that are never going to change when it comes to social media marketing, it’s still crucial to understand who you are speaking to before planning for each platform.

Planning your content pillars and using them as a foundation for your social media strategy will help you focus your message. It will also save you time when trying to come up with content ideas. Making a plan in advance will also make it easier for you to create a web of linked content.  This will eventually benefit your organic SEO as well.

Using Social Media to Ask Questions and Test Your Content Pillars

Finally, it’s important to remember that social media works as a two-way stream. It’s a great place to learn more about your followers and understand their behaviour. This can be done by engaging in social listening, asking for feedback, conducting polls and interacting with user comments.

This feedback loop will help you refine your buyer personas and content pillars over time. The more relevant your content pillars are to your target audience, the more likely your content will resonate with them.

If you need support creating a social media strategy that aligns with your content pillars, then please get in touch with The William Agency.

We are a brand storytelling and branded content agency with bags of experience and plenty of ideas to share.