Content Creation: Strategies Built on Pillar Content

Eric Siu

Content creation plays a pivotal role in establishing your brand’s online presence and driving engagement. To maximize your efforts and achieve exceptional results, it’s crucial to harness the potential of your brand’s pillar content.

In this blog post, we’ll explore how you can leverage pillar content to skyrocket your output, amplify your reach and captivate your target audience.

So, let’s dive in!

Jacqueline Foster

Demand Generation Marketing, Lever.co

We can count on them to bring new ideas to the table consistently

Amplify Content Reach

What Is Pillar Content?

Pillar content, also known as pillar pages, is a content marketing strategy that involves creating comprehensive and in-depth pieces of content around a central topic or theme.

The purpose of pillar content is to serve as a foundational resource that covers all the essential aspects of a particular subject.

A pillar page typically provides a broad overview of a topic, addressing key subtopics and providing links or references to more detailed content on each subtopic:

Think of it as the core content asset that showcases your knowledge and authority in a specific area. It could be a blog post, a podcast episode, a video, or any other format that resonates with your strengths and preferences.

Pillar content can be defined in a lot of different ways, but for the purposes of this piece, we’re defining it as a piece of content that your organization is most proficient at producing, be it written content, video content, podcasts, graphics, you name it. Other content should be looked at as a tertiary priority that supplements and supports your dominant content.

Essentially, “pillar content” is simply the manifestation and expression of what you’re good at doing. You might be able to dabble in other areas of content and even do so competently, but pillar content will remain the category of content that you can reliably knock out of the park every time.

Benefits of Pillar Pages

Pillar content provides a wider breadth of information that people are searching for all in one place. Other benefits include:

Longer time spent on your site’s pages. The more content available for users to consume, the more time they’ll spend doing so.
A decrease in bounce rate. If users find what they’re looking for on your page, they won’t go back to Google to find another source.
Backlinks and a ton of social media shares. Pillar pages get shared widely and often, especially among influencers in a given space.
Gets traffic throughout the lifetime of your blog or website. Pillar content is evergreen content, so its value doesn’t diminish over time.
A high Google ranking. The high word count, shares and backlinks will all contribute to improved visibility on SERPs.

Dive Deeper: Omnichannel Marketing: Using the Content Sprout Method to Overcome Info Overload

The Power of Content Sprouting

Content sprouting is a marketing concept that allows you to maximize the impact of your pillar content. By expanding its reach and repurposing it across various channels, you can engage with a wider audience and achieve exponential growth.

Let’s explore some key tactics to expand the power of content sprouting:

Embrace Different Social Networks: Don’t limit yourself to a single social network. Embrace a diverse range of platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, and more. Each platform offers unique opportunities to connect with specific demographics and engage with your target audience.
Leverage Video Content: Visual content is highly engaging and has the potential to reach a vast audience. Consider creating video content from your pillar content, such as YouTube videos, live streams, or webinars. Videos can be shared across multiple platforms and are highly shareable, increasing your content’s reach and visibility.
Harness the Power of Visuals: Visual content creation goes beyond videos. It also includes compelling images, infographics, slideshows, and interactive graphics. Visuals can convey information more effectively, enhance user experience, and increase social media engagement. Create visually appealing assets that capture the essence of your pillar content and share them across relevant platforms.
Optimize for SEO: Ensure your content is optimized for search engines by incorporating relevant keywords and meta tags. Conduct keyword research to identify high-value keywords related to your pillar content. Include these keywords naturally within your blog posts, videos, and other formats to increase your visibility in search engine results.
Repurpose Across Formats: Don’t limit yourself to a single format. Convert your pillar content into various formats to cater to different preferences. For instance, transcribe podcast episodes into blog posts, extract key points for social media captions, and repurpose visual content into downloadable guides or e-books. By offering content in different formats, you can appeal to a broader audience and increase engagement.
Collaborate with Influencers: Partnering with influencers or industry experts can significantly amplify your content’s reach. Identify influencers who align with your niche and collaborate on content creation. This can include guest blog posts, joint videos, or co-hosting webinars. The exposure to their audience will expose your pillar content to a wider network, driving traffic to your website.
Share on Community Forums: Engage with niche communities and forums related to your content. Participate in discussions, answer questions, and share valuable insights. By providing helpful and relevant content, you establish yourself as an authority in the community and attract potential followers who may be interested in your pillar content.
Email Marketing: Utilize your email list to distribute your pillar content and related derivatives. Segment your subscribers based on their interests and preferences, and tailor your emails accordingly. Include snippets, links, or summaries of your content and encourage recipients to engage further by visiting your website or subscribing to your social media channels.

Maximizing Your Pillar Content Output

To exemplify how content sprouting works, let’s consider an example of a podcast episode. Imagine you record a three-hour episode with valuable insights.

Here’s how you can repurpose it:

Blog Posts: Transform key takeaways from the podcast into a comprehensive blog post, highlighting the main points and providing additional context. This written format appeals to readers who prefer in-depth analysis and reference material.
LinkedIn and Twitter: Break down the podcast episode into smaller snippets and share them as thought-provoking LinkedIn articles or engaging Twitter threads. This approach enables you to cater to diverse platforms and capture different segments of your audience.
YouTube Videos: Extract the most compelling segments from the podcast and create standalone YouTube videos. These videos can act as teasers, directing viewers to the full podcast episode and enhancing your reach on the popular video-sharing platform.
Social Media Shorts: Craft short, captivating snippets from your podcast episode to share as daily or regular shorts on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Stories and YouTube Shorts. These bite-sized videos are perfect for capturing attention in a fast-scrolling environment.

Visual Content Creation: Leverage your pillar content to generate visually appealing content assets, such as infographics, slideshows, or interactive graphics. Visual content can enhance engagement and make complex ideas more digestible for your audience.
Content Curation: Compile the most valuable insights from multiple podcast episodes into curated content pieces, such as “Top 10 Tips” or “Best Practices” articles. This approach allows you to consolidate your expertise and offer easy-to-consume resources for your audience.

Dive Deeper: How to Use Google Keyword Planner for Content Creation

Expanding Your Content Distribution

Achieving a 10X output doesn’t stop at repurposing your content; it also involves maximizing its reach across different platforms.

Here are a couple of key considerations to think about:

Social Network Diversity: Embrace multiple social networks, including Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, and more. Each platform has its unique user base, and by being present on all of them, you increase the chances of reaching different segments of your audience.
Algorithm Optimization: Don’t shy away from posting the same piece of content on multiple networks. Algorithms ensure that only a fraction of your followers see each post. By diversifying your content distribution, you increase the likelihood of reaching a larger portion of your audience.

If you’re looking for inspiration and tactical guidance on content repurposing, Vanessa Lau is a great example to follow. Her ability to create and repurpose content is hard to match in our current climate of content creation. Another great source to draw inspiration from is Gary Vee, who flourishes with video content to inspire business owners to wield their skills to their advantage and success:

Dive Deeper: Why Content Marketing Should Always Be 20% Creation and 80% Promotion

Last Words on Utilizing Pillar Content to Your Strengths

Hopefully, you’ve got a little bit better of an idea of how to efficiently develop and capitalize on what your brand excels at best through optimized content creation.

Remember, as long as you stick to your core proficiencies and produce authoritative content based on those strengths, you will stand out as a thought leader in your vertical.