How to brainstorm your content pillars for your blog
You likely already know how important consistent blogging is for your business (and SEO!!) but it can be challenging to come up with content topics that are interesting to your audience and help you achieve your business goals (meaning grow your email list, book sales calls or make sales directly on your site!).
If you find yourself struggling to come up with content ideas for your blog, know you're definitely not alone!
Even though I’ve been publishing blog posts consistently for almost two years now, I’ve also found it really tricky to constantly come up with interesting topics to write and share about that ALSO helped me reach my business goals.
Which is why I'm excited to share my little content creation secret with you... strategic content pillars!
This blog post will discuss what content pillars are, how to pick better content topics and how to brainstorm content pillar ideas.
What are Content Pillars?
Content pillars are core topics or ideas that you focus on as the foundation of your content strategy. They act as a guide for content creation and help you create content that is relevant, interesting, and valuable to your audience.
They can even be the foundations of your pillar articles where you link back to the other articles you’ve written on that topic - which is a great SEO booster by the way!
How to Brainstorm Your Content Pillars
The content pillars you create should be based on your business goals, what your ideal clients are searching for, and what they're interested in.
To brainstorm content pillars, I like to answer these three questions:
What do my ideal clients need help with? (ex. make more money with their side hustle)
What is important to them? (ex. ethical selling)
What are they curious about? (ex. passive income)
Tips for Creating Better Content and Content Pillars:
Once you’ve picked your content pillars, you’ll want to create a content calendar - or content plan if setting specific dates isn’t your style - that outlines what content you will create around each pillar and when it will be published.
I recommend you double-check that all of your content is relevant AND interesting to your audience, as well as geniunely providing them with some value.
If you’re creating content in the hopes of getting found via search engines, make sure to research your keywords and use them correctly throughout your content.
Another tip when creating content around your content pillars is to try to link each article back to at least one other article in the same content pillar. This will help people (and search engines!) understand your content pillars and why they're essential.
Examples of Businesses With Successful Content Strategies
Laura Belgray of Talking Shrimp
Laura is a hugely successful copywriter focusing on email copywriting, but that's a pretty broad topic, isn't it? Some of her content pillars and main topics are:
Being yourself as an entrepreneur
Using the power of your voice
Copy that sells
Sharing your story
Her blog posts tie back to at least one of those topics, and sometimes more than one.
Buffer
Buffer is a popular social media management platform with a great content strategy around its content pillars. Their content pillars are
Creating great content
Marketing with social media
Saving time with your social media marketing
Social media advertising and paid campaigns
Final Thoughts
Creating content pillars is a fantastic way to organize your content ideas and create more valuable content for your audience. When you have a content strategy based on what your ideal clients are looking for, it becomes easier to come up with topics that will be of interest to them. And when you focus on creating content that provides value, you're more likely to see results and build your community!
If you’re curious about getting the most out of your content creation, check out my SEO Quickstart course to make sure you’re optimizing your articles for search!
