Pillar content is the cornerstone of all the content you want to create for your personal brand. It is long-form, and it lives within a blog, a podcast or YouTube video of some sort, and it’s something you can cut down over time into other pieces.
It’s your big idea, so it’s important for us to create it first as opposed to just creating short-form content.
There are three reasons pillar content is critical to any content creator in their content marketing strategy:
- It’s a content engine.
- It’s an authority builder.
- It’s a growth tool.
Pillar Content as a Content Engine
Your pillar content allows you not just to create an episode, but to dive more deeply into solutions and go in-depth on topics people have questions about.
When you can deep dive like that or talk about trends or whatever it is, you have now created a repurposing foundation that you can use over time. It’s not just 40 pieces of random content — it’s four pieces of content that you can divide into 40 smaller pieces of content.
The last key is that pillar content is evergreen. It’s the kind of content people can keep looking for and keep finding. If it’s written the right way, it can continue to serve people who ask the same questions over time because you’ve answered it in an evergreen, long-form content format.
This is the engine. It is the content you can create once a week and then post across all the other platforms. You need something that you can create once and use 40 times.
Pillar Content as An Authority Builder
The second reason pillar content is so important is that it’s an authority builder. We’re talking about thought leadership and becoming known for the things you need in your business.
It’s hard to become a thought leader. If you don’t have any kind of catalog of the things you stand for, the common things you believe, and your shared perspective, then it’s hard for people to know you are knowledgeable in that subject.
Pillar content helps you build authority because it gives you proof to point back to. When you are out there in the world and you’re starting to share your knowledge, you can refer people back to your show or blog.
You start to have every question in a particular field answered because you’ve cataloged it, and that starts to build thought leadership.
As you’re using your voice over and over within a long-form platform, you also start to develop consistency in terms of delivering the same message. That will become the thing you’re known for and start building authority.
Your pillar content is a searchable catalog of ideas. When people look for it, they can find your ideas because you’ve cataloged them in a way that’s searchable.
This becomes social proof. Rather than just posting short things on the internet, you begin to amass a record that you were the host of this show or the author of this body of work. When people start looking for an expert or guest speaker, you begin to emerge as an authority in your market.
Pillar Content as A Growth Tool
Pillar content will help you grow because of its immense long-term SEO value.
When you are creating long-form content and putting it on the internet, it becomes searchable. The most used search engines in the world are Google and YouTube, which is also owned by Google. The form of content they prefer is long-term blog posts.
Your long-form written and verbal content is indexed by Google and YouTube and becomes searchable. So if you want to grow long-term and have SEO value, you have to continue to push content that is long-form into the blogs, video channels and podcasts so you can be found.
Now, this doesn’t just happen with one piece. You need to do multiple pieces of long-form pillar content to get there.
This also creates growth because as people start subscribing to a pillar content format, like a podcast or a YouTube channel, they’re now notified when you have new content released. You might start with one subscriber or 10, but you keep providing more, and they stay. With short-form content like Facebook posts, people might see you once and never again.
Your pillar content also becomes a list builder because in addition to housing your content, your platform will enable you to embed the things that entice people to give you their information, to join their list.
Types of Digital Platform
I hear a lot of people say you should just focus on one channel and be great at that one. I agree that as a starting point, you need to be a primary creator in one channel — pick the one that you can use, that you’re comfortable with and that flows best for you.
But one platform can only go so far. Everything has advantages and disadvantages. And there are reasons why you should be leveraging all of them.
Obviously, I’m a big fan of podcasts. However, I don’t think a podcast is going to serve my business long-term if it’s the only place where my business and my content lives. So let’s talk about the other formats you should be exploring.
Blogs
A blog is the No. 1 place where you can be searched other than YouTube, so it is a good platform to drive consistent, non-paid traffic.
Blogs have been around the longest and have distinct advantages. Here’s what they are great for:
- Step-by-step education. When you need to explain several steps to someone in order and they need to keep referencing back, a blog is ideal.
- Linking to other sources. A blog reader can easily click a link and go to an item that’s been referenced right there.
- Capturing leads. While people are on your blog, they’re active and engaged, so they’re more likely to download content you’re offering. You can give them things right away that they can put on their computer in exchange for their information.
- Purchase funnels. A blog is a good place to set up landing pages and sales pages. Readers who are already interested in your content might also be interested in your product, and you need to convert them. When they’re ready to take action, they can purchase while they’re there.
Blog Drawbacks
One downside to blogs, though, is that compared to other channels, engagement is lower. There’s no immediate interactivity with blogs. It’s a passive form of content because people are there to read it, not necessarily to interact or respond to it.
They’re taking it in and could take action, but it’s not something they’re necessarily reacting to and providing comments on.
There’s also less personality, even if you’re a great writer. You just can’t get the same sense of a person through their writing as you can by watching a video or listening to a podcast, where you can hear that person’s voice and tone.
Blogs are also not great for recurring readership. Subscribing to a blog is less active than a YouTube channel or a podcast will be in terms of them actually looking for that show every week. So your email is buried among everyone else’s, and your content is less consumable.
YouTube
YouTube is great at live engagement. Actually, video in general is great at live engagement, getting that immediate feedback from viewers.
What are the advantages of video? It’s great for a few things:
- Demonstration. Video allows for demonstration, where you can actually show people your screen and take them through things you want to show them.
- Short education. A video is perfect when you need to get through something quickly, like a how-to for something you just want to figure out in three to five minutes. It’s great for that one-time knowledge to solve one thing.
- In-person interviews. Video is a very visual medium, so it lets you take advantage of location, or great lighting, or a great stage.
- Personality. Video shows people who you are. They see your face, they see the emotions. And if you are a passionate person, it’s a great platform for demonstrating that energy.
So video is a different type of teaching. In other ways, a blog might be better if you need to slow down, read through things and look at links. But for quick hits and capturing your personality, video rises above.
As with blogging, you will get audience growth via search, but it might take a long time for you to compete. That’s because there are so many YouTube videos out there, just like there are so many blogs, so it takes time to develop a high ranking because you’re competing against literally everyone.
But long-term, if you can stay at it, it’s a great place to be found.
YouTube Drawbacks
There are a few things YouTube is not good at, because some content is not great on video. These are on my personal list:
- Zoom interviews. I’d rather watch a nice produced interview or listen to an interview on a podcast.
- Long education. When a lesson needs to be more than an hour, I’d rather not watch it on a YouTube video. This content, to me, just comes across better in a blog or podcast.
Recurring viewership is also tough with YouTube. Obviously, people subscribe to YouTube channels, but being a subscriber doesn’t necessarily mean people are watching those shows all the time.
They’re usually searching for one-off things, then watching their same favorite shows every week.
Another drawback to YouTube, obviously, is that it’s not good to consume on the go. Same with blogs. You can’t be driving or working out or doing other things and watching or reading something.
Podcasts
For me, podcasting is the fastest way of creating content. Cranking out an episode on a podcast happens very quickly for me. I don’t need to set up cameras or sit down and write. I just need to turn on the mic.
Plus, I can talk much faster than I can write. In 30 minutes of talking, I can crank out 5,000 words of written material. That would take me hours if I was writing it.
But personal opinions aside, podcasts are a smart platform for several kinds of content:
- Long-form education. You can talk about high-level concepts, and you can continue to give people new nuance to the things you’re trying to teach every week.
- Recurring listenership. Again, most platforms allow people to subscribe, but podcast subscribers actually tend to listen to each episode and come back each week. If they like the content, they can also dive deep and binge content once they’ve found you. Podcasts tend to be 30 minutes to an hour, and most people who start an episode will listen to the whole thing, which is a lot longer than a lot of the other platforms.
- Zoom interviews. One-on-one interviews can be a lot more friendly on the ear than the eye. Not every interview is interesting to watch, especially if it’s a Zoom or other online interview. However, listening to them becomes very engaging, and you can do that while you’re doing other things on the go.
- One-time short education. You want a couple of quick hits on tips to solve something? Bring in an expert, or talk about it yourself. You can get people answers pretty quickly.
- Personality. Just like video, personality can come through pretty well with your voice versus the written word.
- Thought leadership. A podcast lets you easily get your thoughts out and into a recorded fashion so you can capture all these ideas you have. That can be simpler through just talking than it is to write down or to set up and put on camera.
Podcast Drawbacks
What are podcasts not great for? Live engagement, for starters. We don’t know who’s listening, and there’s no way for you to interact with the podcast within the format.
Demonstrations are also tough. Within my podcast, I can’t show you a video or where I’m clicking or take you to a link to another page. I can tell you to go somewhere, but if you’re on the go listening, it’s hard for you to go to that thing immediately.
Lead capture is similarly tough. It’s hard to say, “Hey listeners, go to this website and download my thing,” because it’s hard for people to want to take action or remember to take action in the moment if they’re not sitting at a computer.
The last major drawbacks are audience growth and search. There are a lot of podcasts out there. Not as many as YouTube channels and blogs, but finding people to listen to your show can be tough.
There’s also no natural search engine for podcasts that works well. Obviously, you can find shows on iTunes or Google Play or Spotify, but those are not as powerful at highlighting your content as Google is for YouTube and blogs.
Social Media
I haven’t mentioned social media yet because to me, it’s not a platform in and of itself. It’s not a pillar content platform. It is, however, great for distribution.
The biggest positive for social media is that discovery is greater in social media than anywhere else. People are on it all the time, and your ability to put a post out there and get people to see it is amazing.
However, you might have to start to pay for that over time, because once you have an audience, only about two or three percent of those people are actually seeing posts you create.
Fortunately, social media is a great place to grow your audience via ads. Nowhere else has that ability to grow as quickly with ads as Facebook and maybe YouTube does.
Other great uses for social media:
- Catching people’s attention. Messages that are short catch people’s attention and bring them into your world, offering a chance to send them to these other platforms like the blogs and podcasts.
- Generating interest and interaction.
- Promotion.
- Quick content. Social media is not suitable for pillar content. It is, however, great for short, highlight-type content like pics and memes and clips.
All of this contributes to social media being a great place to grow your audience.
But don’t just grow them on social media. Grow them and send them to these other platforms, where they become longer term pieces of your audience network.
SOCIAL MEDIA DRAWBACKS
Again, social media is not the place for pillar content. Here are a few other areas of weakness:
- Education. Posting an image or just a 200-word post is just not good for long-form education or for deeper, more in-depth content.
- Demonstration. A short clip limits what you can demonstrate, especially if you want to dive a little deeper into the lesson.
- Thought leadership. Posting a couple of images doesn’t show people you are a leader in your space.
- Nurturing your community. People might see one clip now and might not see another thing from you for months and months. Nurturing requires you to have consistent exposure.
Picking Your Primary Platform
As you can see, each platform has its advantages and disadvantages. Still, you need to pick one to house your pillar content and then start figuring out how to redistribute to the others.
You want to reap the benefits of the other platforms — you just can’t concentrate all your energy on all of them.
So let’s say you’re starting with a podcast. Once you’ve figured out all the systems you’re doing for that, try to venture out and ask, “How do I take this podcast and create video out of it that people would watch?”
To turn a podcast into a blog, I recommend taking the transcript of your show and finding out how you can convert that into written material that people would actually read.
And that might take some work.
Now, if you’re a YouTuber, you’ll have similar challenges. You might be able to pull the audio from your video and create a podcast, but it likely won’t sound as good unless you get it edited.
You could pull a transcript from it, but the way you’re creating the show might not lend itself to non-visual mediums like writing or podcasting. Maybe you’re demonstrating things with your hands that just don’t translate to a podcast.
Video also takes a long time to create, so it’s slower in times of production.
Everything will have its limitations.
If you’re starting with a blog, I would recommend you try to get that text and turn it into a podcast or video. But now you have to actually physically record an extra something, or else you’ll have a robotic transcription.
You can’t just instantly create video from a blog, either. So that, for me, is the hardest.
Integrating Your Platforms to Share Pillar Content
Everything will have its advantages and disadvantages.
My point is, if you want the advantage of each platform, you need to use all three.
Integration is the only way to get it all: the impact and searchability of video, the ease and long-term listenership of a podcast, and the discoverability of a blog and its ability to both share and collect information.
Make the content freely flow from one platform to the next. That’s the second phase of creating pillar content. It isn’t just creating one thing and never doing anything else. It’s creating one thing, getting good at it and then finding a way to become good at the other pillars as well.
Eventually, you might have to create individually for all three. I don’t think you have to start there, but you might have to start moving toward that.
One of the biggest factors in developing your content marketing strategy is figuring out how to leverage the platform you want to create with and create pillar content.
That might just be one thing you create every week and use as the content engine for the other platforms.
That’s fine. Use that pillar of content to build your authority and grow your audience. Then figure out, over time, how to take your main platform and transition into the other platforms. Remember, you want the full benefit of all three, rather than just being stuck in the limitations of the one thing you’re creating.
Obviously, it’s a lot of work and takes a lot of time, but that should be the goal. If you don’t want to be stagnant, or if you found that you’ve hit a wall or a plateau in your creative ability to grow an audience, it might not be because you need to create more content
It might be because you need to expand your horizons to other platforms and the advantages that they bring.
MORE ADVICE
Want to learn more about how to build your content marketing strategy? Head back to the beginning of Season Three.
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Talk soon!