Instagram Content Clarity Series | Step 4: Establish Your Brand’s Content Pillars

It’s time to dive into the core part of this 5 part/5 step series, creating the actual content! And if you’ve missed any of the previous posts, just click the links below. You’ll want to have read them all before moving on to this part of our series.

Step 1: Instagram Content Clarity Series | Step 1: Decide on Your Ultimate Instagram Goal
Step 2: Instagram Content Clarity Series | Step 2: Get Clear on Who You’re Posting For
Step 3: Instagram Content Clarity Series | Step 3: Discover and Utilize Your Unique Influencer Personality

You may imagine content creation as a disorganized process, where you seek spur-of-the-moment Instagrammable moments to take pictures of during the day, or maybe where you schedule a photoshoot and take a ton of pictures to use as bulk of your future visual content. You may even wonder how other influencers manage to post so consistently and come up with so much content themselves. It can feel like everyone else really has it figured it out sometimes!

In reality, the most efficient way to create content is not to be on high alert 24/7 for something you can post (although you should always be aware of moments that might bring value to your followers). It’s also not to just take random photos each shoot and hope that a few of them will work out in the future. Rather, you need to be able to understand the center focus of your content, so you can create it intentionally. In order to stay on track with this, I recommend coming up with some content pillars (or your areas of consistent content focus) that will hold up your brand and help make it more well-rounded.

If you can do this, you’ll spend much less brain power on your content creation, and you’ll have a lot more time and energy to devote to other aspects of growing your brand. Pillars will help you create a posting framework (also known as a guide) to use throughout the month as you plan your content. Keep reading to learn more!

Content pillars are the various core areas of content that support your brand.

They’re going to represent the big picture categories of what you’ll post about. Good content pillars should:

• Help drive your content schedule

• Influence your content creation

• Be a part of any content planning that you may do

The pillars should also take into consideration your influencer personality type, your perfect follower, and the goals of your brand, so that you stay true to your brand with whatever you’re posting.

I’m going to ask you to answer a few questions, to help you discover your own brand’s content pillars. But before we begin, I want to invite you to think about your content in general terms. As you answer these questions, you may start thinking up some awesome ideas for specific posts, and that’s great! I encourage you to write them down somewhere so you don’t forget them. But don’t spend too long thinking about the actual posts. For now, you want to focus on thinking about the core topics you’re posting about.

If you need somewhere you can easily make notes, I’ve included plenty of space in my FREE Instagram Content Clarity workbook, which you can get by signing up in the form below! It includes all the questions I’m going to ask you, and helps you keep your notes neatly organized in one place.

And if you like the workbook, you’ll love my Instagram Planning 101 Guide (the workbook is actually an excerpt from that guide). I’m running a special offer this month. If you purchase the Instagram Planning 101 Guide, you also get my Master Your Instagram Aesthetic e-course for absolutely free (normally valued at $297)!

The questions you’ll need to answer to find your content pillars are:

• What do you want your brand to be known for?

• What is your brand’s core message in one or two sentences?

• What are your brand’s categories or topics?

• If you had to sort your brand’s past blog posts, products, or advice into categories, what would the titles of those categories be? 

From here, you want to narrow it down to 3 to 6 pillars (or main content focuses). Too many, and you risk having inconsistent content as a brand. Too few, and you won’t have enough variety to provide unique value to your followers with your content.

Take a look through your notes, and eliminate anything that doesn’t align with your brand. Then answer the following questions to help you narrow your focus to just 3 to 6 pillars:

• What are you most excited to share with your followers?

• Are there any themes that stand out or are repeated?  

• Are there any themes that could be condensed together into a more general category?

If you’ve answered these questions and still aren’t sure about your pillars, don’t worry! It’s ok to start somewhere and refine your pillars over time. You may find that recurrent themes or ideas pop up as you post more content, and you may be able to identify that as one of your brand’s pillars. You also may find that your pillars change as your brand grows. Don’t panic, it just means you’re gaining deeper clarity and understanding about your brand!

Once you have your pillars, be sure to write them down so you can reference back, and you may even want to share them with me in the comments below! And don’t forget to check back here next week, where we’ll wrap up our series by looking at how to create repeatable content topics for your brand, to make your content creation process even smoother month over month!