It’s 2:42 on a Tuesday afternoon. I am staring at a blank Microsoft Word document and a blinking cursor. I convince myself that if I stare at this screen long enough, something interesting will show up… right? Maybe I should look for some inspiration online?
Now it’s 4:05 and I am down the research rabbit hole on Wikipedia, trying to figure out which new prop I need for the boat I don’t have. FOCUS! The damned blinking cursor is still there…
While your version of this story might feature a viewfinder rather than a Word document, and your Wikipedia rabbit hole might not involve a boat prop, most marketers have been through this. It is frustrating to say the least.
How do we solve the issue? There are probably a lot of great answers to this question, but my favorite is called “Content Pillars.” The way this works is you define specific topics of content to which your audience will respond favorably. Within each one of these “Pillars,” you can create different ideas for what content to create, what form it should take (article, photo, video), and the cadence at which you want to create the content.
Here are some ideas for what this might look like (on a very basic level):
While this system of content creation provides you with a good content calendar, it’s a lot more than that. Content pillars allow you to position your brand as a thought leader in certain categories in a way that search engines will act favorably toward.
In the example above I created pillars that were broad and universally applicable. I encourage you to create pillars that are more specific to your brand’s strengths and/or values. For example, if you’re located in Carmel Valley and live music is part of your brand experience, you might want to create a pillar around music at wineries in Carmel Valley. If content around this topic is frequently added and includes information about artists, videos of events, and calendars of who to see and where (regardless of where they are playing) then search engines will likely see your website as the place to send people when they search for “Carmel Valley live music.” This is good for SEO as people planning trips, who want to see live music during their visit, will be much more likely to find you in their planning process and feel a connection to your brand before they even leave their house. This brand connection is what results in visitors, and ultimately club memberships.
Another big benefit to creating these content pillars is that you can measure engagement around each one and get truly actionable data from it. If you had a pillar about vineyard operations, and didn’t get great engagement on that topic, you know not to focus on it. Conversely, if you only occasionally create content around sustainability, but people were really engaged, then it might be a good idea to ramp up your content creation around that topic. This engagement data becomes especially helpful when looking at which mediums to use when communicating information. You typically get a few seconds of engagement on a social post, a few minutes of engagement on a webpage, and days of engagement with print. The cost to disseminate information using each of those mediums has an inverse relationship with the engagement time – so it is probably a good idea to use the data you have around social engagement, before you invest a bunch of time and money in building a webpage or put something into print.
Whether you decide to use content pillars or not, remember the words of business legend Peter Drucker, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” While you might be able to wing it for a while, the analytical approach will help you determine what is working, what isn’t, and ultimately, where to invest precious marketing budgets.
