Creating great content is a laborious and complicated process. You want your content to provide value for the reader while also helping you meet your marketing goals. 

If you’re assembling a content marketing strategy that will work for your brand, you don’t want to skip steps or leave things half-done. Let’s go over some of the most important areas and elements of content strategy that can help you find a repeatable content creation structure and supercharge your next growth marketing campaign.

Why Is Content Marketing Important Today?

It may be changing, but content marketing remains more relevant than ever before. It is one of the best ways to inform and educate audiences. It is also a great way to build brand awareness and establish authority through thought leadership. Even credibility, developed through a good SEO strategy, benefits from (and often hinges on) quality content. 

If content marketers want to use this powerful marketing medium to reach a target audience, though, they have to think twice about their content marketing objectives. Past content marketing strategies are quickly becoming dated. 

Things like advances with AI and Google SEO updates are shifting content marketing objectives. Many of the types of content marketing that a content marketer uses will remain the same. However, the way they’re used and how they fit into content strategy make a huge difference in whether a campaign features effective content marketing or not. 

One way to maintain high-performing content is to remember the most important areas of content marketing so that you can address these every time you create an asset for your marketing efforts.

What Are the 6 Areas of Content Marketing?

Let’s consider six of the most important content marketing objectives to focus on. These specifically pertain to content marketing and the content creation process. 

If you’re fleshing out your content development plans, here are half a dozen key areas you want to have in mind as you prepare to generate a library of content marketing resources.

1. Content Strategy Is Your Foundation

You may want to dive into the creation process, but make sure you have a rock-solid content marketing strategy in place first. This functions as your plan of action. 

A good content strategy aligns your resources with your goals and ensures that everything you make has a purpose. You want this in place first so that you can use it as a roadmap to keep you on track as you go along.

2. Content Creation Must Be Purposeful and Holistic

Once you have your strategy in place, it’s time to make the actual content. Don’t treat this step lightly. You may have a personal vision for your content, but how does it fit into your larger strategy? 

What is the purpose of each content type? If it’s written content like a blog post, what part of the funnel does it help? If it’s a social media post, does it reflect your industry authority? If it’s a podcast, is it brimming with unique educational insights? As you write, illustrate, and record valuable content, make sure each item has a clear purpose.

3. Content Distribution Gives You Momentum

Most pieces of content will focus on a single distribution channel. A “how-to” article, for instance, will live on your company blog. However, that doesn’t mean you can only promote it in that space.

You can also distribute your content through various channels. From ads and social media to emails and newsletters, look for ways to push new blog posts in front of more faces. This gives it a better chance of seeing content marketing success right out of the gate.

4. Repurposing Content Optimizes Its Effect

You can also repurpose content across different customer-facing channels. Repurposing might feel a lot like distribution, and they are similar. But there is a key difference.

Repurposing existing content represents an extended creative cycle. In it, you repackage content in different formats (such as summarizing a blog idea or quote into a social post). This indirectly extends the lifespan and reach of each piece of content you create.

5. Analyzing Content Reveals Weak Links in the Chain

Once you’ve strategized, created, distributed, and repurposed your content, it’s time to analyze its impact. You can use tools like Google Analytics and native social media or newsletter analytics dashboards to see how well your content performs. Consider things like organic search engine traffic, link clicks, time spent on page, and other conversion metrics.  

The goal here is two-fold. First, you want to see what content performs well. Second, you want to identify what content falls flat on its face.

6. Optimization Helps You Improve

Once you’ve analyzed your content, it’s time to optimize it. (Pro tip: this can take time. Search engine optimization, for instance, can take half a year to start generating organic traffic. Be patient!)

You can optimize both lagging and engaging content. For the latter, consider ways you can integrate CTAs and otherwise improve on content that is already buzzing. For the former, look for ways to update calls-to-action, links, format, keywords, technical SEO, and other factors to get things moving in the right direction.

Focusing on the 6 Key Areas of Content Marketing

The digital marketing world is a vast and intricate place. Content is just one part of that world, but it remains an essential one. 

If you want your brand’s content to make a difference in your business goals, you may want to consider working with a content marketing agency. They can use the elements listed above to create a clear, repeatable, and successful content marketing strategy so that every piece of content is a comprehensive contributor to your larger marketing efforts.

There are many different types of content in digital marketing. One classic item that often sits at the center of a content strategy is pillar content.

There are many content pillar examples out there. Information-heavy on-site pillar pages are a marketing staple. Social media content pillars are also popular ways to generate theme-related content for social media marketing.

If you’re investing in a content pillar strategy but you aren’t sure how many pillars to make, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s dig into why content pillars are important and how many pillars make sense with an average content marketing strategy.

Why Are Content Pillars Important?

A content pillar approach to content creation is important because it provides a clear structure for your engaging content to follow. Pillar pages are examples of long form content that centers on a handful of specific themes that are unique to your brand, ensuring they are properly communicated to your target audience.

Content pillars centralize your message and make it easier to create a content calendar to pace your publishing schedule. They also interlink on-site content and improve keyword research and integration across your relevant content. This creates greater website organization and boosts SEO, improving search engine traffic in the process.

Pillar content is also an effective way to generate a variety of marketing content that all works toward the same goal. Pillars are central repositories of information that can inspire a supporting blog post, related social media content, email campaigns, and so on.

While pillars are powerful, they take time and resources to build. Each pillar should serve a distinct purpose and highlight the right topic if it’s going to have a positive effect on your marketing — which begs the question: how many content pillars should the average content pillar strategy have?

How Many Content Pillars Should You Have?

The technical answer to how many content pillars you should have is that it varies. In most cases, though, three to four pillars is the sweet spot. That is, unless your business provides a large number of services.

This number tends to work best because each pillar page takes time to plan, create, and maintain. You don’t want to bite off more than you can chew.

At the same time, focusing on a single pillar page or even two can restrict your marketing strategy. Working with three or four themes is a great way to find a balance. It provides depth as to why your brand is the best option without overwhelming your pillar strategy in the process.

How Do You Decide What Your Content Pillars Should Be?

Okay, so you should focus on three or four themes for your pillars. That’s nice. But how do you decide what those themes are? After all, there are likely many different reasons you think your brand is the best option on the market.

The main point here is to identify the primary relevant topics on which your company can build its reputation. In other words, what are the top unique factors that set your brand apart from the competition?

This could be customer service, superior products, innovation, or any number of other things. Start by considering your customers’ pain points and the main services you offer as solutions to those problems. Now, ask yourself how those solutions are better than what your competitors are offering.

Here’s the part where you have to resist getting carried away with the brainstorming exercise. You may think there are 20 different ways your business is better than the next guy’s — and that may even be true. But what are the top reasons that set you apart?

What are the factors you won’t mind repeating over and over again as you promote your brand? Identifying three or four of these provides you with the most important themes, each of which you can emphasize in its own pillar.

Building a Content Cluster for Each Pillar

A good content pillar template should build out on each of your primary themes. This should cover all of the basic information related to that theme.

Keep in mind that with the pillars themselves, there’s no need to go into too much detail. These are meant to be comprehensive but should only provide 10,000-foot views of each theme.

Once a pillar is complete, You can use many different types of valuable content to support your main pillar page and dig into the nitty gritty details surrounding that core topic. You can create sub-pillars that handle meatier thematic elements and a blog post that zooms in on specific related topics. You can also use your pillar to inspire your email marketing and social media strategy.

Finding the Sweet Spot With Pillar Content

Pillars are a powerful way to create synergy with your content and digital marketing activities. They organize each content idea, focusing them on specific themes and marketing goals.

However, creating content pillars is no walk in the park. Each pillar takes a lot of time and effort and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Instead, your brand should focus on creating three or four primary pillar pages to keep things manageable.

If you aren’t sure which themes these should adopt, it can be helpful to seek the help of a content marketing professional to guide you. That way, you can choose each theme with the confidence of knowing that you’re orienting your content marketing in a direction that will provide synergistic results over time.

Content creation is a vast and intricate process. It can take multiple forms and can serve many needs. 

Content pillars are a common tool marketers use to channel their content marketing strategy efforts. They provide a sense of purpose and focus that is difficult to achieve when a marketing team generates individual and unrelated content.

If you’ve heard of content pillars but aren’t sure what they are, it’s worth investigating. Here is a breakdown of what content pillars are, the many forms they can take, and why you really should be using them as an integral part of your content strategy.

What Are Content Pillars?

Content pillars are substantial and lengthy pieces of educational content that a business builds around each of the primary concepts that it wants to emphasize as a unique selling point for its business model. Pillars tend to be long form pieces of content, running around 3,000 words, depending on the marketing philosophy you’re following. 

To truly be a content pillar, these resources must also have the potential to break down into a variety of derivative resources and materials. Each of these focuses on a unique and detailed section of the primary content pillar, uses similar keywords and topics, and links back to the original central resource.

What Are Pillar Topics?

Every business has a core topic or many themes that they focus on. This could be something specific, like a marketing company emphasizing the ability to help clients gain organic traffic. It could also be broader, such as a tech company prioritizing innovation.

Usually, there are a handful of themes that a company values above everything else. There are three or four areas where a brand attempts to truly set the standard and excel above the competition. Pillars should focus on these select areas.

What Are Other Words for Content Pillars and Their Supporting Content?

Content “pillars” are a common name for large, central repositories of information that focus on the specific themes for which a company wants to be known. The analogy makes sense since these pillars provide structure for the content creation process and hold up a brand’s larger content strategy. 

However, in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, there are other terms that refer to this kind of content, too. For example, content pillars are also called content topics or content categories. Some marketers refer to content pillars as “buckets,” too. The imagery here, once again simple, as content pillars buckets hold the primary information that their supporting resources draw on and link back to.  

Creating content also goes beyond the primary pillars. In many cases, as marketing teams build out from a pillar, they will create sub-pillars that go in-depth on supporting topics. From there, they will create even smaller individual blog articles and social media content that makes individual, highly targeted support points. Altogether, these pillars, sub-pillars, and blog and social posts are called topic clusters.

What Types of Content Do Pillars Include?

As we already mentioned, a pillar is a very long resource that usually contains at least 3,000 words. These live on your website. They are keyword-rich, usually focusing on around 15 to 20 high-value keywords that are particularly relevant to the larger topic. Pillars also serve as a primary option for internal linking.

There are many supporting resources that a team can build out from a pillar. This starts with a variety of on-site relevant content, including sub-pillars and smaller blog articles related to the subject.

While these are the essential elements that make up a content pillar strategy, a well-constructed pillar and its ancillary resources can spawn the creation of countless additional marketing assets. For instance, content creators can generate on-theme off-site content such as a social media post and email marketing campaigns that link back to your pillar page. They can also create gated content, like whitepapers and demos, that can help potential customers work their way down the sales funnel.

Why Are Content Pillars Beneficial to Content Marketing Strategy?

A content pillar strategy has a number of important benefits. For instance, it can:

From on-site SEO to social media marketing, pillars can provide a synergy that impacts all of your content marketing efforts.

What Is an Example of a Content Pillar?

To get a better idea of what pillar content looks like, let’s go over some content pillar examples. Consider the marketing team at a hypothetical fintech budgeting app company that wants to use a content pillar template to boost its content strategy.

The group starts by identifying three themes that lie at the core of their software: general budgeting tips, investment strategies, and paying off debt. They decide to build a pillar for each of these, starting with mobile-friendly tech. 

From there, they lay the groundwork, conducting keyword research and observing competing resources. They build out a 3,000-word pillar on the mobile-friendly concept that covers all of the major aspects of that theme without going into too much detail in any one area.

Next, they create three or four sub-pillars detailing support themes, like fintech security on mobile devices, mobile check deposits, and maintaining mobile-friendly websites. They break these down into further support resources, starting with a highly targeted blog post, or more, for each sub-pillar.

Along with developing the actual pieces of the pillar, the group puts together a content calendar to help guide the creation and publication process. They also develop a plan to generate supporting content to post on social media channels and send out via email campaigns. The final result is a keyword-rich, interlinked series of on-site valuable content that leads to countless additional off-site content opportunities, all of which reinforce a theme that the brand prioritizes as part of its key content marketing strategy.

Using Pillars to Supercharge Your Content

Content pillars breathe purpose and direction into every great content piece that you create. They give you a central point to build off of and focus your content marketing messages on a few essential themes.

If you’re unsure what those themes are for your business or you need help creating a strategy to build pillared content around them, consider finding a reputable content marketing agency. A third-party partner can ensure that you make the most of your pillar pages and keep your content creation process efficient and effective both now and for the long-term.

Every good marketing strategy incorporates some form of content — and thoughtful marketers always back up their content marketing strategy with targeted content marketing KPIs. 

A key performance indicator functions as a compass for your content efforts. They are detailed and specific objectives that keep you focused and on track as you work toward your larger content marketing goals.

The question is, what are good KPIs in the context of content? What metrics and benchmarks should you track to see if your content is performing? Let’s consider some of the tools that you can use to measure content effectiveness and what KPIs you can set within those tools to better direct your content marketing.

How Do You Measure Content Marketing Performance?

There are many tools that can help measure the impact of content. The most well-known of these is Google Analytics. This is a content tool that can track various content on your website. You can see how users interact with your content, from the number of visitors to how many pages they visit and even how long they spend on those pages. 

Google Search Console is another Google product that is a powerful tool in the hands of a marketer. It provides further insights into website traffic and can help with optimizing things like SERP rankings and other technical SEO decisions.

Of course, there are more tools besides Google’s admittedly impressive content-tracking software options. For instance, third-party tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz all provide their own flavor of content insights.

In addition, many marketing content platforms provide their own in-house analytics. Email platforms like MailChimp and Constant Contact provide reporting analytics dashboards. These show things like open rates and click-throughs. Most social media sites have similar native analytics options, such as Facebook Pixel and Twitter Analytics.

Each of these tools helps you track and observe data. But if you want that data to be effective, you need to know what metrics are worth tracking. Let’s consider a few KPI examples that are particularly worth keeping an eye on if you want to gauge the effectiveness of your content.

What Are the KPIs to Measure Content Effectiveness?

There are many different content marketing metrics that you can watch when it comes to content. Each one provides a different value. For instance, tracking the amount of time a person spends on a page can help you decide if your content is answering the searcher intent of those who are finding it through the SERPs. 

With that said, there are a few statistics that are particularly relevant to optimizing content performance. Here are four of the best KPIs to track content marketing success.

SERP Rankings Reveal Content Visibility

Your ranking in the SERPs is one of the most obvious KPIs that indicate your content is doing well. Search engine results pages are the digital equivalent of physical foot traffic. If your valuable content is tucked way down on the SERPs, it isn’t likely the consumers you created it for are going to find it. 

To boost your SERP rankings and build brand awareness, you want to consider the utility and purpose of your content marketing strategy. Who is it for? How does it help them? The better you can address these factors, the more likely your content will resonate with its intended audience and the more likely they’ll be able to find it in the SERPS. 

It’s a good idea to keep Google’s E-E-A-T content standards in mind when considering SERP rankings. E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. If your content satisfies the E-E-A-T standards, it’s more likely to perform well.

Site Traffic Shows Organic Synergy

Showing up in the SERPs is a good start. But, as a content marketer, you also want people to click through to your website. 

This generates traffic, which builds synergy across your website. The more people click through to your site, the more likely Google is to move it higher in the search rankings. This makes it more likely to generate traffic, creating a repeating cycle of benefits. 

It’s important to note that we’re talking about organic traffic here. You can pay for traffic through things like pay-per-click ads, but paid campaigns are limited in scope and can be very expensive.

Quality content that answers customer pain points should generate organic website traffic all on its own. Tracking that metric ensures it is actually doing so.

User Engagement Enhances Content Impact

It’s great for your content to show up in a search engine and even for consumers to click through. But to truly be effective, it should spark action, as well. 

When consumers engage with your content, you know it’s performing. Members of your target audience are finding what they need, and it’s prompting them to interact with you and, ideally, proceed further down your sales funnel.

Engagement metrics can take many different forms and can occur both on and off of your website. Onsite engagement could be signing up for an email form or requesting a demo. Offsite engagement could be clicking through an email or commenting on a social media post. 

Whatever form it takes, it’s worth tracking to see if your engaging content is resonating with its intended audience.

Conversions Indicate Content Is Truly Performing

The most powerful KPI of all is conversion. This is when a consumer takes a specific action that you’ve defined as important.

Conversions often overlap with user engagement. However, they are also more detailed and important to your specific marketing goals. 

For instance, a customer clicking through a link in an email may be engaged. But if they request a demo or sign up for a newsletter, that may be an action that you’ve identified as particularly important. 

You can create conversions that are unique to your marketing needs in Google Analytics. Tracking these is a great way to gauge if your content is not just performing but doing so in the specific areas you need it to.

Finding the Right KPIs for Your Content

As you identify your target audience, create timelines, and otherwise map out your content strategy, remember to keep content metrics in mind. Partnering with the right content marketing agency can help ensure these metrics are being tracked correctly and consistently. Setting the right content KPIs gives your content marketing efforts a greater impact by ensuring that they are delivering the results that you’re looking for. 

Even if they aren’t performing well, good KPIs help you identify shortcomings quickly so that you can pivot and make adjustments where necessary. They are a powerful and necessary tool for any content marketing campaign.

Content marketing strategies function as the roadmap for your content creation. They guide all of your content along the right path toward the same goals.  

At least, that’s what a good content strategy is supposed to do. However, it’s difficult for the higher vision of a content strategy to translate into the details of specific pieces of content.  

That’s where a content marketing framework comes into the picture.

What Is a Content Marketing Framework?

A content marketing framework puts meat on the bones of a content strategy. Where a strategy serves as the “why” behind each piece of content that you create, a framework gives you the structure to turn concepts into reality.

A framework for your content marketing plan gives you a comprehensive, 10,000-foot view of everything your larger content strategy requires to be effective. It considers your organization’s larger mission, values, vision, and goals and connects them to the specific tools, techniques, and other resources you have available. Without one, the content marketing world can be confusing and hard to navigate. 

Critically, a content marketing strategy framework also puts things in writing. It collects documented and detailed elements of everything from mission statements to brand guides, KPIs to content tools.  

If something is part of the content creation process, it should be accounted for in your content strategy framework.

A Content Strategy Framework Vs. a Content Strategy Template

As a quick aside, a content strategy framework doesn’t specify how to create each individual piece of content. That is what a content strategy template is for.

Content marketers can use the comprehensive, detailed, and documented resources available in a content strategy framework to create individual templates. These are repeatable content framing devices, such as a format for blog posts or social media posts, that you can use over and over again as you create content in relation to a specific content strategy.

What Are the Benefits of a Content Marketing Framework?

If you’re already building out a content strategy and you know you have to create templates to execute that strategy, why go to all the trouble to also create a framework? There are several answers to that question. Here are just a few of the biggest benefits that a solid framework offers: 

• A content marketing framework provides comprehensive clarity. A content strategy may make sense in theory, but it’s often difficult to grasp how to turn all of the hypotheticals into specific marketing assets. A framework puts it all in front of you. It helps you see everything at the same time.
• A content marketing framework bridges the gap between high-minded strategy and nitty-gritty content creation. It’s difficult to remember your company mission statement or a specific KPI when you’re fighting with Canva to reformat an image, or you’re in Google Docs optimizing a blog post for SEO. Frameworks help you connect the big picture with specifics, even when you’re in the thick of the creative process.
• A content marketing strategy framework creates consistency. Valuable content can take multiple forms. It can also send many different messages to various audience segments. A solid framework keeps all of your content and its messages flowing in the same direction.
• A content marketing framework makes it easy to make changes. Adjusting a content marketing strategy is difficult, especially if you have multiple digital marketing initiatives going on at the same time. A framework makes it easy to make tweaks and pivots to your entire strategy in order to stay in front of your target audience.
• A content strategy framework generates synergy toward content marketing goals. It’s hard to move so many different content marketing elements toward the same SMART goals. A framework ensures everything is working toward the same results. 

Frameworks aren’t just a content marketing frill. They provide the infrastructure required to execute a content strategy at a high level.

What Are the Elements of a Content Marketing Framework?

Okay, so a framework is worth it …but how do you create one? Here are the pieces you want to consider when pulling together a marketing framework for your content.

• Vision, values, mission, and goals: Always start with the high-level stuff. Review both your larger objectives and short-term goals as a company and keep them at the center of your framework.
• Target audience: Who are you targeting? Make sure you’ve identified your primary audience. Should you focus on a specific segment of that group? What content type will help you reach potential customers? Use this information to create a clear buyer persona for your current content marketing strategy. 
• Content marketing resources: You can’t turn plans into assets without the right tools, team members, and budget in place. What are the resources that you have available to create content right now? What pieces or people are missing for your strategy to be effective?
• Content ideas: What will your content be about? What will your content format look like? Are there general themes, topics, or keywords that you want to hit on a regular basis? Will you be repurposing existing content? Figure these out and add them to your framework.
• A solid schedule: You don’t have to predict when you’ll post every article, infographic, or social blurb. However, you do want to have a rough idea of the timeline and content calendar that your strategy will require. This is why building out a schedule for creating, posting, and following up on content distribution is essential.

The holistic nature of this collection of components is a great snapshot example of how important a framework is as a central repository for all of your content strategy needs.

Tapping Into the Power of a Content Marketing Framework

It’s tempting to skip over the need for a framework as you seek to get your content production schedule rolling. However, this is a critical piece of a larger content strategy that you should never ignore.

Take the time to build out a framework for your content strategies. If you’re struggling to develop an effective framework on your own, find an experienced content marketing agency to help you pull everything together. 

That way, you can optimize the results of each content campaign you run and ensure it has a maximum impact on your overall content marketing efforts.

Pillar content is a classic form of content strategy. It centralizes and unifies a brand’s content creation, ensuring that everything is working toward the same marketing goals and reaching your target audience.  

While pillars have been around for a while, they remain an important part of a good strategy. Let’s dig into why that’s the case and consider how you can create your own effective pillar page.

Are Content Pillars Still Relevant?

A content marketing strategy is as important as ever. But it’s a changing field of marketing, nonetheless. From complex video content to AI tools, how we engage with and create content is evolving — quickly.

While this has dated certain digital marketing techniques, one tool that remains in the mix for many marketers is pillar content. Building a pillar page around each of a brand’s important themes remains a critical part of an effective content strategy. 

Solid content pillars help build authority by demonstrating deep and comprehensive knowledge in areas where you are expected to excel as a company. It builds trust and brand awareness, educates consumers while moving them down the sales funnel, and effectively uses marketing resources.

All of these are true if you have a good content pillar strategy. What does that look like, though?

What Should a Content Pillar Be?

There are a lot of opinions and varying terminology that surround the content pillars concept. Depending on who you ask, you might hear a content marketer describe these gigantic on-site marketing assets as content pillars vs. content buckets, content categories, content topics — the list goes on. 

At the end of the day, these terms are basically synonymous and arguing over them is simply semantics. It’s the way that you go about building these principle pieces of content that matters. A content pillar is typically an all-encompassing resource that focuses on one of the primary services that a business offers. 

Usually, there are only three or four of these per brand, each of which is worthy of its own pillar piece. These can vary in word count, but 3,000 words is a perfectly acceptable length. 

These sizable central pillars are then surrounded by sub-pillars, smaller blog posts, and social media content pillars resources. These different types of content form a unified topic cluster that supports your content pillar strategy.

Content pillars remain a prime marketing tool in an era defined by rapidly evolving AI tools and skyrocketing user expectations. They bring together unique and insightful information from a brand that informs readers, emphasizes unique selling propositions, and helps set each company apart from competitors in a crowded online marketplace. They provide one-of-a-kind precision in an Internet era where generative AI is becoming king and generic branded solutions are no longer useful marketing tools.

How Do You Create Content Pillars?

Understanding the value of content pillars is one thing. Creating one is another. Below is a content pillar template. Use this step-by-step process to envision your own content pillars examples and then develop them into rock-solid content for your brand.

1. Start with audience research: What are the needs of your target audience? What problems are you trying to solve for them? Conduct keyword research to better understand how to answer these questions.You can glean inspiration from things like your mission statement and company vision — but always start by putting yourself in the customers’ shoes.
2. Define your USPs: Unique selling propositions (USPs) are the factors that set you apart from the competition. These are more than solutions for your customers. They are the specific reasons your solutions are better than your competitor’s alternatives. List your strengths, review customer feedback, compare yourself to the competition, and otherwise, take steps to identify your USPs and why they help you stand out as a superior option. This can help you create each content idea. 
3. Choose the top three or four themes that stand out: What USPs make your brand special? Is your product better? Do you have superior service? Do you cater to a specific demographic or use cutting-edge technology? Find the top three or four themes that make you an attractive option for your target customers.

At this point, you have your primary brand themes. Each one functions as a topic for one of your pillar pages. Now, it’s time to create each pillar.

How Do You Write Pillar Content?

Once you have your primary themes, you need to create a pillar around each one. Pick one to start with, and then follow the steps below.

At this point, you’ve created a pillar, built out supporting sub-pillars and blog articles into a topic cluster, and used it to create quality content in a variety of formats and places.

Using Content Pillars to Keep Your Marketing Momentum

Content pillars may not be new, but they remain integral to creating content. Thoughtful pillar content underlines the areas where your business has a competitive advantage. It shows off thought leadership, improves brand authority, and builds credibility and trust. 

Use the steps above to identify your pillar themes and then create powerful pillars and the cluster content.  

If you’re still unsure how to build your content marketing strategy, reach out to a content marketing agency. Working with a qualified third-party marketing firm is the perfect way to gain peace of mind, knowing that you’re setting your content creation strategy on the right path to success from the start.

A content marketing strategy may seem simple on the surface. And there is some truth to that. Creating a social post or writing up an answer to a question in a blog format may be a straightforward process.

However, to be effective, there are a lot of nuances and elements of content marketing that you want to consider, starting with the why behind content creation in the first place.

Why Is Content So Important for Business?

The content gurus at DemandJump point out that the primary importance of content creation in business is that it allows companies to “reach more customers and gives them the potential to sell more products.” 

Simple, right? But why does content do this? For several reasons, actually. Content has a positive impact on business promotion by:

• Improving visibility through better brand awareness. 
• Demonstrating industry authority and helping to build credibility.
• Cultivating engagement and developing trust with your target audience.
• Providing opportunities for high-quality CTAs and conversions.

There are many reasons content can impact your brand. However, these don’t manifest by simply embracing an “if you create it, they will come” mentality. 

You need to infuse your approach to creating content with an effective content marketing strategy. This starts with establishing a clear roadmap that identifies content KPIs and the tactics required to execute them.

Equally important is a comprehensive framework to help execute this strategy.

Why Should You Create and Utilize a Content Strategy Framework?

A content strategy framework helps you align your digital marketing activities with your larger marketing strategy. It considers your entire content strategy and links larger goals and objectives with specific tactics and resources.

A content marketing strategy framework provides the comprehensive infrastructure necessary to execute your content strategy and, critically, achieve the results you’re hoping to reach. It helps you make the leap from theoretical strategy to bonafide content marketing results.

What Are the Five C’s of Content Marketing?

If you want your content framework and strategy to be effective, it’s important to remember the five C’s of content marketing. These are a quick and easy collective of “C-related” concepts that can help keep your content on the straight and narrow as you go along:

1. Concoct

Before you create a single piece of content, you need to set the stage. Concocting content marketing strategies and formulating the frameworks to execute them is ground zero for content success.

At this stage, you want to consider everything. Start with the big stuff, like your content marketing objectives and target audience segments for each strategy. 

From there, add in the nitty-gritty details. What resources do you have available? What content strategy templates will you need to repeatedly create strategy-infused content for social media, emails, blogs, and so on?

2. Create

Once you’ve built your strategies, assembled your team, considered your resources, and developed templates, it’s time to start creating. This is the fun part, but you want to keep your eye on the prize every step of the way.

Creating content — specifically marketing content — can be tricky. It doesn’t matter if you’re fleshing out a 5,000-word whitepaper or reducing a complex concept into a 280-character Tweet. You always want to provide quality information in a format that engages readers.

From there, you also want to keep your larger content strategy and objectives in mind. From SEO optimization to calls to action to strategy-specific messaging, make sure every piece of content is pushing you toward your KPIs.

3. Convert

High-quality content informs readers and satisfies search engines. Above all, though, good content converts.  

Conversions are a major part of how you create value with content. A conversion can be anything of value, from signing up for a newsletter to requesting a demo, downloading a whitepaper, or even buying something. 

It’s important to craft your content with appropriate CTAs embedded in them. This should match the level of the sales funnel that the content is made for and be clear, helpful, and not too salesy.

4. Check

Just because you incorporate a CTA into your content doesn’t mean it’s going to work. That’s where checking comes into play.

Once you’ve created and published your content, you want to take the time to review it. What content is converting well? What content isn’t? 

If you want your content to contribute to your larger marketing strategy, this step is just as important as creating the content in the first place.

5. Correct

Knowledge may be power, but only if you know how to act on it. That’s why the final “C” of content marketing is to make corrections when necessary. 

As you analyze your content’s performance, you’ll see what is working and what isn’t. When something isn’t working, the next step is to make tweaks to improve it. 

Even if something is working, if it’s underperforming, you may want to do something to boost its effectiveness. If you’re unsure what steps to take, this is where working with a quality content marketing agency can help.

Using the Five “C’s” of Marketing to Crush Your Content Goals

Content is fun. It’s fascinating. But it won’t be effective until you infuse it with purpose.

Use the “Five C’s” listed above as a way to align each piece of content that you create with your larger marketing strategy and objectives. That way, you can enjoy not only the content creation process itself but the results that it generates, too.

One of the best ways to reach your content marketing goals is to create a content marketing strategy. This gives you a clear understanding of your collective content objectives and the techniques required to achieve them.

While a strategy is a good starting point, it’s important to back this up with a concrete, down-to-earth content marketing strategy framework. This serves a critical purpose in translating the hypothetical content contained in your strategy into marketing content for your audiences.

To put it another way, it puts your content marketing plan into motion.

Why Is a Content Marketing Strategy Framework Important to Create?

A content strategy framework gives marketers a 10,000-foot view of your entire content marketing strategy. It brings together lofty elements, like your mission and goals, as well as specific items, like the team members, tools, and techniques required to create the content itself.

Building a framework for your content strategy should never be optional. It is a necessary part of a healthy, fully-optimized content strategy.

Your framework bridges the gap between the theoretical and the literal. It allows you to take your goals and decide how you can use your current resources to build the necessary content strategy templates to achieve them. From there, your template provides the litmus test that you can use to gauge if your content is performing well and delivering the results you need.

What Are the Four Pillars of Content Marketing Strategy Framework?

A content framework is a complex marketing tool. It contains a wide variety of key documentation, such as brand guides and mission statements. It also takes into account budgets, team members, tools, templates, and countless other factors that are required to turn your marketing vision into reality.

With that said, there are a few things that are key to a successful framework. Here are four of the most essential content pillars required for any marketing strategy framework to be effective.

1. Setting and Understanding Clear Goals

Goals are critical to a successful framework. When it comes to content creation, it’s easy to wander as you move from one topic, platform, or format to another.

Having goals in place ensures that every piece of quality content you create — no matter who it’s for, what it’s focusing on, or where it lives on the internet — is pushing toward the same marketing goal.

It doesn’t matter if you’re building brand awareness, launching a new product, improving sales, or anything else. Goals give you a North Star that you can build around as you develop your larger content strategy framework.

2. Understanding the Nuances of Your Audience

Understanding your audience is a basic best practice for any marketing endeavor. Knowing who you’re marketing to is a foundational element of any successful growth marketing initiative.

When it comes to building a content marketing strategy framework, you want to take this audience obsession to the next level. Dig beyond the surface of your target audience and consider what segment of that group is particularly important to focus on with your current strategy. Will you target a potential customer? Or focus on existing customers?

As you differentiate one part of your audience from another, you can hone in on digital marketing messages that will resonate with specific groups that you market to. An example of this could be a bicycle shop owner (whose primary target is fitness-focused individuals of all ages) targeting the 65-plus demographic as they build a strategy around the launch of a new bike for senior citizens.

Focusing on a specific segment of an audience can make a message more effective. It also makes it easier to build buyer personas that can intimately inform your content creation as you go along.

3. Embracing Helpful Content on Every Level

If you want your engaging content to perform well, you have to be willing to put your target audience first and a search engine second. This doesn’t mean you ignore the latter in favor of the former.

On the contrary, it’s always wise to check that your content is SEO-optimized. However, you need to have your priorities straight as you go about the content creation process.

The best way to do this is to create content that embraces Google’s concept of generating “helpful content.” This is content that follows the E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness) guidelines of the search engine.

This kind of approach seeks to infuse content with value specifically targeting the reader. According to Google, “The helpful content system aims to better reward content where visitors feel they've had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn't meet a visitor's expectations won't perform as well.”

4. Keeping Conversion at the Center of Your Strategy

Calls to action should always be a central part of your content strategy. CTAs are the ultimate conversion element that shows your content is performing well and delivering the results you desire.

The good news here is that while conversions are important, you get to tailor them to your specific marketing needs in each content creation situation. Each content piece can focus on a different CTA.

For example, a detailed whitepaper might end with a call to request a demo or book an appointment with a salesperson. At the same time, a basic 101 blog post or social media post could end with a simple request to sign up for an email or click through to another article that moves the reader further down the sales funnel.

Whatever the case, crafting powerful CTAs that lead to conversions is essential for content marketing success. They breathe extra meaning into each content piece that you create and give you a metric to measure its success.

As a content marketer, conversions should be a central element of your overall framework. If you’re unsure how to come up with targeted CTAs or track conversion metrics, consider working with a content marketing agency that can help supercharge your calls to action.

Building a Strong Foundation on the Four Pillars of Content Strategy Frameworks

Digital marketing is a multi-faceted and complicated world. It’s important to have a content strategy in place and for that strategy to be reinforced by a clear framework.

As you build this framework and create content, remember to keep the above elements in mind. From clear goals and a segmented target audience to valuable content and conversions, focus on the right areas. That way, you can count on every piece of content that you create to to lead you towards a successful content marketing strategy.

Content marketing is a complex activity. It consists of countless forms and styles of content, from blog posts and emails to podcasts and social media.

Along with these variations, content creators must develop marketing assets that provide multidimensional quality. They must provide value to end users while also fulfilling search engine requirements and feeding into your larger content marketing strategy.

The question is, how do you know a piece of content is satisfying all of these needs and is ultimately helping convert readers into loyal customers?

How Do You Assess Content Quality?

If you’re looking for a single quality content meaning, don’t expect to find one. When it comes to SEO and content marketing, there are multiple ways you can assess the quality of your content, and they each matter in their own way.

For instance, you want to have high production quality so that each piece of content is insightful, readable, and engaging for readers. You can use a tool to get a writing quality score and see how readable your content is from a consumer perspective.

This is a good start, but you also want your content to play an effective part in your growth marketing strategy. This is where converting content comes into play.

Conversion content weaves CTAs into high-quality content. This encourages readers to take a desired action while simultaneously benefiting from the inherent value that your content offers.

Google uses multiple metrics to gauge quality from an SEO perspective, too. The search engine’s Quality Score decides the quality of content based on things like relevant keywords. It’s Helpful Content Update,  YMYL (your money, your life), and E-E-A-T standards also consider how content helps readers. These can collectively have an effect on your SERP rankings.

A good marketer should have all of these concepts and metrics in mind when crafting a content plan.

What Is an Example of Converting Content?

Let’s look at a hypothetical example of what holistic, high-quality, converting content looks like. Consider a Saas company that has created a workflow tool. They want to create a series of blog posts designed to help someone work down the sales funnel.

One blog post could be titled “What Is Workflow.” In this case, this is a 101 topic. It is designed to provide basic information to educate someone who is new to the concept of workflow. In contrast, a topic about “How to Organize Your Online Workspaces” is mid-funnel. It digs deeper into the topic and aligns more closely with encouraging a reader to use the brand’s products.

To function as converting content, all of these should be SEO optimized to attract traffic from search engines like Google. They should also have CTAs embedded within the blogs themselves, depending on the part of the funnel they address.

A 101 blog, for example, might encourage readers to sign up for an email newsletter or click through to a more advanced topic. A mid or low-funnel piece of content might have a call to action that asks the consumer to ask for a demo, contact a sales rep, or even make a purchase.

Of course, designing a piece of content to convert doesn’t mean that will automatically happen. Once you’ve created a content strategy and developed the content itself, you need to identify if your content is actually converting.

How Do You Identify Your Well-Converting Content?

Once you’ve created your content, it’s time to consider what content metrics to track to see if it’s converting. Google Analytics is a big factor for any onsite content. If you don’t have the analytics tool set up on your site yet, you need it. If you’re creating something like emails or social posts, you can usually access similar tools right on the third-party platforms that you use to manage that content.

Once you have Google Analytics tracking your content, you need to set up goals. These are unique parameters that Google tracks to see if users are completing specific actions. A goal could be clicking on a link, watching a video, the amount of time spent on a page, or even the number of pages visited in a session.

When goals are fulfilled by visitors, it creates a conversion. A high conversion rate indicates that you have well-converting content. What a high conversion rate looks like depends on the metric you’re tracking, your industry, and even your brand’s past data in relation to that CTA. 

For instance, email marketing brand Omnisend says landing pages have the highest email sign-up conversion rate at 23%. However, before you set that as your benchmark, you want to conduct additional research to see what the average sign-up rate is in your industry.

If you don’t have goals set up to track in Google, you can still observe general traffic. Look for pages that have the most visitors. When you identify these, you can do two things.

First, support those pages with some conversion rate optimization. Ensure that they are taking advantage of that traffic by locating strategic CTAs in the right places to set them up for success.

Second, use those pages as templates for future success. Consider what elements — such as valuable information, videos, or simply answering a good user query — make them stand out. Use that information to inform future content creation.

How to Create Well-Converting Content

Okay, you know how to track your existing content. But what about making new content?

This tends to be pretty straightforward since you’re working with a fresh canvas. Start by reviewing your buyer personas and conducting any market research necessary to fill in the gaps. Make sure you grasp what is important to your target audience and can create content to help answer their questions.

As you create that content, think through both structure and format. Remember both readability and your marketing strategy. In other words, create valuable content for the reader while also answering marketing needs.

For example, when you create a headline, make it snappy for readers and put a primary keyword in it for search engines. Include links for unexplained concepts, and make sure those links connect to sites with high domain authority (DA). Keep paragraph length short and wording simple, too. At the end of the day though, the most important thing is to create helpful content for the reader. If you do that, you’ll win with search engines, conversion tactics, and your audience.

Getting the Most Out of Your Well-Converting Content

Content is a powerful marketing tool. It can help your target audience while also encouraging them to take action to support your brand. Consider hiring a content marketing agency if you need an expert’s advice.  

You should always put the reader first when creating content, as you want to make a powerful and positive impression that establishes yourself as an authority in your industry. 

As you do so, though, use content performance analytics to observe how well your content converts, too. That way, you can encourage consumers to not just learn from your content but take targeted actions to solve their problems, too.

There are many different types of content strategy. These are the approaches, processes, and types of content that you plan on using to create your brand’s content over time. 

A content strategy combines the larger perspective of a content marketing strategy framework with the detailed, nitty-gritty tactics of a content plan. It takes into account big-picture items like trends and marketing objectives, as well as the specific tools you have available to create content for your brand.

Here is an overview of what it takes to create a comprehensive content strategy in 2024, along with a step-by-step process to chart the course for your own content marketing strategy this year.

What Is Different About Content Strategy in 2024?

Digital content is always in a state of evolution. An effective digital marketing content strategy always considers the latest content marketing trends. 

In 2024, most trends trace their way back to one thing: artificial intelligence. AI is all the rage at the moment. Content marketers are using AI tools to brainstorm ideas, generate outlines, analyze results, and much more — and we’re just starting to scratch the surface of this powerful, limitless technology.

Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) is one of the biggest developments to date. Google’s Helpful Content Updates are also redefining how the internet search process takes place. The brand’s updated E-E-A-T guidelines also put the emphasis on educational, helpful, and high-quality content rather than generic or unhelpful alternatives. 

While there are other content trends, like using video and interactive content, these latest AI-focused developments from the world’s most powerful search tool have the potential to revolutionize how users and marketers alike use search engines. Savvy marketing teams should be watching and learning everything they can regarding these trends as they shape their content strategies for 2024.

How to Build a Helpful Content Strategy for 2024

As you pull together the different parts of a content strategy, you want to consider all of the different types of content and formats available. What content strategy tools can you use? How do the trends listed above play into the picture? 

The best way to create a solid content strategy plan is to use a structured approach. Here is a content strategy example that uses a step-by-step process to form a roadmap for the next twelve months. Use it to help guide you as you build your plan.

1. Review Your Content Strategy Framework

Always start a time-based content strategy with an initial review of your larger content marketing goals. Review the themes and niche topics where you want to position your brand as a source of expertise and authority.

Also, review basic brand goals, such as driving revenue, generating leads, or creating brand awareness. What are your long-term content goals? This is your starting point. As you prepare to create content in 2024, remember to keep your larger marketing strategy in mind as you go along.

2. Conduct Research

Now, it’s time to look past the hypothetical and consider the real world. What are the topics and search queries that your target audience is looking for? Don’t be afraid to ask them directly on social media or through email if you need to. This information is key to creating the engaging content that will be most helpful to your audience.

While you’re researching, it’s also a good idea to conduct competitive research and consider current trends like those listed above. Look at what your competitors are doing well or what they could improve on so you know what works and where opportunity lies.

3. Create Strategies Based on Your Research

This is the tricky part. Now that you’ve done your research and review, you need to consider how it all fits together. This means aligning your larger brand objectives with current trends and potential customers' pain points. As you consider all three of these, you can begin to create specific strategies for the coming year.

For instance, consider a SaaS brand focused on using AI to simplify tech stacks. They want to spur revenue by generating leads, and their audience is looking for ways to eliminate unnecessary spend. 

A good content goal might be to create a series of top-of-funnel blog articles that highlight overspending on tech and the power that AI has to analyze and reduce inefficiencies. This goal considers the brand’s themes (tech/simplification), current trends (AI tools), and customer pain points (overspending/inefficiency).

4. Consider What Content Type is Needed to Achieve Your Goals

Once you have your goals set, it’s time to dig into more of the details. Where are these goals in your sales funnel? What kind of content facilitates achieving them? 

For example, if you need top-funnel content, you may want to create a topical blog post, conduct a content audit focused on improving your helpful content, or create more social media content. However, if you need to create content for the bottom of your funnel, you may want to focus on creating demos, video content, whitepapers, or email marketing. 

5. Plan Out How to Publish Your Content

When you plan out an entire year of content, it’s tempting to dive in and start posting things as soon as you’ve created them. However, it’s wise to spread things out and post things on a schedule. This keeps your brand looking fresh and current.

Set up a content calendar that incorporates everything. Social media, on-site content, top-funnel, bottom-funnel, take everything into consideration. What is time-sensitive? What isn’t? Use the answers to plot your content’s course for 2024.

6. Analyze as You Go Along

Finally, don’t forget to set the stage to analyze your results. Once your content is live, use tools like Google Analytics to gauge how it performs.

Relevant content can take varying times to generate results. On the one hand, a social post will have near-instantaneous traffic. On the other hand, an SEO-optimized blog article could take six months to start generating organic traffic to your site. 

Set up a recurring schedule to check in on your content creation strategy throughout the year. When you do, consider what’s working and make adjustments where necessary. If you aren’t sure what to do to improve a lagging campaign, you can also work with a good content marketing agency to improve your results.

Building a Helpful Content Strategy

2024 is the year of AI, and Google’s AI is focused on creating helpful content. If your valuable content is genuinely educating and supporting consumers, it will shine through. In fact, Google specifically recommends that if you’re already producing helpful content, “then you don't need to do anything; in fact this system may be good for your site, as it is designed to reward helpful content.”

However, if you need more quality content, you need to build a good content strategy for the coming year. Use the steps above to consider your digital marketing strategy goals, current trends, and customer pain points. Then, pull everything together into a killer content strategy that can generate truly helpful content for your customers.