Instagram content pillars give you ideas to create and post content around your niche topic. Your business is perceived in how you project it, and content influences it. Effective content comes from a sturdy content pillar.
Facebook, Whatsapp, YouTube, and Instagram are the most popular social media platforms where you can find potential customers. Instagram users make up 28% of the world’s internet users.
In 2016, Instagram introduced business profiles, enabling new social media marketing. Since the inception of business profiles, Instagram shopping has become more prevalent, and the platform launched its analytics.
Everyone has their own Instagram business profile, from established businesses to startups and influencers. Opening an account for your business on Instagram has benefits, which you will learn more about when you read this article.
What Is a Content Pillar?
A content pillar is a long-form article that elaborates on the topic that your brand focuses on. It has interconnected topics from which many other content types can be created. Interconnected topics are the clusters. A content pillar creates a better structure for your posts, making it easier for your audience to digest your content.
In social media marketing, content pillars involve several predetermined themes and topics around which the content you post revolves. These themes are known as buckets and are as closely related to your brand as possible.
Content Pillars vs Brand Pillars
- Content pillars represent the structure of your social media content strategy.
- Brand pillars represent the crucial points of your business, the way your solutions are communicated, and how the public perceives it.
Content pillars are brand-specific themes and topics that support a brand’s social media content strategy.
Why Are Instagram Content Pillars Important?
Instagram has 2 million active users worldwide and is a powerful social media platform for marketing your business. You can post photos, live videos, and hashtags about your business that increase user engagement. You can advertise your business through Instagram ads and use Instagram’s sales function to sell your products.
Instagram for business drives brand awareness, boosts sales and tracks audience engagement. It is the best way to find the customers where they are already spending time. Statistics show that it is the best hub for business.
Your social media platform requires consistency. You need to have posted regularly around your business theme. It gives you a strong identity on social media. You can have different types of content on your social media platform.
Instagram Content Pillars
Whether you believe it or not, there is actual content on Instagram. Though it was introduced mainly as a platform where photos and videos can be shared, it thrives and wins in content. Depending on your business, you have your Instagram pages to focus on the following content pillars.
1. Employee Spotlight
Content that focuses on employees is an excellent option for Instagram. It’s another way of showing users the human side of your brand. It makes an emotional connection to you, encouraging them to trust you more.
Some of the benefits of including employees in your social media marketing strategy are:
- Employees are your organic Instagram audience.
- They are your natural brand ambassadors.
- They share your information on their social media pages.
2. Product News
Always announce the good news! Post new products, business updates, and milestones reached with appealing visuals. You can spin more content around it and encourage your followers to check your business page frequently.
Instagram has a feature – the product launch. It allows you to tag and build awareness about your products. People learn about your products through your feed, stories, videos, reels, live broadcasts and push notifications. After your product launches, it remained in your Instagram shop and tagged in posts.
3. User-Generated Content
User-generated content, also known as UGC or user-generated content, is the original, brand-specific content created by your customers and posted on social media channels. It can be images, videos, reviews, YouTube videos, live streams, or testimony.
Re-share them to your feed when you find a post with your product or service. It shows your followers that your brand engages with the community. Re-posting encourages more user-generated content. It is conventional word-of-mouth marketing by your customers, brand loyalists, or employees.
4. Contests and Giveaways
Have you ever thought of contests and giveaways? Contests attract a lot of engagement and generate excitement around your brand. It gets people to talk about your brand, which produces organic traffic. Hosting a giveaway contest on Instagram is a great way to attract a new audience as they tend to bring new viewers to your page.
5. Behind the Scenes in Your Business
You invest a lot of time, money, and effort into building your business and offering top-notch products and services. Why not share your success story with everyone else there rather than just show the result?
The people and the processes behind your products and services are valuable assets you may use to your advantage. In recent years, businesses have become much more transparent with their audiences, thanks to the growth of social media. You can document the behind-the-scenes happenings and show your customers that your business is not static and it’s a journey.
6. Motivation & Inspiration
One of your Instagram content pillars could be sharing something inspirational about your niche business. Create the quote template using your brand’s color and fonts using a simple designing tool like Canva.
You can occasionally share something inspiring related to the niche of your business. Create a quote template with your brand fonts and colors. For this, you can use a simple graphic design tool like Canva. Don’t forget to include your handle or website’s URL at the bottom because posts like this get shared often.
7. Products & Services
Your business offers a lot of products and services. Put pictures and videos of your products, and share the new release news on your page. Sharing content featuring your products can help drive sales and promote your business online. You can have creative content with your products. You can post short blogs, include infographics that mention your products’ benefits, or run contests asking your followers to create exciting captions.
Engage a graphic designer to create catchy visuals and mention the hashtags. You can also create product posts that convey an emotion. Research and find what occurs in the minds of your followers when they see your products. Post a picture of your product that users can connect to.
8. Industry Trends
Keeping up with your niche industry’s latest trends and news will help you discover potential business content pillars. You can use tools like Google Trends to find the latest trends in your industry. There’s no specific good or bad method, but it’s all with your audience’s preference whether your Instagram post would suit or not.
9. Informative Content
Create posts that have informative content for your audience. You can create tutorials on a topic that your audience finds interesting and something that is most searched for. You can share screenshots of the analytics that you found using a tool. Other contents that you can share are lists, textual data, graphs, and stories.
10. Work Backwards
Followers count is a crucial KPI in Instagram marketing. Most marketers want to know what Instagram users might like and start researching from the bottom up. Instead of that, start to look the other way around. Visit your ideal audience’s Instagram page and look at what they already like. Check the brands they follow and see the type of content they like.
Check your audience’s profile’s list of followed accounts by clicking ‘Following’ on their profile page. Look for brand names or logos in a user’s list of followed accounts. Also, look into your competitor’s page and get tips on what they have been doing. Get insights on the content formats they use regularly and how they present their content on social media platforms. Other details include their most viewed Instagram video, Story Highlights, etc.
11. Look For Hashtags
Hashtags help people to find posts or tweets that interest them. Your ideal audience would follow a list of hashtags; observe those as they would be helpful for you to create an Instagram content pillar. You get these details by looking at their ‘Following’ list.
The thumb rule is that use relevant and specific hashtags. It’s a myth to believe that excessive hashtags would bring more engagement. Rather, it only confuses your ideal audience. Hashtags on Instagram help your audience to reach you quickly. The power of hashtags comes from the users who use similar keywords. If you click on a hashtag, you get more posts on a similar topic. If the user finds the most interesting, they can follow that hashtag on Instagram.
The type of hashtags you use depends on the emotions that you wish to express, the products that you recommend, and the kind of people you want to connect with. You can use different types of hashtags to identify your brand.
- General hashtags.
- Branded hashtags.
- Niche hashtags.
- Location hashtags
- Community-based hashtags.
- Industry-based hashtags.
FAQs
What are Instagram content pillars?
Content pillars are a collection of related topics a brand focuses on when publishing posts. Content pillars help establish your brand as an authority in your niche and meet the audience’s needs.
How many content pillars must you have on your Instagram page?
You can have three to five content pillars for your Instagram page. The purpose of a content pillar strategy is to provide valuable content to your audience. Ensure your content focuses on answering your target audience’s questions and keyword research and meets your business goals.
How do you plan a content strategy for your Instagram account?
Planning a content strategy for your Instagram content makes a huge difference. It can convince your audience to buy your product and increase sales rather than just procuring a handful of likes. While planning your strategy, prepare it according to your business goals. Make use of a tool for planning your content, managing, and scheduling when to publish your content.
What are some tips for creating an Instagram content pillar?
– Your Instagram page’s number of followers is a key performance indicator. Think of how you can increase your followers. Check out your target audience’s page, find the brands they are following and try to develop such ideas on your Instagram page.
– Look at your target audience’s hashtags that they are following. It is one way of discovering a potential content pillar idea.
– Follow the news and be abreast of the latest trends and technologies to help you uncover a good Instagram content pillar. Use Google Trends to identify trends in your niche industry quickly.
What are some examples of Instagram content pillars?
– Educational content.
– Video tutorials.
– How-to videos.
– Data visualization charts, graphs, and reports.
Closing Thoughts
Instagram content pillars are interconnected topics you need to plan and create when publishing your posts. The pillars are the basement of your strategy to generate sub-topics ideas that you can write and share. These pillar topics help you create different posts on your Instagram channel. Are you interested in knowing more about pillar content and how to create them? Check our blogs and read about content marketing and its use cases.
