Content pillars: how to pick them, with examples by industry
What content pillars are, how many a brand needs, how to choose them from what you sell and what your customers ask, worked pillar sets for six kinds of business, and how to turn them into a posting week.
Marián Cabadaj
9 min read
Content pillars are the 3 to 5 topics a brand posts about again and again. Each pillar is a reason your audience follows you, and each one links back to something you sell. When a post idea comes up, the pillars decide whether it gets made.
Most brands that "run out of content" have no pillars, or they have pillars so wide that they decide nothing. "Tips", "behind the scenes" and "product" fit almost any post, so the team still starts every week from a blank page. Good pillars are narrow enough to point at a post and say which pillar it belongs to.
This guide shows how to choose pillars, how many to run, a set of examples for six kinds of business, and how to turn the pillars into a posting week. If you only need the ideas for this week, start with the content idea generator and come back to sort the output.
What are content pillars?
A content pillar is a topic your brand owns on social media. It is wider than one post and narrower than "our brand". A coffee subscription might run four pillars: brewing at home, where the beans come from, the subscription itself, and the people who drink it. Every post on the account belongs to one of the four.
Pillars do three jobs:
- They decide. A new idea either fits a pillar or it does not get made this month.
- They balance. A feed that is 80% product announcements reads like a catalogue. Pillars set the mix before the week starts.
- They teach the audience what to expect. People follow an account for a reason. When the posts keep returning to the same few topics, the reason stays clear.
Pillars may also help with ranking. Instagram says the most important signals for what you see in Feed are, roughly in order, your activity, information about the post, information about the person who posted, and your history with that account (Instagram, 2023). Instagram does not mention topics. Our reading is that an account with a few steady topics gives those signals a clearer picture of who should see each post.
Are content pillars the same as content buckets?
Many teams use the two words for the same idea. Some teams use "buckets" for post formats (carousel, reel, quote) and "pillars" for topics. Keep the two apart. A pillar is what the post is about. A format is how it looks. One pillar can run as a reel on Monday and a carousel on Thursday.
How are content pillars different from message pillars?
Message pillars belong to paid ads. They are the 3 or so claims your ads defend, each backed by proof, and they are covered in our messaging framework guide. Content pillars belong to the whole feed. They include topics that sell nothing directly, such as the founder's story or a weekly customer question.
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Add as preferred sourceHow many content pillars should a brand have?
Run 3 to 5. Three is enough for a small account that posts three times a week. Five is the ceiling for a team that posts daily. With six or more, each pillar gets a post every two weeks, and nobody notices that the account has a pattern at all.
| Posts per week | Pillars | Each pillar shows up |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | 3 | Once a week |
| 5 | 4 | About once a week, one pillar twice |
| 7 | 5 | Once or twice a week |
| 10 or more | 5 | Two times a week each |
The table is plain arithmetic. A pillar that appears less than once a week is easy for the audience to miss. Below three posts a week, keep three pillars and rotate them over two weeks.
Should every pillar get the same share?
No. Give the most posts to the pillar that brings new followers, and a small share to the pillar that sells. For a small DTC brand, start at 40% teaching, 30% community and proof, 20% product and 10% personality. That split is our own starting point, with no study behind it. Move the shares toward whatever your own results reward.
How do you choose your content pillars?
Start from evidence. Four sources give you almost every pillar you need, and you already have all four.
Start from what you sell
List your products or services, then group them by the problem they solve. A skincare brand with 14 products might have only three problems: breakouts, dry skin and sensitivity. Those problems are candidate pillars. A product is too narrow to carry a pillar alone, unless it is your only product.
Count what customers ask
Read your last 50 DMs, comments, support tickets and reviews. Count the questions. The three most frequent questions are a pillar on their own, often called "objections" or "FAQ". When a brand answers the same question in public every week, the support inbox usually shrinks, and the post tends to earn saves.
Read what already worked
Sort your last 90 days of posts by engagement rate and read the top ten. Do not sort by likes alone. A post with 200 likes on 40,000 views did worse than a post with 90 likes on 3,000 views. Use the calculator below to compare them on the same scale.
One post's numbers
Open the post in the app, read the insights, and copy the figures across.
The formula never changes. The median it is graded against does.
Leave this empty to match the published benchmarks, which count likes and comments only.
Your engagement rate
Median 0.48%
Engagement rate by followers
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Total interactions
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Scale: 0% to 1.92%
Interactions per 1,000 followers
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Engagement Rate Calculator: the full tool, with the benchmarks and the FAQ
Look for the topic the winners share. If four of the top ten are "how we make it" posts, that is a pillar, even if nobody planned it.
Decide who you want to be
One pillar should carry the brand's personality: the founder, the team, the opinions, the jokes. It earns the fewest sales directly, but it is the reason people pick you over a cheaper copy. Keep it to 10% to 20% of posts.
Then test each candidate with two questions. Can you name 10 posts for it today? Does it link back to something you sell within two clicks? A pillar that fails the first one runs dry in a month. A pillar that fails the second one grows an audience that never buys.
Content pillars examples by industry
The pillar sets below are worked examples, written to show the method. Use them as a start and swap in your own evidence. The same list holds if you searched "content pillar examples" or "social media content pillars".
| Business | Pillar 1 | Pillar 2 | Pillar 3 | Pillar 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skincare DTC | Skin problems explained | Ingredient deep dives | Real customer routines | Founder lab notes |
| Coffee subscription | Brewing at home | Farm and roast | Box of the month | Customer cup photos |
| B2B SaaS | The job your buyer does | Product how-tos | Customer results | Team and opinions |
| Local gym | Form and technique | Member stories | Class schedule and events | Coach personalities |
| Jewellery brand | How to style and stack | Materials and care | Customers wearing it | Studio and making |
| Pet food | Feeding questions | What is in the bag | Pets of our customers | Vet and nutrition facts |
Two patterns repeat across all six. Every set has a teaching pillar that answers the customer's real question, and every set has a proof pillar made of customers. Those two carry most of the reach. The product pillar is always there, but it is never the first one.
What do one brand's pillars look like in practice?
Here are our own ads at Selzee, sorted by pillar. Selzee makes ads for brands, so our pillars are the problem our buyers have, how the product works, the objections they raise, and our voice.
Pillar 1: the problem. This ad shows the morning a marketer loses to ad research. It sells nothing yet. The reader has had that morning.
Pillar 2: how it works. These ads explain the product in one frame. The billboard says what happens, in order. The checklist turns the same steps into something a reader can save.
Pillar 3: objections. This ad answers a question buyers ask before they try it: will the ads look like my brand?
Pillar 4: voice. A letter that apologises for making the reader's routine too easy. It carries the same product facts as the billboard, in a lighter tone.
Notice that all five ads say almost the same thing about the product. The pillar changes the angle. The product facts stay the same. That is how a small team posts every day without inventing a new message every day.
How do you turn content pillars into a posting week?
Give each weekday a pillar, then fill the slots. A fixed rhythm removes the daily question "what do we post today?" and makes gaps visible early.
| Day | Pillar | Format | Example for a coffee subscription |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Teaching | Carousel | 5 brewing mistakes that make good beans taste bitter |
| Tuesday | Proof | Customer photo or reel | A subscriber's Sunday pour-over, reposted with credit |
| Wednesday | Teaching | Short reel | The grind size for a French press, in 15 seconds |
| Thursday | Product | Single image | This month's box and the farm it came from |
| Friday | Personality | Story or reel | The roaster tasting a batch that did not make the cut |
Plan the month in one sitting with our free content calendar template. Fill the teaching slots first, because they are the hardest to fake and the posts readers save most.
How do pillars and post ideas work together?
Pillars set what a post is about. Our Instagram post ideas guide sorts ideas by the action they earn: saves, comments, sends. Use both. Pick the pillar first, then pick the idea inside it that earns the action you need this week.
When should you change your pillars?
Review them every quarter. Keep a pillar that brings followers or sales. Merge a pillar that keeps producing the same three posts into its neighbour. Replace a pillar only when the business changes: a new product line, a new market, a new kind of customer. Changing pillars every month throws away what the audience has learned to expect.
How Selzee runs your pillars
Selzee researches your brand first: your site, your products and the ads that are winning in your market right now. Then it makes new ads for your brand every day, with your products, logo, fonts and colours, and every ad comes with the angle and the insight it is built on.
That angle is where pillars come in. When you review the new ads, sort each one into a pillar by its angle. A pillar with nothing approved for next week shows up at once, and you know what to ask for. You approve the ads you want and publish them in one click. You decide the pillars. Selzee keeps each one stocked with new ads, so the planning meeting is a review of what is ready.
Content pillars: FAQ
What are content pillars?
Content pillars are the 3 to 5 topics a brand posts about again and again on social media. Each pillar is a reason people follow the account and links back to something the brand sells. Every post belongs to one pillar.
How many content pillars should I have?
Have 3 to 5. Three suits an account that posts three times a week. Five is the limit for daily posting. With more than five, each pillar shows up so rarely that the audience does not see a pattern.
What are good content pillar examples?
A coffee subscription might run brewing at home, farm and roast, the box of the month, and customer cup photos. A B2B software company might run the job its buyer does, product how-tos, customer results, and team opinions. Each set has a teaching pillar and a proof pillar.
What is the difference between content pillars and content buckets?
Many teams use the two words for the same idea. Where they differ, a pillar is the topic of a post and a bucket is the format, such as a carousel or a reel. One pillar can run in several formats in the same week.
How do I find my content pillars?
Use four sources: what you sell, what customers ask, which past posts worked, and the personality you want the brand to have. Keep a candidate only if you can name 10 posts for it today and it links back to a product within two clicks.
The short version
Pick 3 to 5 pillars from evidence: your products, your customers' questions and your best posts. Give the teaching and proof pillars the biggest share, and keep the product pillar small. Give each weekday a pillar, plan a month at a time, and review the pillars once a quarter.
If you want new on-brand ads for every pillar each day, see how Selzee works on your own brand.