Content pillars for client social media: how to choose them and keep them balanced
Content pillars stop a client's feed turning into a stream of adverts. How to pick three to five, agree them with the client, and check the balance every month.
Ask a new client what they want to post about and the answer is usually “our products” and “whatever is happening”. Both are fair, and neither is a plan. Content pillars are the handful of recurring themes a brand posts about, agreed in advance, so that every month has a shape before anyone writes a caption. This guide explains how to choose them for a client, how many to have, how to turn them into a rhythm and how to notice when the balance slips.
What a content pillar is (and is not)
A pillar is a theme broad enough to fill a post every week or two for a year, and narrow enough that you know immediately whether a post belongs to it. “Product” is a pillar. “The new oat latte” is a post. “Engagement” is not a pillar at all, because it describes a result, not a subject.
Good pillars do three jobs:
- They protect variety. Without them, the easiest posts (offers and announcements) crowd out everything else.
- They make briefs faster. A writer who knows Tuesday is “behind the scenes” starts from a question, not a blank page.
- They make reporting meaningful. When every post carries a pillar, you can compare how each theme performs instead of guessing.
How to choose pillars for a client
Pillars should come from the client’s business, not from a generic list. Work through these four sources in your onboarding call or workshop.
1. What the business sells or does
Start with the obvious: products, services, menus, programmes. Group them into one commercial pillar, or two if the client has very different lines (for example retail and workshops).
2. What only this business can show
Every business has material its competitors cannot copy: the people, the workshop, the suppliers, the process, the neighbourhood. This usually becomes a behind-the-scenes or “how we make it” pillar, and it is often where a small brand’s personality shows best.
3. What the audience wants help with
List the questions customers ask in the shop, on the phone or in reviews. Answering them in public becomes a tips or education pillar that is useful even to people who are not ready to buy.
4. Proof from other people
Customer stories, partner features, reviews the client has permission to share, community events. A pillar like this works only if the client can supply material regularly, so check before you commit to it.
If a candidate pillar would need the client to send you something every week and they have never done so before, plan it at a lower share until they prove they can.
How many pillars, and in what proportion
Three to five is enough for most clients. Fewer than three and the feed gets repetitive; more than five and each theme appears so rarely that nobody recognises it.
Give each pillar a rough share of the month rather than a fixed count, because the number of posts changes from month to month. A simple starting point for a fictional neighbourhood bakery, Hollow Oak Bakehouse, might look like this:
| Pillar | Share | Example posts |
|---|---|---|
| From the oven (product) | 35% | Weekend specials, seasonal bakes, pre-order reminders |
| Behind the counter | 25% | The 5 a.m. shift, the new mixer, meet the team |
| Bake it at home (tips) | 20% | Storing sourdough, why rye needs longer, flour questions |
| Our street (community) | 20% | The market stall, a local school fair, supplier visits |
The shares are a guide for planning, not a target to hit to the post. If a launch month needs more product posts, say so in the plan and let the other pillars recover the next month.
Agree the pillars with the client in writing
Pillars only help if the client recognises them. Before you plan the first month:
- Write each pillar as one sentence: what it covers and why it matters to the audience.
- Add two or three example posts under each, in the client’s voice.
- Note what you need from the client for each pillar (photos, product details, permission to feature customers).
- Agree the rough shares and how often you will review them, for example every quarter.
Keep this one-page summary next to the brand voice notes. If you use PostRoost, the client’s brand voice settings hold who they are, who they talk to, words to use and avoid and the hashtags they always use; the pillar summary sits comfortably alongside it in your onboarding notes.
Turn pillars into a weekly rhythm
A rhythm decides which pillar goes where in the week, so a month can be planned in minutes. Start from the number of posts per week you can sustain for each network (a rhythm you can keep for a year beats one that collapses in week three), then spread the pillars across the slots.
For Hollow Oak’s three posts a week on Instagram and Facebook, that could be:
- Monday: Bake it at home (tips start the week gently)
- Wednesday: Behind the counter or Our street, alternating
- Friday: From the oven (weekend specials, when people decide where to go)
The fixed dates for the month (launches, holidays, closures, events) go in first; the rhythm fills the rest. Our guide to planning a month of social posts walks through that order step by step.
Keep the month balanced
Balance slips quietly. A sale comes up, a new product lands, a few behind-the-scenes photos never arrive, and by the third week the feed is all offers. Three habits catch it early.
Tag every planned post with its pillar
In a planning spreadsheet, a pillar column with a drop-down list is enough. Our free social media calendar template has one, and its Overview sheet counts posts per pillar and per status so you can see a lopsided month before it is scheduled.
Look at the month as a whole before sign-off
Before you send a month for approval, read it as a calendar, not as a list. Are two product posts back to back? Is the same call to action repeated three days running? Is there a week with nothing from the community pillar? On a content calendar these gaps are obvious in a way they are not in a document.
Review pillar performance, then adjust
After a month or two, compare pillars rather than individual posts. Use the same engagement-rate formula every time (see our explanation of engagement rate formulas), and compare averages per post, because a pillar with eight posts will always have bigger totals than one with three. If a pillar consistently underperforms, try a different format before dropping it: tips that do nothing as a single image sometimes work as a short video or a carousel.
Common mistakes
- Pillars that are really goals. “Brand awareness” and “engagement” describe results. Pick subjects.
- One pillar per network. Pillars are about the brand, not the channel. Each network gets its own version of the same idea; our guide on adapting one post for seven networks explains what to change.
- Never revisiting them. A pillar chosen at onboarding may not survive the first season. Review quarterly and change shares before you change pillars.
- Promising material the client cannot supply. If customer stories depend on the client asking customers, agree who asks, and plan fewer of them until it happens.
A quick checklist
- Three to five pillars, each a subject, each one sentence long
- Two or three example posts per pillar, in the client’s voice
- Rough shares agreed with the client
- What the client must supply, and how often
- A weekly rhythm that places pillars into slots
- A pillar column in the planning sheet
- A quarterly review of shares, with per-post averages
Pillars do not make a feed interesting on their own; good posts do. What pillars give you is a month that has a reason for each post before you start writing, and a way to show the client that the plan is deliberate.
