Repurpose Content Like a Pro with Pillars, Themes, & Formats
If you want to implement a consistent and cohesive social media strategy, making your content formulaic is a helpful first step.
By defining core pillars, themes, and formats, when you sit down to create content, you’ll have a roadmap to follow, making content creation that much easier.
Plus, read to the bottom to find out how this makes repurposing content ideas seamless!
Content Pillars
According to Later, content pillars are “3 to 5 topics your brand will consistently discuss, amplify, and create content for on social media.”
Defining content pillars will ensure you’re addressing the variety of topics within your strategy, while also setting guardrails to ensure you’re staying on-topic and relevant.
You should first understand your organization’s goals on social media to define the topics that you will post about.
Since social media is a consumer-driven platform, find a balance between posting content that gives value and content that promotes your organization. If every post is all about you, or every post has a donate ask, people will likely become tired of consuming your content.
For example, as a nonprofit, your content pillars might be:
Mission/Education – the “why” behind the organization
Impact – storytelling and data
Take action – ways to get involved & make a difference
Team/Behind the Scenes – team spotlights, volunteer appreciation, donor thank you’s, events, etc.
Holidays – days of note relevant to your mission
Any time you come up with a content idea, ask yourself if that idea fits within your pillars and thus, supports your organization’s goals. If not, it might not be appropriate for a post on your organization’s social media channels.
Content Themes
Educate, inspire, motivate, entertain, promote, relate…within the social media space, these are widely adopted and recommended, and sometimes referred to as content pillars. For the purposes of this blog post, I’m going to call them “content themes.”
Content themes identify the way you present your content based on what your audience will take away from it. Your themes will tie back to the brand identity you want to establish, so be sure your themes match your tone.
For example, as an environmental nonprofit, the Mission/Education content pillar could be presented in different ways based on the theme, such as:
Educate – graphic carousel sharing a list of 5 things to know
Inspire – positive news about the environment that relates to the organization’s programs
Motivate – statistic that highlights the environmental preservation
Entertain – funny reel bringing attention to an environmental fact
Promote – talking head video of a team member educating on the organization’s program and making a donation ask
Relate – meme about the environment and its impact on everyday life
When making your content, be sure to vary your content themes so your content doesn’t become monotonous, but also be sure it stays on-brand.
Content Formats
Finally, when creating content, we must consider content formats. These are the medium by which we present our content, such as graphics, photos, and videos.
Always be sure to optimize your content by platform using the most appropriate media for the platform, but don’t be afraid to experiment too!
It’s always a good idea to try out different formats to see what your audience responds best to, as different formats may appeal to people based on their content consumption habits.
Repurpose Like a Pro
The best part of this approach is that it unlocks the opportunity to repurpose content ideas seamlessly by presenting the same idea in various ways over time!
Start with your content pillar
Define your content idea (what’s the content actually going to be about?)
Select your theme
Select your format
Repeat steps 2-4, presenting the same content idea in multiple ways by mixing and matching content themes and formats
This is a simple and effective approach to make the most of your time spent creating content. Only a small percentage of your followers sees your content, and an even smaller percentage absorb the information, so presenting the same idea in various formats increases the likelihood that your message will be conveyed and remembered.
If you want help defining your organization’s social media content strategy, including pillars, themes, formats, and so much more, inquire with us about our Social Media Strategy service!
