--- name: content-pillars description: >- Use to define a brand's content pillars — the 3–5 recurring themes it posts about — the strategic backbone between the brand profile and the content calendar. Run when the user says "content pillars," "content buckets," "what should I post about," "content themes," "content strategy," "pillars," or before planning a batch or calendar. Reads brand-profile first and derives pillars from positioning, point of view, audience, and proof — real ownable themes, never generic "educational / behind-the-scenes / promotional" buckets (those are intents and formats, not pillars). Produces a content-pillars.md that batch-content-plan and the content skills read. Works for any business: B2B, ecommerce, local, personal brand, nonprofit. metadata: version: 1.0.0 license: MIT --- # Content Pillars Content pillars are the few recurring **themes** a brand returns to — the strategic layer between *who the brand is* (`brand-profile`) and *what it posts this week* (`batch-content-plan`). Good pillars make a feed coherent, ownable, and infinitely easy to plan; their absence is why so many brands post random things that add up to nothing. The single most important idea in this skill — and the thing almost everyone gets wrong: > **A pillar is a theme you own. It is NOT an intent or a format.** "Educational," > "behind-the-scenes," and "promotional" are not pillars — *educational* is an intent (the job a > post does) and *behind-the-scenes* is a format/treatment. A real pillar is a subject area like > "payroll without a specialist" or "the craft of coffee, demystified." Get this distinction > right and everything downstream gets sharper. See `references/what-makes-a-pillar.md`. ## When to use this - After `brand-profile`, before planning content at any scale. - When the user doesn't know "what to post about," or their feed feels random. - When `batch-content-plan` needs pillars and none are defined. **When NOT to use this:** if a current `content-pillars.md` exists, load it, summarize it, and move on unless the user wants to revisit it. ## Step 0 — Read the foundation first Load `brand-profile.md` (and `voice.md`). Pillars are *derived from strategy* — positioning, point of view, audience, proof, offers — not brainstormed from thin air. If there's no brand profile, run `brand-profile` first; pillars built without it are guesses. ## Step 1 — Mine the brand profile for raw material Pull the candidate sources (see `references/deriving-pillars.md`): - **Positioning + point of view** → the *signature* pillar (the thing the brand wants to be known for; the hill it will die on). - **Audience jobs-to-be-done / pains** → audience-relevant pillars (their problems, not your features). - **Proof + expertise** → credibility pillars (what the brand can authoritatively teach). - **The human / brand story** → a connection pillar. - **Offers / product** → at most one conversion-linked pillar, used sparingly. ## Step 2 — Generate candidate pillars From each source, draft candidate themes. Aim wide first (8–12 candidates), phrased as *subjects*, not formats — "small-business money mistakes," not "educational posts." ## Step 3 — Test and select 3–5 Run each candidate through the **pillar test** (`references/what-makes-a-pillar.md`): 1. **Ownable** — can you say *why this brand specifically* is credible or distinctive here? 2. **Relevant** — does the target audience genuinely care? 3. **Strategic** — does it advance a real goal (awareness, trust, conversion)? 4. **Sustainable** — can you brainstorm **10+ post ideas** from it right now? Keep the 3–5 strongest. A candidate that fails *ownable* or *sustainable* is not a pillar. Fewer, sharper pillars beat more, vaguer ones — a feed with eight themes has none. ## Step 4 — Define each pillar For every selected pillar, capture: a clear name, what it covers, **why the brand owns it**, who it's for, the goal it serves, 5–8 example angles/sub-topics, and the proof/assets it draws on. This is what makes pillars usable by the planning and content skills. See `references/pillar-template.md`. ## Step 5 — Balance the mix A healthy pillar set has: - **One signature pillar** — the differentiator, the brand's distinct POV. Every brand needs one. - **Supporting pillars** — audience problems, credibility, connection. - **At most one conversion-linked pillar**, used as the minority (promotion rides on the value the others create — see the mix logic in `batch-content-plan`). Spread the pillars across goals so the brand isn't all-teaching or all-selling. ## Step 6 — Write the artifact Produce `content-pillars.md` using `references/pillar-template.md`. Summarize it back to the user, flag the signature pillar, and invite one round of edits. `batch-content-plan` and the content skills will read this on every task. ## Quality bar — self-check - Are the pillars **themes**, not intents or formats? (No "educational" as a pillar.) - Is each one **ownable** — with a reason *this* brand is credible/distinctive on it? - Is each **audience-relevant**, not just brand-interesting? - Could each generate **10+ post ideas** (sustainable)? - Is there exactly **one signature pillar**, and is promotion a minority? - Are there **3–5**, not eight vague ones? - Does each pillar trace back to something real in the brand profile? ## Edge cases - **User lists generic buckets** ("educational, BTS, promo") → explain those are intents/formats, and convert them into real themes derived from the brand. - **Too many candidate topics** → narrow to the 3–5 that best pass the pillar test. - **Brand with no obvious distinctive theme** → mine the POV and audience pains harder; if there's truly no differentiation, the signature pillar becomes *voice + a consistent angle*, and you say so honestly. - **Personal brand / creator** → pillars are person-led (what they're known for, their journey, their craft); keep them tied to the person, not a faceless topic list. - **Multiple audiences** (e.g., nonprofit: beneficiaries + donors) → some pillars may serve different audiences; note which. - **Multi-product / broad business** → resist one pillar per product; pillars are audience themes, not a catalog. ## Related skills - `brand-profile` — read first; supplies positioning, audience, POV, proof. - `audience-research` — deepen audience pains that feed audience pillars. - `batch-content-plan` — consumes pillars to build the calendar. - The content skills (`caption-writer`, `reels-script`, …) — each post is tagged to a pillar. ## References - `references/what-makes-a-pillar.md` — the definition, the pillars-vs-intents-vs-formats distinction, the pillar test, anti-patterns. - `references/deriving-pillars.md` — the method for mining the brand profile into pillars. - `references/pillar-template.md` — the content-pillars.md output schema. - `references/examples.md` — ownable pillar sets across six business types.