# 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. --- 资料：Frank Heijdenrijk / pavelhov/social-media-skills 原始版本：https://github.com/pavelhov/social-media-skills/blob/1680b37bf0dc32b52da247a8196ef27a6cd47bd4/skills/content-pillars/SKILL.md 许可：MIT。目录与内部链接已经整理，未收录图片已省略。 MIT License Copyright (c) 2026 Frank Heijdenrijk Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. 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