The Four Content Pillars: a social strategy proven to work

In the world of modern marketing, practically every social media manager knows that the most effective content is not content that advertises, it’s content that adds value. Therein lies a new competition: who can add the MOST value? Really teach their followers something, make them laugh out loud, or inspire them in some way?

Constant analysis of what separates fleeting accounts from much-loved brands has led social media marketers to develop a powerful strategy: content pillars. These are key themes or broad topics that should act as a guide for every piece of content you create, no matter your industry or platform.

Whilst pillars vary depending on a brand's specific goals, successful strategies are built upon a foundation of four overarching concepts, each pertaining to a specific requirement. Inform, inspire, educate and entertain. Those that master the balance between these four are the brands we remember - the ones that have gone from company names to thriving, admired hubs of community.

What exactly are Content Pillars? Why do they work?

Understanding the "why" behind our pillar system is almost as important as the pillars themselves. And our “why" is this: pillars give your social media content a “why”. They stop you from falling into the common trap of “posting for the sake of posting” by providing structure, purpose, and consistency. We’ve all felt that pressure to constantly feed the algorithm, to put something out there to stay active. But sometimes less is more. Gap-filling posts lead to generic and uninspiring content, doomed to drown in a social media void.

This is where the strategy helps you use social media as the powerful growth tool that it is. By assigning every post a purpose - to inform, engage, inspire, or to entertain - you create a content mix that is consistently valuable to your audience.

But how do you choose the right topics for your pillars? How do you turn these broad concepts into a real-world content calendar that works?

In no particular order, here is your go-to guide to content pillars…

Inform

Our first pillar is Inform. Here, you recognise your audience's problems, then give them a solution. It’s a chance to talk directly about your services by switching the focus from selling to solving; informing potential customers about what you offer, how your services work, and who they are for provides clarity and builds confidence in your brand. You need to meet people where they are on their journey.

Inform needs to answer every customer’s ultimate question: “How will this help me?”

Ideas for Inform:

• Spotlight a service: Delve into a specific product or service. Explain its features, the process, and exactly what it is designed to do.

• Tell success stories: Create a case study to illustrate a real person’s success story. Testimonials also work here, but a more detailed story with tangible, measurable results delivered by your product or service goes a step further.

• Keep everyone up-to-date: Announce any new feature, improvement, or upcoming change. This keeps your current customers engaged and shows potential customers that you are active, responsive, and constantly finding ways to improve.

• "Which service suits you?" guides: Come up with a simple quiz, flowchart, or carousel post that encourages followers to recognise themselves in your offerings and choose which best fits them.

• Focus on an FAQ: Transparently explain your pricing, onboarding process, or what an audience member can expect when they become a customer. It’s this sort of transparency that builds trust. 

  
  

Informing your audience is the bridge between brand expertise and customer needs. You’re demonstrating value, but never resorting to aggressive sales pitches. Consistent, creative content that clearly and helpfully explains solutions to problems gives followers the confidence to become customers.

Inspire

Our second pillar is Inspire. This is where you truly connect with your followers, tapping into emotions, values, and goals. Facts and information make people think, but emotion is what makes them connect with your brand and follow your calls-to-action. This pillar is your chance to share the why behind your brand. What is its mission, what does it envision, what drives its work? The aim is to build a community with a shared belief system, making people feel like they are people, not customers, part of something more meaningful than sales transactions.

“Inspire” goes hand-in-hand with “inform”. It answers a deeper question: “Why should I believe that this will help me?”

Inspiration for Inspire:

• Go back to your roots: Tell the tale of why your brand was founded. What was the problem that you recognised? How did you find a way to solve it? Why did you want to solve it in the first place? This begins a powerful narrative that, hopefully, people become invested with.

• Speak about values: Dedicate entire posts to your core company values. Rather than just stating what they are, prove you uphold them and action them through behind-the-scenes content of the team, your community work, and your customer interactions.

• Put faces to the logo: Introduce team members with a photo and a short piece about them and the role they play. This humanises your brand, in turn, one again, building trust.

• Mark your milestones: Share your brand’s journey with your audience. If there’s a business anniversary, major goal reached, or other form of achievement you’re proud of - tell the world! If you’ve successfully made your followers invested in your brand, there’s almost a sense here that this is their success. 

• Be aspirational: Think about your audience, and ask yourself what their personal goals might be. Is there a way you can align this with your brand? If so, post content that reflects your audience's aspirations, made relevant to what you do.

  
  

Inspirational content is what turns a customer into a loyal customer. When people are inspired by your company, they’ll support it not just for what it sells, but for what it stands for - which makes them stick around. An inspirational brand has the holding power to weather a storm.

Educate

Next is Educate. Where Inform focuses on services, Educate focuses on the wider industry and your follower’s broader needs. It’s like an act of generosity. You are empowering people with valuable knowledge and skills that can help them succeed, whether they buy from you or simply “lurk” in your follower count. This pillar positions you as a genuine expert and a trusted guide, helping to build authority in your field. Teaching is an extremely effective way of nudging followers towards the decision you want them to make.

Educate answers a curious mind’s questions: “How can I do this better?”, “What does that mean?”, “What is this?”

How to Educate:

• Share step-by-step tutorials: Break down a complex process related to your industry into a simple, easy-to-follow guide. Carousels lend themselves particularly well to this, as do short videos - and we’ve all witnessed the power of short-form video content in 2025. 

• Bust jargon: Finance, fitness, even fashion; there’s jargon in every industry. Remember that you, however, are an expert, so you can bust that jargon. You can minimise the intimidation caused by lack of understanding. This helps you become a go-to source for clarity; more interesting than, but as reliable as, a dictionary. 

• Break myths: Address and correct common misinformation surrounding what you do. Myth-busting reassures any followers who are concerned about becoming customers, as well as showing you have their best interests at heart.

• Host a Q&A or webinar: Offer a live or pre-recorded session on a high-value topic, allowing your followers to learn from you in a real-life format and giving you the chance to connect with potential new customers face-to-face.

• Curate helpful resources: Recommend valuable tools, articles, or books that people can trust, and say why they can trust them. This proves a genuine desire to help your community thrive.

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Consistently educating your audience makes your brand one of their go-to resources. Then, when a follower encounters a problem that your brand might solve, your website is their first port of call. 

Entertain

Last, but certainly not least, we have Entertain. In the fast-moving world of social media where attention can be held for just seconds, this pillar is your not-so-secret, but nonetheless brilliant, weapon. It’s how you catch eyes, display brand personality, and make yourself memorable. Entertainment provides a moment of joy, humour, or aesthetic pleasure in a crowded feed. It’s your chance to be relatable in a more human style, showing, where appropriate, that you don’t always take yourself too seriously.

Entertain fills the hole we’re all really trying to fill when we scroll on social media: “I want something that will make me smile.”

What to do to Entertain:

• Know your niche: Make memes, post GIFs, or film short videos about a relatable struggle or inside joke that people interested in your particular industry would understand.

• Tap into trends: Keep a close, constant eye on channels like TikTok and Instagram Reels to ensure you always know what’s trending. You have to be quick, because trends are forgotten about in a matter of days, but adapting popular sounds or video styles to fit your own organisation shows you are culturally relevant and creative - even “cool”.

• Humanise your brand: Post the “bloopers”, team jokes, office pets, “day-in-the-life” videos… and anything else going on within your company that could make someone laugh. 2025 has seen a huge rise in brands - from restaurants to banks - shifting from corporate companies to comedy geniuses.

• Think about aesthics: Share entertaining time-lapses, satisfyingly short clips related to your product or service, or simply beautiful, high-quality photos that are pleasing to look at.

• Post polls: Lighthearted, low-stakes quizzes and polls give “lurkers” a chance to interact way easily and almost mindlessly. The “poll” feature is available on all of the main channels! 

  
  

Entertaining posts are often the very first touchpoint a new person has with your brand. They are highly shareable, make you stand out, and build positive associations that make people want to stick around to see what you’ll come up with next.

Piecing our pillars together 

The four pillars; Inform, Engage, Inspire, and Entertain - form a strategic system for communication. However, this is not a rigid formula - you do not necessarily need 25% for each pillar. The right combination depends on your brand's voice and, crucially, the platform you're using. For example, Instagram and TikTok will naturally be heavier on the Entertain and Inspire pillars given their younger demographic and their love of online trends, whilst the character limit and fast pace of Bluesky and X (formerly Twitter) make these channels better for content that falls under Inform, such as service updates and announcements. True social media mastery is found when you perfectly adapt each pillar and its regularity. 

View the pillars like you view a balanced diet - only designed for your brand health, not your fitness! Create a template, and set a plan for the coming weeks. Is the community being nourished with a healthy platform and brand-appropriate mix? By consciously weaving these four pillars into a content strategy, any account can beat the algorithm. Not by being the loudest, but by being the most valuable.

Stuck on where to start with your template? We’ve created one for you! Download it for free here.

Happy pillar-ing!