The Creative Bodega | Content Marketing and Instagram Growth for Solopreneurs

69: Content Pillars That Actually Convert: The 4-Part System for Solopreneurs

• Emily Connors • Episode 69

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If you've ever sat down to plan your content and realized you genuinely don't know what to post, your pillars might be the problem. Not because you picked the wrong topics, but because most of us were taught content pillars the wrong way. Educate, entertain, inspire? Those are content values, not pillars. Your offer as a pillar? That turns every post into a pitch. In this episode of The Creative Bodega, we're rebuilding the way you think about content pillars from the ground up: verb-led, offer-connected, specific enough that you always know exactly what belongs there and what doesn't. If your content has been feeling scattered or like it's just not converting, this one is for you.

Check out the full show notes for this episode CLICK HERE.

Things I cover inside this episode:

  • Why "educate, entertain, inspire" are values, not content pillars, and what to do instead
  • The common mistake of making your offer a pillar (and why it makes every post feel like a pitch)
  • How personal themes work in your content without becoming a dedicated pillar slot
  • Why every pillar should start with a verb and what that looks like in practice
  • The line-of-sight test: how to tell if each pillar connects back to an actual offer
  • Why three to four pillars is the sweet spot and how to combine overlapping ones
  • How and when to revisit and refine your pillars as your business grows

Resources & Links mentioned in the episode:

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Speaker

Your pillars are supposed to evolve, my friend. Your business changes, your offers change, you change, your audience shifts. The things that clients are asking in a year or two are gonna be different from what they were asking in year one, and your content should reflect that. Welcome to the Creative Bodega, a podcast about content marketing, Instagram growth, and personal branding for female service-based solopreneurs who wanna grow their business without letting it take over their lives. I'm your host, Em Connors, and each week I'll share actionable tips, expert advice, and unfiltered truths to help you create engaging content, connect authentically with your audience, and turn followers into loyal customers, all without the burnout. If you're ready to simplify your content creation, navigate the ever-changing trends, and build a business that works for you while staying sane in this crazy season of life, then you're in the right place. Hello, and welcome back to the Creative Bodega podcast. This is one of those super fun episodes that I already recorded and that didn't get saved. Don't you love technology? And, like, I kept talking for the entire 20-some minute podcast. I didn't realize that it wasn't recording, and it's one of those moments where you stop and you go to, quote-unquote, "stop the recording," and there's nothing there, and you just kinda wanna throw your laptop out the window. I don't know. But I couldn't redo it that day. This was, like, five days ago. So I'm starting fresh today. I was over it at that point. But what I wanna talk about is so important that obviously I'm back on the mic trying this for a round two, and this time I've got the other window up so I can see if there are any, you know, technical problems. I wanna talk about content pillars. This is something I am supremely passionate about. I've been teaching it for years, but I've really kind of changed my tune on how I'm approaching or how I'm teaching you to nail down content pillars in the past year or so. And before you think, "Oh, I know what pillars are," like, "I've got this covered," just hang with me through this episode because you may hear something different, because I really have changed how I approach these, and I'm gonna sh- teach you exactly how I think you should nail down your content pillars. Because I have worked with thousands of solopreneurs at this point, and I see the same mistakes over and over with content pillars. And some of the mistakes, I actually taught them initially, so we're gonna unpack that today. But by the end of this episode, I hope you're gonna walk away with a completely new way of looking at your content pillars, one that is clearer and actually designed to help you convert followers into paying clients. And the best part is it's a lot simpler than what most people are trying to do. So let's get into it. I wanna clear something up real fast, 'cause this makes me a little bit crazy. Content pillars are not educate, entertain, inspire, okay? Maybe you've heard that. I've heard it a million times from people that I actually really respect as content creators, and, you know, maybe it's just a different, uh, use of language or terms or s- you know, maybe someone told you that or you've seen it like I have. A- and I get it, it sounds logical, but those are not pillars, okay? Educate, entertain, inspire, that's the way that you're delivering your content or the goal behind the content, okay? And that's to make sure that there's value there, and I get that, and I absolutely talk about those things. You can educate through a reel, you can inspire through a caption, you can entertain in your stories. But none of those things tell you what you actually talk about, and that's what a content pillar is supposed to do. A content pillar is a topic, a subject, a theme, a specific corner of your expertise that you come back to again and again. And it really helps give your content direction so that when you sit down to make a post, you're not staring at a blank screen wondering what the hell to say, okay? So if you've been operating under the educate, inspire, entertain framework, we're gonna put that aside. We're gonna build something a lot more useful with your content pillars. So when I first started teaching content pillars, I honestly learned from them initially from the OG of marketing, Jenna Kutcher, okay? I loved her at the time, and what she taught made a lot of sense. But her general idea was to have a mix of business and personal pillars, okay? She had this, like, whole workbook, and I downloaded it, and it was free, and it was like, you know, pick three business pillars and two personal pillars and get posting, right? And for a while, that worked, but as I kept working with students and clients, I started to notice something. The personal pillars piece was stressing people the F out, okay? More than it was helping. They were treating these personal pillars like mandatory content categories where they had to make posts about personal stuff, and they had to dedicate the post to it, and they had to talk about their dog once a week or their morning routine, even though they weren't, like, a life coach or something. And that just made content creation feel a lot heavier for a lot of people. Even, like, me, I just wanna teach. I wanna teach people my expertise, what I love to talk about, and I don't wanna have to talk about my personal life on my feed consistently. And the other thing I started noticing is that a lot of people's business pillars were too vague. To be useful, okay? Or they were their offer. People were making their content pillar their actual offer. And both of those things are a problem, but for different reasons. So here's where I've landed. I want everyone to have three to four business pillars. I want them to be crazy clear, specific, and actionable. And then your personal life, right, like those personal themes or your personality or, like, the real-life stuff, that can get woven in naturally, but it doesn't have to be a content pillar, okay? It more lives for me, at least, in my stories, in my newsletter, maybe in my podcast once in a while, but they are not dedicated content pillars that I have to talk about each week and, like, check it off my list, okay? So let me give you a really concrete example so that this lands. My personal themes, or if you want to... Yeah, I really don't even call them content pillars, honestly. Let's just call them personal themes. They're the things that are, like, genuinely a part of my life that I don't mind sharing about or that I think my ideal client can relate to. Being a solopreneur, being a working mom of two elementary age school kids, being the main earner in my family, having a completely neurotic rescue pit bull, Blitz, being obsessed with romantasy novels, really caring about health and fitness. I am a chronic pain sufferer, and I do a lot to try to keep my body out of pain, and I love food, and I love sharing recipes. I love fashion. Uh, I worked in the fashion industry for 10 years in New York City. It's just a part of my life. I love buying clothing. It makes me happy. Uh, home stuff. I really love interior design as well. I also worked in interior design for five years. Being a lake person over a beach person. These are just little parts about me that make up my life and make me, me. And when you combine all of those things together, no one else is going to have that same roundup Of personal themes, okay? But none of those are dedicated content pillars for me. But all of them will show up in my content. If you're listening to this and you're a fan of mine and you hang out in my newsletter and you hang out in my stories, none of those things surprise you, 'cause you've heard me weave them in here and there. But I'll be teaching about batching and mention that I record podcast episodes while my kids are at school, or I'll be talking about Instagram stories and bring something up about Blitz, right? That, you know, did something that made me laugh or drove me insane, like he just started barking five minutes ago and I had to pause this podcast. I'll send a newsletter and open with real-life moments from the weekend before, right? Before I kind of get into strategy. And that personal layer is what's gonna make you, you. It's what's gonna make people feel like they actually know you, and when they feel like they know you, they start to trust you, and when they start to trust you, they're way more likely to buy from you. It absolutely needs to be a part of your content. It just doesn't need to be its own content pillar. So the question to ask yourself is, what themes are present in my life that my ideal client can relate to? And am I comfortable sharing that? You know, that's a theme I hear a lot, too. "I don't want to talk about my personal life. My kids don't want me to talk about them. They're in middle school. They're in high school. They don't want..." I... Dude, I am never telling you that you have to speak about something that you're uncomfortable speaking about. I will never say that, okay? So you need to find the things that you are comfortable talking about. For me, solopreneur life, it's mom life, those are big ones, and because my audience is almost always navigating both, it's something that they can really relate to. My kitchen renovation, when I did that, I talked a ton about it. It has nothing to do with what I teach. N- it's not about content strategy or Canva, but people loved following along with my kitchen renovation. A book I couldn't put down or a podcast I couldn't stop listening to that have nothing to do with my area of expertise, or my new infrared sauna that I bought that I'm, like, so excited about. It does not have to be deep. It just has to be true to you. And you're not gonna be able to weave these things in perfectly every time. I don't. If there's no connection or I can't figure... Like, I'm not forcing these personal themes, but every couple of days, you better believe that a personal thread is naturally weaving itself into my content. In my stories especially, I would say, it's happening without me even having to think about it. 'Cause again, I t- I approach my stories like I'm talking to my coworkers when I had a 9 to 5 before the big boss came in, when we had our coffee. Like, I talk about the things that I would've talked about then in my stories, and I love that stuff, and my audience seems to love that stuff, too. Okay, here's the one thing that's gonna trip people up the most, and I wanna spend some real time on it because it's so common. Your pillars are not your offers. So someone will tell me their content pillar is, like, my one-on-one coaching program or my six-week live program or whatever their main service is. And I get it. It's what you're trying to sell, so it feels like it should be at the center of everything you talk about. But when your pillar is your offer, every piece of content that you put out starts to feel like a pitch. And when you're not trying to sell, it's gonna read that way, and people will disengage so fast. And what I want instead is a pillar that's g- gonna create the problem awareness, the desire, and the trust that makes someone want your offer. So the pillar leads to the offer. It does not become the offer. So I think that's really, really important to understand. The pillar's gonna open the door, and the offer is what is waiting on the other side. Your offers should not be your pillars. So what should a good pillar actually look like? Here's what I want you to take away. First, I have really started leaning into and teaching that your pillar should start with a verb. This is something I started doing a couple of years ago, and it completely changed how my pillars felt. A verb in the beginning makes a pillar feel so actionable. It signals that something's going to happen, that your content has a direction. So think about it. Instead of just being, you know, a content pillar being content strategy, instead it's building a content strategy that doesn't take over your life. One of those sounds like a textbook chapter, and the other sounds like something that I actually want. So you don't need a full long version, but the verb at the front is going to matter, and it's going to really help make your content pillar actionable. So some more examples. Attract clients through Instagram content. Grow and nurture my audience through my email list. Show up consistently without the overwhelm or without burning out. All of those feel like they're going somewhere, right? Second, your pillars should be specific enough that you know exactly what kind of content should come out of it or should live there and what doesn't. So if a pillar is too broad that literally any post could belong under it, it's really not doing its job, okay? So marketing To me is not a pillar. Convert your Instagram followers to email subscribers, that's a pillar. It's specific, and it is actionable. Third, and this may be the most important one, every pillar should have a clear line of sight to at least one of your offers, and it is okay if the offer is coming, okay? So don't panic if the offer doesn't exist yet, but you know the offer is coming. That's good enough, okay? You should be able to look at a pillar and say, "Okay, somebody who consumes this content consistently is eventually gonna wanna work with me or buy from me because my content pillars all relate to or can be drawn a direct line to an offer." If you can't draw that line, the pillar might not be doing its job, okay? Now let me walk you through what this looks like for me, so you have some real examples, right? To work off of. My pillars right now consist of four. There's four of them, and the first one is create content that attracts and converts. The second one is build a sustainable content system. The third one is design scroll-stopping visuals with ease, and the last one is turn Instagram followers into email subscribers and buyers. Okay? So every single one of those connects back to one of my offers. Every single one of those gives me a clear lane to create content in, and that's it. It's four content pillars, four lanes, and under each one of those pillars, I obviously have, like, subtopics, right? The more specific ideas that can live within that theme, and that's where I get the actual post or content ideas. But at that top level, I've got four areas that I own, and when I sit down to plan content, I am not guessing. I am pulling from one of those buckets, thinking about what my audience is struggling with in that space and creating something that answers a real question that my ideal client has. The personal stuff gets layered in naturally, where it feels good to me. The offer comes up when it's relevant, and that's the system, okay? Here's something that no one tells you about content pillars, and I think it's why so many people set them once and then feel like something's off a, a year or two later without knowing why. Your pillars are supposed to evolve, my friend. Your business changes, your offers change, you change, your audience shifts. The things that clients are asking in a year or two are gonna be different from what they were asking in year one, and your content should reflect that. I revisit my content pillars regularly. Inside the Content Coven, you better believe that once a year- Our challenge for the month is to revisit our content pillars. I'm not blowing them up every few months and starting from scratch. That's absolutely not what I mean. But I'm asking myself, "Do these still make sense with my offers? Have I added offers where maybe I'm not consistently talking about the content pillar that would be related to that? Or am I talking about content pillars where I no longer have an offer that makes sense to go with that? Are there gaps? Is there a pillar that's not converting the way that I want it to? Is there something my audience keeps coming back to that I'm not making space for, that I want to make space for?" That's the other thing. I gotta just pause real quick and say that if somebody asks you something, like, okay, I always tell people, "Oh, tell me what podcast episode ideas you want to hear from me," right? I'm always looking for ideas, but there are times when people will give me ideas that are a strong hell no to me. Like automations. Like people have said, "Oh, can you do like a ManyChat automation?" You know, like, or like how a freebie actually gets delivered behind the scenes. No. No. No, no, no, no. Do I know how to do it? I do. Do I wanna field questions and be known as an automations person? That is a visceral hell no. Like, how I know is when I get DMs from people asking me questions about that stuff, I don't wanna answer it. I literally want nothing to do with answering those questions. But when someone asks me a Canva question or a design question or a content strategy, I'm like so excited to talk about it. That's how I know. That is my gauge, okay? So do not create content pillars for things that you don't wanna be known for and that you don't wanna talk about regularly in your content. But anyways, sorry, I went off track. These things are gonna... They're gonna change, and actually, in June of this year, we're gonna do a full pillar challenge inside the coven. We are revisiting, refining, rebuilding content pillars with all of this training behind it. I am gonna do a training for everyone, and we're gonna work on them. All the members are gonna work on them because that's the kind of thing that sounds small but, like, could quite literally change everything about how your content feels and performs. And we're also going to do a mini audit on your offers- And making sure that your content pillars relate to your offers, whether they exist or they're coming. Okay? And if you wanna be in the room for that, please, please join us. The doors are always open to the coven, and you can leave whenever you want to. These are two things that are really important to me. The doors are always open, 'cause if somebody wants help, I wanna help them immediately. I don't wanna make you wait for two months when the doors open, right? I don't wanna create this scarcity just to get people to join. Maybe I'm an idiot, I don't know. Maybe that'll change one day. But it's just doesn't feel good to me. And the other thing is, if you need to leave, if you wanna leave the coven, you can always leave. I will never lock you in. I do not want to take your money if it's not a place that you're finding to be helpful or you're not utilizing, okay? So I just wanna throw that out there. You can find all the details on thecreativebodega.com, or I will link the coven in the show notes below. June is gonna be a really good month, a really good foundational month inside the coven. So here's what I want you to take from this episode. Entertain, educate, inspire, those are content values, not content pillars. Uh, personal themes, your life, your personality, the stuff that makes you you can get woven into your content naturally. You do not need a dedicated pillar slot for personal stuff. Your offer is not your pillar, and your pillars create the demand for your offer. That's really important to know the difference there, and getting clear on it will completely change how your content feels to your audience. Your pillars should be verb-led, specific, and all pointing towards something that you actually sell. I think between three and four is a real sweet spot. Inside the visual edit and the messaging edit, when we work on content pillars, a lot of people find that a lot of their subcategories could fall into two different content pillars, and I'm always like, "Just combine them. Just combine the two pillars. Find a way," because there's no reason to have two with a lot of overlapping stuff underneath both. Just scale back to three, okay? Um, and then you wanna come back to your pillars. You wanna check on them. You want to let them grow and breathe as you do. Okay? All right, that's what I got for you today. I hope this is super helpful. I would love it if something clicked if you shared this episode with a friend who you think it could help. Come find me on Instagram @thecreativebodega. I'd love to know what landed for you. I will see you on the next episode. Thanks so much for hanging out with me on The Creative Bodega Podcast. If you loved this episode, please be sure to share it with a fellow solopreneur... who could use a little content creation inspiration. And hey, don't forget to check out the show notes for any resources I mentioned on the episode to help you create content that feels easy and actually gets you results. If you want even more Canva and content tips, head over to my website, thecreativebodega.com, or find me on Instagram under the same name. Until next time, keep creating, keep showing up, and most importantly, try and have a little fun with your content. I'll see you on the next

episode.