A content strategy is never really completed. It always needs to be updated and the month of August is dedicated to content pillars.

As many of you know, we at Toast recommend that a content strategy keeps evolving all year long. It is not realistic to stop once a year (or worse every 2 years) and suddenly write a new strategy document. Although a content team cannot keep on reinventing the wheel, we’ve divided content strategy into different elements that can become monthly focuses throughout the year, allowing your brand to have revised every angle of your strategy after 12 months.

We detailed this process in our guide: How to keep your content strategy alive.

This month, the beautiful month of August, the focus is on your content pillars

“A content pillar is a group of content topics that have a common theme or connection, directly related to your brand’s business goals, that your audience is actively seeking.” (Quoted from our article What is a content pillar?)

You have content pillars, right? If you don’t, we strongly advise you to define them, and “right now” is the best time of the year to do this! ? (You can refer to the article mentioned above to work on them). Once you have content pillars defined and have worked with them for a while, doing their yearly review becomes a simple process, outlined below.

How to review your content pillars?

This month, you should allow at least two half-day sessions in which you:

  1. Review the past year’s content pillars on two levels: a) sort your pillars in the order of the amount of content produced for each; b) sort your pillars in the order of the impact each had on your audience.
  2. Evaluate, from those two lists, if there are any that should be removed, or improved. In other words, discard or rework any pillar that no longer fits your current content strategy in terms of brand objectives and target audiences.
  3. From your revised list of pillars, reflect on unmet needs and expectations of your audiences that aren’t part of your pillars (your pillars should reflect what your audience wants from you in terms of content).
  4. Sort your new list in the order of priorities for the brand, from the most important pillar to the least important pillar.

Once that is done, document this, and share it internally with anyone who might be part of the content team and that should know what the main priorities are for the coming year (because you know that in August next year, you’ll be doing this all over again!). This will become a key document when building your production and editorial calendars.

Want to get your content team up to speed on this? Organize a team workshop or one-on-one coaching with an expert of our team. You can also book Alexandre to come and speak at your event!

There you go! Pillars updated for the year, ready to tackle fall and the end-of-year blitz!

Should you be interested in a consultation on content pillars, do not hesitate to book a meeting with one of our experts to schedule a workshop with your team.