- The Lifestyle Entrepreneur
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- Lifestyle Entrepreneur #54
THE LIFESTYLE ENTREPRENEUR
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Content Pillars
Going into my second year of writing a newsletter is a good time to reevaluate my content pillars.
What are content pillars you ask?
They’re a set of topic categories you choose to write about based on a combination of things.
When structured well they can greatly increase your focus, efficiency, and quality of writing. And also resonate with your desired reader more.
When I’m thinking about content pillars, there are two general ways to select them.
1. Think about the topics you’re most interested in writing about, along with whatever goals you have regarding writing, and narrow down from there.
2. Think about your idea client profile (ICP), or in simpler terms your ideal reader, along with what topics they’re most interested in learning about, and match those topics to ones you think you can best write about.
If you’re writing for a specific business purpose, like creating an audience of potential buyers for your services, then the second method is ideal. This will create crisp pillars that can be regularly tested with people who are inside your ICP, refined, and improved on to resonate more and more with them over time.
If your purpose for writing isn’t specifically to find customers in the short-term, you can have a little more liberty in your content pillars.
I’m in this second camp – my ICP is entrepreneurial leadership teams who are experiencing pain in their businesses and are open to a system to help them get to the next level.
While these people are certainly consuming social media, I don’t believe it’s a primary source of finding the kinds of services they offer. Meaning – no matter how good my content is, very few of my clients are going to come directly from my online content.
My content is better used as a broad coverage of authority to people in my network who may be connected to my ICP.
Because those people span many industries and functions, I think it’s best for my content to be more relevant to more people than specifically business owners looking to get to the next level.
Because of that, I consider my content to be for a couple of main purposes:
1. Personal development – developing the discipline to regularly create content over a period of years, along with improving my skills as a writer.
2. Building general authority – positioning myself as someone who lives an ideal life and is constantly working to improve in all areas of life
3. Helping people with actionable tools to improve their lives
These broad goals require me to live a life in a certain way, creating an interesting amount of accountability in my life because of the concept of leading by example.
What I mean by that is – if I want to become a good writer, I know I have to do it every day, and once I committed to posting content every day I removed all possibility of starting the process but failing after a few months.
Additionally, if I want to be known as someone who lives an ideal life, I have to work my ass off to live an ideal life. So I’m constantly motivated to put in the work required to improve.
These overall goals creates a virtuous cycle of curiosity, discipline, testing, refining, and sharing my learnings and results.
In a very practical way – writing about living a better life ensures that I’m constantly working to live a better life.
I started writing a little less than 2 years ago, and can say for 100% certain that this concept works as long as I don’t quit writing.
Because of my above goals, and the fast I’m not selling an online service directly to a particular customer, I have the freedom to be a bit broader with my content pillars than I otherwise would. The benefit of this is I get to pick topics I’m really interested in, I won’t ever run out of ideas, and I can also change them up whenever I want.
The downside of my approach is that my writing is likely a little scattered and I risk not being focused enough to build a big following. I’m ok with that risk over the next year because 1) My business is growing very successfully and I’m hitting my numbers every month, 2) I’m enjoying the topics I write about and don’t have any concerns about being able to produce content.
With all that background in mind, my broad content pillars are:
1. Wellness
2. Lifestyle design
3. Leadership
4. Sharing my journey building a solo practice
The 4th one is relatively new, and I think I’ve started gravitating towards that topic over the past six months. I spend most of my workday thinking about how to build my solo practice, in addition to serving my client, so it’s logical that I’d start writing about my wins and losses in that area.
As I go into year 2 of this newsletter, I’d love to hear topics you’d like to hear more about. Just email me whenever they come up.
Talk to you next week,
Mike
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