Who Told You That You Needed Content Pillars?
Working across businesses at every stage, from startup to scaling to selling up, there's one thing I hear more than almost anything else from people in that messy middle, trying to grow without the budget for a dedicated marketing team.
"I can't post yet. I don't have my content pillars."
It stops people in their tracks. Genuinely good content, sitting unposted, because someone told them they weren't ready. So let's ask the question. Who told you that? Why did they tell you that? And does it actually work?
Where Content Pillars Actually Came From
Content pillars were formalised by HubSpot in 2016 to 2017. Not by a social media coach. Not by a five day challenge. By the SEO team at a large American marketing software company who had noticed something specific happening with Google's algorithm.
Search engines were getting smarter. They were starting to reward websites that organised their content around broad topic clusters rather than publishing individual posts in isolation. The idea was straightforward. Build a comprehensive hub page around each core topic. Write supporting articles that link back to it. Google sees the structure, understands your expertise, and ranks you accordingly.
That is a content pillar. A website architecture tool for SEO. Designed for marketing teams with content budgets, not for solopreneurs wondering what to post on a Tuesday.
In that context, it works. Grouping long form content into clear topic clusters improves search visibility. Blogs, podcasts, articles, yes. But that's where the evidence stops.
What Happened Next
Somewhere between HubSpot's SEO team and the Instagram carousel of a social media coach, something got lost in translation.
The concept was picked up, repackaged, and repositioned as something every small business owner needed to define before they could post anything online. And the version being sold was often not even content pillars in the original sense. "Behind the scenes content" and "inspirational quotes" are not pillars. They're formats. A pillar is a topic. A format is how you communicate it. The distinction matters, because conflating the two means people are completing homework that doesn't even resemble the original assignment.
Why It Gets Sold This Way
The people teaching content pillars for social media are not always doing it cynically. Some genuinely believe the framework helps. Some found it useful for their own business and assumed it would translate.
But the incentive structure is worth understanding. Content pillar courses sell best to people who feel overwhelmed, behind, and unsure where to start. And the framework creates the very problem it solves. Before you heard about content pillars, you didn't know you needed them. The moment someone introduces them, you feel behind for not having them. The remedy is conveniently available for purchase.
This is not unique to content pillars. It's a pattern across a lot of low ticket online offers. Introduce the gap, sell the bridge.
The genuine benefit, when there is one, is not the pillars themselves. It's the thinking they prompt. Sitting down and deciding what you want to be known for and who you want to talk to is useful. That thinking does not require a five day challenge. It requires about ten minutes and a cup of tea.
The Evidence
Independent research supporting content pillars as a social media strategy is essentially nonexistent.
The testimonials claiming content pillars improve social media performance come from HubSpot, writing about their own SEO tool working for SEO, and from social media scheduling platforms with a product to sell. Neither is studying whether small business owners who define their content pillars outperform those who don't on social media. That study doesn't appear to exist.
What research on social media engagement does consistently show is simpler. Authenticity drives engagement. Raw, unpolished, founder led content is outperforming produced content. Audiences want to hear from a real person talking about something they genuinely care about. That has nothing to do with whether the post was filtered through a content pillar framework before it went live.
The Alternative
Themes, not pillars. The distinction matters.
Themes emerge from who you are and what your audience responds to. They evolve. They're discovered rather than prescribed. A theme is "I talk a lot about the gap between what business advice promises and what it delivers" not "educational content, inspirational content, behind the scenes content."
Research what's working in your space. Notice what lands with your audience. Make decisions about what feels sustainable for you. And post the thing you've been meaning to post before you convinced yourself you needed a framework first.
Content pillars for your website, your blog, your podcast? Yes. Genuinely useful. The evidence supports them in that context.
Content pillars as a prerequisite for showing up on social media? The evidence simply isn't there.
So if you've been waiting until your content pillars are sorted... you've been waiting for something nobody can prove you actually needed.
This topic was explored in Episode One of In Formation with Blondel & Co. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at blondelandco.com. If there's something you've been told you absolutely have to do in your business and you're not sure whether to believe it, send it in. kellie@blondelandco.com
