Content pillars, the difference between a pillar and a theme and how to pick four you can still write in month nine

A content pillar is a subject your business can answer more completely than anyone else your buyers are reading, broad enough to hold thirty pieces of work and narrow enough that you could be the obvious source on it. Three or four of them become the structure of everything you publish. A theme, by contrast, is a word somebody wrote on a calendar in a planning meeting: sustainability, innovation, people. Themes produce one good piece and then eight pieces that only just fit, which is why most content plans die in month three.

Google reports 590 searches a month in the United Kingdom alone for "content pillar", harvested on 22 October 2026 against the United Kingdom target on its own.

The test that separates a pillar from a theme

Four questions. A real pillar passes all four, and most candidates fail on the third.

• Can you list twenty things to say inside it right now, without research? If you cannot reach twenty from what you already know, it is a topic rather than a pillar and you will be researching every piece from scratch.
• Does a buyer actually ask about it? Not an adjacent version of it. The exact thing. If nobody has ever raised it in a sales conversation, it is an internal interest.
• Can you be more useful on it than the three sources currently ranking? This is the one that eliminates most candidates, and it is the one that saves the most wasted effort. If the honest answer is no, pick a narrower pillar inside it where the answer is yes.
• Does it connect to something you sell, in one step? Not two. A pillar that needs an explanation to link it to your business will never produce an enquiry.

Run four or five candidate subjects through those questions and the shortlist usually makes itself. The uncomfortable outcome is common and worth sitting with: the subject you are most enthusiastic about often fails question two, and the subject that passes all four is often something you consider too basic to be interesting. Publish the one that passes.

Building one out, from the inside

A pillar is not a single long page, although a single long page is often part of it. The structure that works is one comprehensive piece on the subject, with a set of specific pieces underneath it, each answering one question properly and linking back up.

Layer	What it is	How many
The pillar piece	The complete answer to the broad subject, written so somebody could act on it without reading anything else	One
The question pieces	One specific question each, from your own sales conversations, answered properly and briefly	Fifteen to thirty over a year
The evidence pieces	Your own figures, a worked example, a dated test, a template somebody can use	Two or three, and they do the most work
The decision pieces	How to choose between the options a buyer is weighing up, written fairly about all of them	Two or three

The evidence layer is the one most British businesses skip and it is the one that earns citations. A number from your own books, anonymised and dated, is something no competitor can copy and no large publisher has. One such piece typically outperforms ten explainers, because it is the only thing on the subject anybody can quote.

How many pillars, and what happens with the wrong number

Three or four, for almost every business under a hundred people.

With one pillar you build real authority quickly and then run out of things to say that are not repetitions, and your publishing becomes dependent on a single subject staying relevant. With two you are usually one pillar short of covering the distinct buyer groups you serve. With three or four you can rotate, which matters more than it sounds: a pillar you are bored of still gets published if there are three others sharing the load. With six or more you are writing one thin piece a month on each and building authority on none of them, which is the commonest failure in content plans built by committee, because every department wanted its subject on the list.

The practical rule for the rotation is one piece per pillar per month in a quiet month and two per pillar in a good one. That cadence is small enough to keep and over a year it produces thirty six to forty eight pieces across three pillars, which is enough to be the obvious source on all three.

The constraint that actually sets the plan

Pillars are usually chosen on subject and then fail on approval. The thing that determines whether a British professional services firm, a healthcare business or anybody regulated can publish twice a month is not the writing, it is how long a piece sits waiting to be signed off and by whom. A plan with four pillars and a four week approval route is a plan for one piece a month whatever the calendar says.

So settle the approval route before you settle the calendar. Who reads it, in what order, what they are allowed to change, and how long they have. Then build the schedule from that, rather than building a schedule and discovering the route. How that works in practice for a firm with a real approval chain is set out in how the approval route sets the calendar, and the wider plan the pillars sit inside is in how to build a content marketing strategy that holds up.

Reviewing pillars without abandoning them

Review at six months and at twelve, and look at two things only. Which pillar produced the pieces people actually read and acted on, and which pillar you are struggling to write. The second is as important as the first, because a pillar you dread is a pillar that stops.

Then make one change rather than several. Narrow a pillar that is too broad to be distinctive, retire one that fails the buyer question, or split one that turns out to be two subjects. What not to do is replace the whole set, because a pillar needs twenty pieces before you can tell whether it works, and a plan rebuilt every six months never gets any of them to twenty.

Questions about content pillars

What is a content pillar

A subject your business can answer more completely than the sources your buyers currently read, broad enough to hold around thirty pieces of work and directly connected to something you sell. Three or four of them form the structure of a publishing plan.

What is the difference between a content pillar and a pillar page

A content pillar is the subject. A pillar page is one artefact inside it, the comprehensive piece that covers the whole subject and links down to the specific pieces. You can have a pillar without a pillar page, and plenty of successful pillars are built from specific pieces first with the comprehensive one written last, once you know what belongs in it.

How many content pillars should a business have

Three or four for most businesses under a hundred people. One leaves you dependent on a single subject, two usually misses a buyer group, and six or more means a thin piece a month on each and authority on none.

How do I choose content pillars

Test each candidate against four questions. Can you list twenty things to say inside it now. Do buyers actually ask about it. Can you be more useful on it than the sources currently ranking. Does it connect to something you sell in one step. Candidates that pass all four are pillars.

How do I know a content pillar is working

Give it twenty pieces before you judge it, then look at whether the pieces inside it are read, whether they produce enquiries, and whether other people cite or link to any of them. A pillar earning links and mentions is becoming authority; one with traffic and no mentions is useful without being distinctive.

Can two pillars overlap

A little overlap is fine and some cross linking between them is a sign the plan reflects a real business. Heavy overlap means they are one pillar, and the test is whether you keep writing the same piece for both. When that happens, merge them and find a fourth.

The question a pillar has to be able to answer out loud

There is a new reason to build pillars deep rather than wide, and it is worth knowing before you set the plan. When somebody asks an assistant about a subject, the answer it writes is assembled from the sources it has read on that subject, and it names companies while doing so. Depth on one subject, with your own figures and worked examples in it, is the kind of material those answers get built from. Breadth across eight subjects is not, because on each one there is somebody more thorough. So the pillar decision is now also a decision about which subjects you want to be named on when nobody mentions you in the question. AI Knows Us asks those buying questions across the main assistants and records which companies get named and which sources each answer was built from.