Open any content strategy resource and the first thing it tells you to do is pick three to five topic buckets. Thought Leadership. Industry Insights. Behind the Scenes. Customer Wins.

That’s not how I do it with clients.

Topic buckets are the wrong starting point because they answer the wrong question. “What can I write about?” isn’t really the question — the real one is: what would the right buyer need to see, in what voice, before they’d actually hire you?

When I work with a client building content from zero — product or service — these are the three pillars I recommend they start with. Then there are two more you can add if you can pull them off.

The filter every pillar has to pass

Before the pillars, one rule.

Every piece of content you publish has to entertain, educate, or engage. If you can’t tell me which one a piece is doing, it doesn’t belong. This isn’t a strategy cliché — it’s the only filter you need when you’re trying to decide whether a post is earning its place on your channel.

Hold every pillar, and every piece under it, to that test. If a pillar can’t consistently produce content that does at least one of the three, it’s not actually a pillar.

Pillar 1: Case studies and proof of concept

This is always pillar one.

Whether you sell a product or a service, you need a steady stream of content that proves the thing actually works. And I don’t mean testimonials or logo grids — I mean real case studies: what the situation was, what you did, what changed. For products, real demonstrations of the thing in use, the result it produced, the problem it solved.

This is the pillar that earns trust. Everything else on the page can be smart and well-written, but if a prospect can’t see proof that someone like them got a real result from your work, the smart writing isn’t going to matter much.

If you’re starting from zero and you only have one piece of proof — honestly, just start there. One detailed case study is going to be way more valuable than five vague ones.

Pillar 2: The persona pillar (with mini-pillars inside it)

This is the one most content strategy guides get wrong. They tell you to write “for your audience” as if that’s actually specific, when it really isn’t.

The persona pillar is content written as if you’re speaking directly to one of your real buyer personas — in their language, naming their situation, walking the walk and talking the talk. It’s personal, and it sounds like you understand exactly what’s going on in their day because you actually do.

Inside the persona pillar, the mini-pillars are the angles of your offering — the who, what, when, where, why, and how of working with you or buying your product.

• Who is this for, and who is it not for?
• What does the offering actually include, in real terms?
• When should they buy — what stage of business, what trigger?
• Where does the work happen — async, in-person, on what platform?
• Why does this approach work — what’s the thinking behind it?
• How does the engagement actually run, week by week?

Most service businesses skip half of these. They publish content that orbits the offer without ever explaining what it’s like to engage with them. That gap is why discovery calls take longer than they should — the prospect arrives with questions a piece of content could have already answered.

If you have multiple personas, repeat the exercise for each one — the language, the angles, and the answers are going to be different. Don’t try to write one stream of “audience” content that’s meant to speak to everyone, because it’ll end up speaking clearly to no one.

Pillar 3: Story

A lot of people buy the story before they buy the service.

If you have a personal tie to your industry, an unusual path into it, or a compelling reason you do this work — that story needs to be woven into your content consistently. Not just once on your About page and then never again. It should keep showing up.

The story pillar isn’t self-indulgent. It’s actually the thing that gives people a reason to choose you over a dozen other competent options out there. Competence is just the floor — story is what differentiates you on top of it.

Even if your story feels small to you, name it. Founders consistently underestimate how much their backstory shapes the way prospects relate to them. The person who’s lived inside startups for five years sounds different from the agency veteran, who sounds different from the career-pivoter — and prospects pick up on those signals whether you spell them out or not. So spell them out.

Optional Pillar 4: Series or concepts

Once the first three are running consistently, you can start a series or a recurring concept.

This is where you get to have fun — take an artistic angle, build something episodic, run a recurring format that’s distinctly yours. The job here is to add personality and stickiness without breaking your through-line.

Anything you build into this pillar still has to pass the filter: entertain, educate, or engage. If a series is a clever format with no real payoff, it isn’t earning its place. The best series do all three at once.

Optional Pillar 5: Behind the scenes (use judgment)

The fifth pillar is the one I’m most cautious about.

Behind-the-scenes content can build huge connection with an audience — letting people see how the work actually happens, what your day looks like, how the sausage gets made. When it works, it really does work hard for you.

But it just doesn’t work for every brand.

If your positioning depends on a certain mystique — premium, polished, exclusive — too much behind-the-scenes can quietly erode it. The magic of the brand comes partly from what you don’t show, so use judgment here. If you’re not sure, just start with one or two pieces and watch the reaction before you commit to it as a full pillar.

The starting setup

For most clients I work with, the starting build is exactly this:

Pillar 1 — Case studies and proof. Pillar 2 — Persona content with mini-pillars covering the who/what/when/where/why/how of your offer. Pillar 3 — Story. Every piece passes the entertain / educate / engage filter. Two optional pillars added once the first three are running consistently.

That’s the framework. It isn’t the most complicated content strategy you’ll read, and that’s the point — it’s the one I’ve seen actually get used.

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The work I do with clients is mostly this: building the strategy and ops layer that turns content from output into a system. See the Content Strategy & Systems service or book a Half-Day Intensive if your content is stalling and you’re not sure why.