Pick 4 or 5 pillars, not 10
The whole value of pillars is that they are a small, repeatable set. Four or five is the sweet spot: enough range that the feed does not get repetitive, few enough that every pillar gets fed often enough to build a pattern the audience recognizes. Ten pillars is the same as no pillars.
A pillar is defined by the job the audience hires that content to do, not by a topic. “Blog posts” is not a pillar. “Teach me something I can use today so I trust you know your craft” is. Write the job, and the ideas write themselves.
Set a mix that adds to 100%
Give each pillar a percentage of your monthly output so no single one eats the feed. Our default starting split for a business that needs to sell:
- Education, ~35%. Teach. This is what earns trust and saves and shares.
- Social Proof, ~25%. Show it works for someone like them. Results, receipts, before and afters.
- Behind the Scenes, ~20%. Show the humans so it feels like a relationship, not a billboard.
- Entertainment, ~12%. Make them laugh or feel seen so they stop scrolling and remember you.
- Promo, ~8%. Tell them exactly what to do next. A little goes a long way when the other 92% earned the right to ask.
Adjust the numbers to your business, but keep the shape: mostly value, a little ask.
Three reusable hook angles per pillar
For each pillar, the planner has you write three hook angles you can rerun forever with fresh specifics. For the Education pillar, for example:
- “3 mistakes killing your [result] right now”
- “The [system] we run for every [client type]”
- “Stop [common tactic]. Do this instead.”
Now every Education post starts from a proven angle instead of a blank page. Fill in the brackets and you have a month of hooks in an afternoon.
Name the proof
The last column is the metric that tells you a pillar is working: saves and shares for Education, DMs and lead fills for Social Proof, link clicks for Promo. If a pillar never moves its metric, the problem is the pillar or the execution, and the sheet makes that obvious.
The download has a full worked example filled in. Overwrite it with your own.