How #Bloggers Can Create Pillar Articles – Part 1

by Paul Wolfe on August 8, 2011

Last week I wrote a post analyzing the success that Pat Flynn has had over at his Smart Passive Income blog.

One of the conclusions I came to was that part of Pat’s success was down to his repeated use of pillar articles. Now this was a successful post – when I show you the traffic spike in the next traffic report you’ll see just how successful. And almost immediately I got emails asking for more information on ‘pillar articles.’

I did a bit of research and found that this was one of those topics where there is some information out there – but none of the information was particularly contemporary.

And no one has written what might be considered the definitive resource on creating pillar articles or pillar content.

So I set myself the task of researching a comprehensive article on creating pillar content. (And yep, I’m totally aware of the irony of creating a ‘pillar article’ about creating pillar articles.)

I almost certainly won’t get it 100% right first time – but hopefully with YOUR help I can get suggestions to edit the article so that over time it will become a great resource for bloggers and content marketers.

So let’s dive in. First we need to define exactly what constitutes a pillar article or pillar content.

So What Is A Pillar Article?

There are several terms for the type of content we’re talking about. Yaro Starak – who I believe originally came up with the concept – calls this content a ‘pillar article.’

Brian Clark over at Copyblogger refers to this type of content as Cornerstone Content. Chris Garrett calls it Flagship Content. If I were trying to get credit for this type of content, the name that I would use would be Tent Pole Content.

Whatever name you’re using doesn’t matter – you’ll know the type of content when you see it.

Yaro originally defined Pillar Articles like this:

“ A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice…. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.”

That original definition was OK, but IMO is lacking some specifics. Here are the elements that I believe you’ll find in posts and articles that are considered pillar articles or pillar content (or flagship content…or cornerstone content…or tent pole content!): )

A pillar article or pillar content is a highly detailed article teaching the readers of a blog how to perform a particular task for themselves.
A pillar article no longer needs to be confined to written format. Pillar content can be presented in multimedia formats – principally video or audio
Pillar content has an enduring appeal
The target market for pillar content or pillar articles is usually the ‘newbies’ in your market area
There should be a high ‘how to’ component to pillar articles. Theoretical content is fine – but it needs to be underscored by solid information that is easy to understand and can be implemented by your readers.
A really good piece of pillar content becomes the ‘reference point’ on that topic in your market area.
Pillar content will almost certainly need to be updated to reflect changes in your market area.

Pillar articles or pillar content are not the kind of content that you can put together in an hour or so. You’ll need to spend time both in researching the content, as well as executing it.

And that begs the question: is the time taken to research and write pillar articles or pillar content really worth it? Let’s take a look at the benefits.

What are The Benefits of A Pillar Article?

If you didn’t read the article on Pat Flynn and Smart Passive Income that I published last week, then go have a read before we move on:

6 Lessons For Bloggers From Smart Passive Income

One of the cornerstones of the success that Pat has had – both with his Smart Passive Income blog, and his niche duel security guard site – is the use of pillar articles and pillar content.

You gain these benefits if you create useful and actionable pillar articles and pillar content:

You get perceived as an ‘expert’ in your market area. Our society is accustomed to being taught by teachers – and we are accustomed to respecting teachers and conferring them with expert status. Pillar articles tap into this by teaching the people in your market area a useful skill that they can implement.
With the increase in the perception of your expertise comes an increase in the ‘trust’ factor from your audience. Trust and expertise go hand in hand….if your blog is a part of your business strategy, you need to build trust to successfully start selling your products or services.
Creating pillar articles or pillar content that gets results when it’s implemented by your audience…in the words of MasterCard, that’s priceless. Once you’ve shown someone how to do something – and they do it and get results – where do you think they are going to go when they want to learn something else? Pillar articles increase your engagement with your audience.
As your engagement with your audience goes up, so does the action that you want them to take. Want them to subscribe to your newsletter – good pillar content will get more readers to subscribe. Want them to look at a sales page for an eBook or course – good pillar articles will convert more readers to buyers.
SEO Benefits. Pillar articles are the kind of content that almost by definition will contain a whole heap of long tail keywords. Over time, those pillar articles will bring you a steady stream of traffic. How much traffic will depend on where you rank and your market area – but a good pillar article will attract search engine traffic.
Pillar content gets linked to by other websites and other blogs. That will send you traffic from the readership of those blogs and increase your rankings in the search engine, helping you with your SEO traffic.
Pillar articles can be repurposed to send you traffic from other sources (see Promoting Pillar Articles below)

So there are plenty of compelling reasons to create pillar content – and plenty of tangible benefits if you do. But some of you are probably wondering exactly how you find topics that you can turn into pillar articles.

The easiest – and best – way to find topics to turn into pillar articles is to ask a Target Profile.

The Target Profile and Pillar Articles

A target profile is a concept developed by my mentor Sean D’Souza – and something I’m currently working on in a copywriting course with Sean. (And although our application of target profiles relates to sales and sales pages, it would work like gangbusters here too).

A target profile is a person – just one person- who is an ideal member of your audience. Your target profile is the kind of person who you’d give your right arm to get a thousand of in your audience. Or ten thousand.

And here’s what you do, when you’ve found that person you email them and ask them if you can phone them up and briefly interview them. If you have to give them quid-pro-quo to get them on a call, then do it. For most target profiles, a free 30 minute consult would probably have them doing cartwheels and back flips in delight (especially if you charge for consulting).

When they’ve agreed to the interview – and most will if you approach them correctly – then you hook up some kind of recorder to Skype and speak to them.

And then ask them questions like:

What are your goals? What are you trying to achieve?
How far on your journey have you got?
What are the three biggest problems you’re currently facing?
For each problem, go into more detail. Why is this holding you back? What are the issues you’re struggling to overcome? What solutions have you tried? Why didn’t these solutions work? And so on.
For each of those three problems you want to get a precise understanding of how the target profile is struggling – and why.
Don’t make notes. Don’t steer the target profile by superimposing your own ideas and your own vocabulary. Let them talk – and LISTEN.

When you’ve finished the interview – and said thank you! – then sit down and listen to the interview again. This time take notes.

For each of those three problems you should be able to identify a problem area, identify why it’s a problem area to your target profile (and by extension, every member of your audience who is like your target profile), and then set about teaching your target profile how to overcome that problem.

Bam. That’s your pillar article.

For this to work, you need to have an audience already – and be engaged with members of that audience so you can say: Sam would make a great target profile. I want a thousand readers just like Sam. Or Stan. Or Eugene. Or Sheila. Or Adrienne. Or whoever it is that fits the bill.

If you don’t currently have an audience where you can identify a target profile, then the next best method of finding topics for pillar articles is from Forums in your market area.

Pillar Articles And Forums

Just about every Market Area has one or more dedicated Forums.

And these Forums are a great substitute for a target profile interview if you haven’t yet developed an audience.

On most Forums you’ll find common problems being asked by newbies. And as you find these common problems, you’ll find topics that can be turned into pillar content by answering the questions.

For example, I just hopped over to The Warrior Forum – which is the biggest Forum for online marketing/internet business – and looked at the first couple of pages.

And instantly found three topics that could lead to pillar content:

How to sell a domain name (website flipping)
WordPress problems (there were two questions specifically about WordPress security)
How to format an eBook for Kindle

Now a quick caveat – of those three topics, only the third would interest me personally. But for other bloggers focused on other areas of online business – those other two topics could form the basis of great pillar content.

The point is you’ll find people on Forums asking questions about stuff that’s driving them nuts. Those questions are perfect places to start planning your pillar content.

A third way of generating pillar articles is to use Frequently Asked Questions.

Pillar Articles and FAQs

I found – and used – a great example of a ‘pillar article’ that answered a frequently asked question today.

I needed a new external hard drive to back up my bass guitar videos that I make. So I ordered a 1 TB drive from Amazon. When it came I plugged it in to my Macbook and tried to back up some video footage.

Wouldn’t work though.

So I headed over to the manufacturer’s website, and a small amount of searching and working through menu options lead me to a detailed article with screenshots that walked me through the process. (As my Macbook is an Intel based Mac there was a specific format that the HD needed to be configured in for it to work properly with my Macbook).

Depending on what your market area is, there might be 5, or 10, or 20 of these frequently asked questions. Creating a pillar article to answer each of those questions will lead to all the benefits we talked about above. And if it relates to a product, and getting that product to work, it will make your customer thankful. And there will be more chance of getting repeat business.

So never trash the emails you get that ask questions –they should be stored safely in a folder where you can retrieve them, and pan through them for those golden questions which can generate fresh pillar articles.

Creating these types of pillar articles enhances your expertise in your audience’s eyes – because when people ask these questions in future (and they will,) you can just send them a link to a detailed solution. That is really elegant.

Think how the person who gets that will feel too.

So there are the three primary ways to create ideas for pillar content for your website or blog. The next step is to actually create the pillar article.

And that’s what we’re going to look at in Part 2 of this article on Thursday.

Summary

It’s common advice to newbie bloggers to create pillar articles for their blogs.

In today’s article – Part 1 – we looked at what a pillar article actually is, why it’s important that you actually create pillar articles, and three methods you can use to generate ideas for pillar articles.

In Part 2 we’ll look at how to actually create a pillar article. And just as importantly – how to promote it.

Your Shout

Today I’ve got some questions for you:

Are you convinced of the need for Pillar Articles yet?
What pillar articles or pillar content do YOU plan to include on your blog?
If you’ve created pillar articles, what kind of success did you have?
What do you think would make good topics for pillar articles on One Spoon At A Time?

Take aim in the comments area and fire away…..and I’ll be back on Thursday with Part 2.

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Tagged as: cornerstone content, flagship article, how to create, pat flynn, pillar article, pillar content, writing

{ 38 comments }

Neil Smith from Life Insurance New Zealand August 8, 2011 at 9:20 am

As a fellow learner from Sean D’Souza, I can assure you I am convinced.

What did surprise me though, while I was reading this article, was the use of an interview and questions for creating killer content, I mean, Tent Pole Content.

It is so obvious! Too good to be true.

Well, it sounds like a lot of work, some would say, and certainly emailed questions would be some sort of substitute for targetted hard work. But answers from a single target profile work well for me.

Thanks for sharing your learnings with those who seek to gather the crumbs from under your table.

Neil
Neil Smith@Life Insurance New Zealand recently posted..The Muntstones Finances Series

Paul Wolfe August 8, 2011 at 9:27 am: Hey neil

Thanks for stopping by.

Doesn’t matter what you call it – it does the same job and gives you the same benefits. And those benefits make the work well worth doing in my opinion.

Of course, everyone needs to align what they are doing and planning with what they hope to achieve to make the most efficient use of their time.

But I would say to anyone thinking this might be too much work to create this kind of content to wait until Part 2 on Thursday and see the ‘promoting’ part of the article. You WILL get a lot of mileage from pillar articles…..

Paul
Paul Wolfe recently posted..How #Bloggers Can Create Pillar Articles – Part 1

Neil Smith from Life Insurance New Zealand August 8, 2011 at 9:33 am

What I meant was that some may think it is too much work to do the interview.

I suspect that like you say, the more you put into it, and post these articles onto what you might call splash pages, or landing pages even, the more you can leverage the work done by the target profile, and the author.

I had a tutorial page in my old blog. But it died. I need to update it and do it again.

Neil
Neil Smith@Life Insurance New Zealand recently posted..The Muntstones Finances Series

Bell August 8, 2011 at 10:34 am

I’d like to come back to this, but for now let me just reflect on your question:

“[I]s the time taken to research and write pillar articles or pillar content really worth it?”

Absolutely. This is why:

When you prepare teaching materials
a) you deepen your understanding of your subject matter
b) you hone your approach to it — i.e., focus on the vital issues, discard the others
c) you teach yourself to teach
d) you come across new information that may prove essential
e) you force yourself to understand someone else’s mindset, which is a powerful learning experience all by itself
f) you gain increased awareness of your own pain points and hopefully learn how to deal with them
g) you realize the true extent of your authority
h) teaching craft to others makes you stay sharp!
Bell recently posted..What can Edward Hopper teach you about writing?

Paul Wolfe August 8, 2011 at 10:36 am: John

What you said.

Thanks for the great comment.

Paul
Paul Wolfe recently posted..How #Bloggers Can Create Pillar Articles – Part 1

Betsy Cross August 8, 2011 at 11:04 am

Paul,
I think I have ADD this morning! I loved this post. I had to keep rereading it so I could know if I was understanding the concept of the “pillar article”.
When I first started my family history blog in April I started w/ the basics and hoped my audience was full of beginners who’d benefit from the tutorials. I was so brand new that I only got feedback from my mom who said the posts were too long. But along the way I’ve opened up to the idea of 5 min. video tutorials. My fear is that I’ll turn off current readers because it’s “old stuff”, AND the video quality is substandard! I’m going to have to do it anyways. I’ll never know unless I do. This is a load of fun. Thanks for helping people like me along. Learning the jargon alone is a monumental task.
Thanks Paul!
Betsy

Paul Wolfe August 8, 2011 at 7:40 pm

Hey Betsy

Hope you have the concept down now!

Can I give you some advice re the videos. Just post them and see what the reaction is – you can always delete them later if the reaction isn’t great. Video is the engine that drives my bass guitar website – and my first videos are utter crap. The sound is crap. The lighting is non existent. And I used a web cam.

But the content is OK.

And that content – in the sub-standard packaging – resulted in an exponential shift in visitors and subscribers. And from there I was able to turn that site into a business.

Sometimes you can strive for too much perfection….do some videos and get them out there. That way you’ll find it. Better to not get the results you’re hoping for – which allows you to move on and try and get results another way – than never know if you would have got results.

And for me video was the key to unlocking traffic. Once you have traffic…everything follows. You can always study and get better…..get them out there!

HTH.

Paul
Paul Wolfe recently posted..How #Bloggers Can Create Pillar Articles – Part 1

illiam Rose from Wfz47 August 14, 2011 at 1:12 pm: Pat Flynn has some excellent stuff written! I especially love the ‘niche duel’ section over there!

I wasn’t aware that this type of writing was called a ‘pillar article’ – interesting read, will certainly ponder on it while brainstorming ideas for blog posts!

Betsy Cross August 8, 2011 at 11:05 am

Paul! I forgot to correct my URL again! Sorry. This is the right one.
Betsy Cross recently posted..An Emotional Payoff!

Paul Wolfe August 8, 2011 at 7:41 pm: Fixed it!
Paul Wolfe recently posted..How #Bloggers Can Create Pillar Articles – Part 1

Palm Oil Free Soap Team August 9, 2011 at 3:04 am

Betsy, I was very interested in your personal profile on your blog. It looks like some folks will appreciate your stories being respun into video.

You might like to look at Stephen Washer’s free tutorials on the You Tube. You’ll love his tutorials!

http://www.brainyvideo.com

N
Palm Oil Free Soap Team recently posted..Parabens

Betsy Cross August 9, 2011 at 8:53 am

Thanks POFST (for short!),
That was really kind of you to do what you did. I watched one of his videos just now. A lot of the tech. was over my head just because I’ve never used it, but I’ll search for the more basic ones to see what I can learn. I added them to my watch later list so I can find them easily!
Have a great day!
Betsy

Paul Wolfe August 9, 2011 at 8:56 am

Hey Betsy

Normally I would have trashed the comment – but it’s from someone I know who’s getting a bit of link love! But Steve is a good guy to learn about video from (for the technical aspects, he’s the best actually!). Definitely you should subscribe to him.

Paul
Paul Wolfe recently posted..How #Bloggers Can Create Pillar Articles – Part 1

Betsy Cross August 9, 2011 at 9:33 am: Paul,
Thanks for not trashing their comment. I went to their site, too. I love how this all works for everyone! You just never know. Do you?
Betsy Cross recently posted..An Emotional Payoff!

Jack August 9, 2011 at 11:43 am

For my yoga business I have been publishing articles once a week every week for the last several months and almost all of them seem to qualify as pillar content based on your definition:
– Longer than 500 words. I tend to average around 1,000 words.
– long term appeal, tutorial, stays current, offers value and insight.

Are you convinced of the need for Pillar Articles yet?
——————————————————————
One article continues to get mentioned at the studio long after I wrote it. “You are in my spot” What to do when someone wants you to move your yoga mat.

I have students coming into the studio and thanking me for the article that I have recently published.

Is it worthwhile? Yes I think so.

My purpose for the articles whether they are pillar content or not is to increase the retention of the members at the yoga studio. Provide more value, be perceived as an expert, give more value for the money they are spending at the studio. I think this is working.

What pillar articles or pillar content do YOU plan to include on your blog?
——————————————————————————————–
My articles are focusing on providing value to my students in these areas:
– Poses – How to do a particular yoga pose including modifications for your inflexible body
– Motivation – How to stay motivated and continue your yoga practice
– Etiquette – How to behave before, during and after a yoga class
– Journey – Yoga is a life long journey.
– Injury free – How to avoid injuring yourself when you are doing a yoga pose

Some of these should qualify as pillar content.

What do you think would make good topics for pillar articles on One Spoon At A Time?
————————————————————————————————————-
– How to market your ebook
– How to find out where your herd, crowd, tribe, fans, whatever are spending their time online. Twitter, facebook, forums, linkedIn, Google+, etc, etc
– How to structure an article
– How to connect with your fans (whatever) where they are online.

Interesting I found that I can reach my crowd in two principle ways:
– facbook. I publish links to my articles on my blog on my facebook fan page
– newsletter. I publish articles once a week in my weekly newsletter with links back to my blog.

My tribe (whatever) do not go directly to my blog. I have had much more success bring the blog to them where they are.
Jack recently posted..How the Romance Novel Technique will improve your yoga practice dramatically

Paul Wolfe August 9, 2011 at 8:14 pm

Heya Jack

Good comment.

Interesting that you have to take your ‘pillar content’ to your audience. One of the definitions of pillar content is that it is long tail orientated and should bring search engine traffic.

But – sometimes you have to do things differently, not every business works the same. The Facebook Fan Page is a concept I’m exploring for my bass site, and I’m using it to ‘curate’ content that’s not always mine and hopefully bring a new audience my way….it’s still early days, but the numbers are up. So we’ll see.

If your Tribe does not go to your blog – where do you find them?

Jack August 10, 2011 at 1:00 am

I am running a brick and motar business and not an online business. A lot of the people that come to the studio are older than 45 years old. For a lot of these people online blog reading is not something they do.

They do read the emails though. I check with them often after class to make sure they are on our mailing list and are getting my emails. They love the emails, read them all and really love the educational content.

How does my tribe find me:
50% – Word or Mouth (referral) Friends, Family, co-workers, etc
25% – Google search. They find my home page and from there go to the Intro class sign up page. They search for “Sunrise Yoga” or “yoga dartmouth”.
The rest – building sign, community flyer distribution, yellow pages.
Jack recently posted..How the Romance Novel Technique will improve your yoga practice dramatically

Paul Wolfe August 10, 2011 at 7:41 pm

Where do you rank in the search engines for ‘yoga dartmouth?’ ANd have you put any serious work into optimizing that phrase? (Something local like that should be reasonably easy to rank for – and different page 1 rankings too….. Email me if you need some tips on what to do….)

Jack August 10, 2011 at 8:52 pm: I did a Google search after I did the post above.
“Sunrise Yoga”
There are a surprising number of yoga studios around the world called Sunrise Yoga.
I own page 1 on Google. All the entries on the page are for my website. That has probably a local effect going on.

“yoga dartmouth”
I rank at #3 on page 1 of Google for this. There are a few other studios in Dartmouth and we are all on page 1.

The traffic is pretty evenly split between the two phrases.
Jack recently posted..How the Romance Novel Technique will improve your yoga practice dramatically

Neil Smith from Life Insurance New Zealand August 9, 2011 at 11:51 pm

Yes Jack, that is very interesting about the fact that they don’t come to your blog much. I think I have the same problem.

But I need to make some changes to my bringing it to them.

I post updates with links on my LinkedIn profile. That works too.

N
Neil Smith@Life Insurance New Zealand recently posted..The Muntstones Finances Series

bettyboop80 August 10, 2011 at 12:59 pm

Another kind of marketing strategy? Huh! so many to learn. I hope I can absorb this in 1 week.
bettyboop80 recently posted..angry birds game online

Paul Wolfe August 10, 2011 at 7:38 pm: There’s always more to learn….we just have to keep acquiriing new skills slowly but steadily!

Jens P. Berget August 10, 2011 at 1:50 pm

Hi Paul,

What a great article! And, this my friend, is a pillar article

Like you said, I first read about pillar articles from Yaro Starak, when I took his Blog mastermind course a while back. At the time, I also tried my best to write a few, but I don’t think I did a good job. The problem was that it took a long time to write, and I was going to use several days writing them. To me, blogging was more a thing I did for an hour and then I published what ever I had finished writing. It worked to some extent, because I was personal and I shared some fairly interesting thoughts.

But, the big difference with pillar articles compared to what I have been writing (and continue writing), is that pillar articles will continue to live on “forever”. They’ll help you get traffic (and subscribers) for many years, while the ordinary articles will be interesting for a few days or maybe a week if we’re lucky

Jens
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Paul Wolfe August 10, 2011 at 7:37 pm: Hey Jens

Well – I’m hoping that when it’s combined with Part 2, and added with some checklists, that it will become a good reference on creating pillar articles.

They do take a long time to write – but the ‘return on investment’ if you get it right in terms of traffic, engagement, comments, etc is more than worth it IMO. Of course, you have to align writing and researching such articles with your ultimate blog goals.

And of course, once you’ve written one there are several ways to promote it…..as you;ll see in Part 2!!!

Paul

Eugene from Internet Success August 10, 2011 at 6:32 pm

I love the “target profile” section. It’s something that never really crossed my mind while I was writing, and yet it’s of great importance. Definitely would be beneficial.
Eugene @ Internet Success recently posted..One Week Left to Help Your Business and Change the World

Paul Wolfe August 10, 2011 at 7:35 pm: Eugene

I’ve been working with target profile’ in more detail in connection with copywriting recently – but its use goes across the board. It’s an incredibly useful tool if you wield it correctly.

Paul

Adrienne August 11, 2011 at 8:00 pm

Wow Paul, you have outdone yourself with this post. Talk about jammed pack with fabulous tips, I can’t wait to read part 2.

I will agree with you though, these types of articles, videos, podcasts, whatever really keep my attention. Because if there is something I want to learn how to do and I can locate that information, you can bet I’ll be coming back for more from that person that shared it with me. It’s really hard to find really good information explained correctly these days.

Love the idea of the interview as well as the questions. I do get a lot of emails with questions but never considered turning that into a post. The ideas are flooding in now.

Okay, off to read part 2…

Adrienne
Adrienne recently posted..7 Ways To Kill Your Blog Quickly

Paul Wolfe August 11, 2011 at 8:50 pm: Hey Adrienne

Thanks for stopping by and tweeting out. really appreciate it. Glad you’ve got some ideas too….and questions from your readers are goldmines for posts, product ideas, webinars, etc. Never EVER throw those away.

Paul
Paul Wolfe recently posted..How #bloggers Can Create Pillar Articles Part 2

Diana Simon from Blogging For Beginners August 18, 2011 at 4:41 pm

Hi Paul,

I have heard the idea of writing for one person. On my coaching blog, I am still getting there but for my personal blog, I have one person in mind when I am writing. I know this person very well. What I have seen is that my personal blog is growing much faster! With this in mind, I need to sit down and see who is the one person I am writing my blog for. It will give me more focus.

Thanks,
Diana
Diana Simon@Blogging For Beginners recently posted..My Blogging Community Features Adrienne Smith

Paul Wolfe August 21, 2011 at 6:58 pm: Hey Diana

Yeah Stephen King talks about this too in “On Writing.” He calls his one person the ‘ideal reader.’ If memory serves, for him, it’s his wife Tabitha.

For us bloggers – and especially when it comes to products and pillar articles – the target profile not only gives us someone who we can write for, but we can get valuable insight before we even start writing our pillar articles and products.

And if you pick the right person there will be a thousand people just like that…or ten thousand…or more. And you’ll be directly to every single one of them. Your engagement rates will spike and all your efforts will improve.

Paul

David August 20, 2011 at 2:45 pm

Really interesting, and more importantly useful, article on pillar/ cornerstone/ tent pole articles. I think the school of thinking behind these things is the reason why so many affiliate marketers are switching from straight sales/ landing pages to industry blogs.

As consumers we’re evolving, and we’re getting harder to impress. And in this tough economic environment we’re becoming far more savvy about where we spend our money – we want more information before we make a purchase. I think pillar content is the perfect answer for this.

neo August 21, 2011 at 1:42 pm

Hi Paul

I read part 2 first and then I realize I need to read the first one – that make me read the 2nd part again. BTW this is great article from you. TQ again for the great tips.
neo recently posted..Bagaimana Meningkatkan Tahap Pembacaan Blog Anda

Paul Wolfe August 21, 2011 at 6:50 pm: Hey neo

You’re welcome – glad that the articles helped you.

Paul

Ryan Hanley November 8, 2011 at 10:39 pm

Paul,

I am infinitely convinced of Pillar Content.

A couple months ago I started posting less content per post more often (from my average 2 posts a week to 4 posts a week). This increased my traffic but not necessarily the quality traffic that I wanted. A couple weeks ago I found your site and that led me to Smart Passive Income to Social Trigger and so on… All of you talking about the power of Pillar Content. I firmly believe.

Thanks again!

Ryan H.
Ryan Hanley recently posted..Why I Hope You Never Realize the True Value of Insurance

Paul Wolfe November 14, 2011 at 11:07 am: Ryan

Thanks for stopping by – Pillar Content has got so many potential benefits that you should strive to create pillar articles as often as possible.
If you can pull it off, it will start to boost your traffic numbers, your conversion, and everything else. So it’s definitely worth striving for.

Paul

Anthony from Gamma Scientific Light Measurement December 29, 2011 at 7:42 pm

Paul,

Great article, I especially like the concept of setting a target profile. It’s often intimidating and difficult to do research on thousands of people, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find one and pick their brain. Definitely gave me a different perspective.
Anthony @ Gamma Scientific Light Measurement recently posted..LED Test, Measurement and Industry News

Ana from Increase Web Traffic January 18, 2012 at 4:13 am

I published a post today (linked in CL) and one of the comments said: “I don’t think you can intentionally write popular content”.

I immediately thought “Boy, are you in the wrong business!”

I would’ve referred him to this post, Paul, if I knew about it – great stuff!
Ana @ Increase Web Traffic recently posted..How to REALLY Create a Popular Blog From Scratch

Paul Wolfe January 20, 2012 at 5:06 pm: Hey Ana

LOL!

The truth is that you WON’T really know if your post is going to be popular until after you’ve published it and promoted it – and then you see the traffic and shares. BUT – you can take steps to create pillar articles that COULD prove popular! (That’s a subtle distinction I know…but it does need to be made).

Thanks again for tweeting out.

paul

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