The Strength of Pillar Content and Why You Should Have Some on Your Substack

What pillar content is and how to set up yours for maximum impact.

You want to grow your Substack, right?

Pillar Content can help you stand out from the competition and convert more Free Subscribers into Paid Members.

If your Substack is a business platform, your readers and subscribers deserve an organized post archive. The Substack default archive is a start, but it’s not organized beyond a dull list of posts.

Your subscribers deserve something better.

But first, let’s define what we’re talking about.

What is Pillar Content?

Pillar Content is the intersection of topics of prime importance to you and your audience.

To illustrate this, here’s a breakdown of the pillar content topics I write about here on Working Writers:

What’s Important to You is Important to Me

1. Converting Free Subscribers to Paid Members

2. Consistent writing and publishing

3. Client/subscriber satisfaction

4. Getting paid

5. Other growth strategies

6. Educating and inspiring readers

7. Creating Digital Products (eBooks, courses, etc.)

8. Making enough money to quit your 9-5

Setting Up Pillar Content Sections

Referring to the screenshot below from my Settings screen, you can see that I created three sections. One is for Getting Paid, which includes posts that discuss implementing alternative income streams; another is Work With Me, which provides pillar content related to how you can work with me to boost your Substack revenues. Finally, there is a third section called Course that contains a 6-lesson mini-course where you’ll learn how to turn your life experience and training into income.

I set up these sections and ticked the box to hide these posts on the homepage. However, Substack’s default setting is to place your section name in your navigation.

Depending on your school of thought, minimalist vs. show-them-everything, if you’d like to hide them from the navigation, you can do that in Settings under the Navigation settings area (you can type ‘Nav’ into the search bar to reveal it quicker than searching for it).

After you publish a post, the section page will list them chronologically, with the most recent at the top by default (using the Copywriting Tips section)

You Can’t Paywall a Section

Be aware that a section is viewable by all subscribers, and you cannot blanket paywall a section. However, you can paywall individual posts within a section as you publish them.

I do this for all of my posts. Every other post is paywalled to encourage more free subscribers to become Paid Members.

Summary

Your Pillar content is essential for educating your subscribers. Additionally, it can be a form of gentle leverage to convert free subscribers into Paid Members.

1. Your pillar content is within the intersection of your Substack’s focus and your target audience’s interests.

2. Segregating those posts into separate sections is an excellent way to organize your Substack.

3. You can choose to hide or display your posts on your homepage.

4. While you can’t paywall a section, you can paywall individual posts within a section to drive more conversion of free subscribers to paid members.