Pillar to Post: Do you have 5 pillar articles on your blog?

This suggestion comes from Yaro Starak, on the Small Business CEO blog, by way of Henri Schauffler who writes at www.CeoCoachBlog.com. This suggested blog writing tip makes sense to me for any business blog, especially where there are several subtopics the author is writing about.   

Write at least five major “pillar” articles. 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 article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. 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.

I've been meaning to do this for some time for this blog: take the 4-5 main subtopics of writing great ezines, blogs, articles, white papers and sales copy (and maybe also news releases) and put them on stand-alone pages. That way anyone visiting this blog for the first time can immediately access core information on writing better for various online purposes.

What do you think? Would this be helpful to readers? And, have you done this for your own blogs?

Comments

[joybringer]

This is an interesting concept but I don't understand what the 5 pillars are all about or why you would put them on separate pages for someone to access asap.

I know TypePad now has a feature for individual pages but does that mean you would then put a link to each of the 5 articles somewhere easy to see on your blog sidebars? I already do this just by using a typelist link for what I want readers to have easy access to.

[Patsi Krakoff]

Yes. That's how you publish stand-alone pages for easy access: create a typelist and link to the pillar posts. You could title the typelist to make it compelling. Example: 5 Key Concept You Need to Know About Content Marketing