Creating content ·
How to create content pillars for LinkedIn without sounding generic
There comes a point where what holds you back is no longer the fear of publishing but a duller, more persistent question: what do I talk about next week, and the week after, and in three months? A good post comes out when it occurs to you. A presence that builds something needs a handful of topics to return to without having to invent from scratch every Monday.
These are called content pillars, and the advice you will find everywhere is the same: "pick three to five topics and rotate them". It sounds orderly. The problem is that almost nobody tells you where to get those topics, so people open the list of "profitable LinkedIn niches", copy the ones that sound familiar, and end up publishing exactly what a thousand other profiles in their industry publish.
This article is about the opposite: how to derive three or four pillars that are yours, how to test them for a month before marrying them and how to notice when one is dead so you can retire it in time. With examples of bad and good pillars across several professions, so the difference shows rather than staying theoretical.
By Sheena de PunkVoice · Edited by Mario Pérez
Why "pick 3 to 5 topics" leaves you just as lost
The advice is not false, it is incomplete, which is worse. It gives you the structure (a few topics that repeat) but skips the only hard part: how to choose topics that are not everybody else's. And because choosing is the costly bit, most people take the shortcut: they look at what works in their trade, see that "leadership", "productivity" and "artificial intelligence" get likes, and adopt them.
The result is a cloned feed. Ten consultants discussing leadership with the same quote from a famous CEO. Fifteen designers commenting on the same trends. A sea of "5 mistakes you make in X" carousels interchangeable with each other. It is not that those topics are bad, it is that handled with no angle of your own they turn your profile into one more in the pile, and then it makes no difference how much you publish.
There is also a mistake at the root: confusing pillars with niches. Your niche is the territory you play in, your pillars are the specific topics you return to inside that territory. A tax adviser for freelancers has already chosen the niche. What is left to decide is which four things they will discuss inside freelance taxation without reciting the tax office's leaflet.
The difference between choosing a niche and choosing pillars, in detail
What a content pillar is (and what it is not)
A pillar is not a loose word. "Marketing" is not a pillar, it is an empty shelf. A pillar is a recurring topic with an angle: a position, a way of looking at it that is recognisably yours and that you could sustain for months without boring yourself or running out of things to say.
The acid test is simple: if any other person in your industry could sign your pillar exactly as you have phrased it, it is not a pillar yet, it is a category. "Productivity tips" could be signed by anybody. "Why most productivity systems fail in teams under ten people" already has an owner, a tone and a point of view to defend.
A good pillar also has to feed you in quantity: if you can only think of two posts about it, it is not a pillar, it is an idea for a post. And it has to connect with what you want people to think about you. If it gets likes but moves you away from where you want to be remembered, it is a pillar working for the algorithm and against you.
Where your pillars come from: the intersection of three things
The pillars that hold up are not chosen from a list, they are found at the intersection of three things you already have. Separately each one is weak. Together they are what makes your content sound like you and nobody else.
1. What you genuinely know how to do
Your real experience: the problems you have solved, the mistakes you have made, the decisions you have had to take with incomplete information. This is what gives you authority without having to claim it, because it shows when somebody speaks from having lived it and when they are repeating what they read. Here are the concrete examples only you can tell: the client you nearly lost, the project that went sideways, the metric that changed when you did the opposite of what the manual said.
2. What you think differently about
Your judgement: the points where you disagree with your industry's current. This is the hardest to draw out, because it requires committing, but it is what makes following you worthwhile. Which practice everybody defends strikes you as overrated? Which repeated piece of advice do you think does harm? A pillar built on an opinion you defend is inexhaustible, because reality keeps giving you new cases to support it.
3. What your audience asks about
The real demand: the questions people put to you privately, in meetings, in the comments. Not what you think interests them, but what they genuinely ask you again and again. If four different clients have asked you the same question this quarter, you have a pillar with guaranteed demand. Review your direct messages and the questions you get repeatedly: they point at topics your audience already wants and nobody is answering well.
The intersection, not the sum
The key is crossing all three, not settling for one. What you know but nobody cares about is a diary. What you have opinions about but have not lived is posturing, and it shows. What people ask you about but you do not master forces you to copy others. A strong pillar lives where they overlap: something you master, that you have a position on and that people are also asking for. Three or four intersections like that are your whole content strategy.
Generic against angled: three examples
The theory is clear enough. The difference shows better in the concrete. Same professional, same underlying topic, two ways of framing it: one anybody could sign and one that only makes sense signed by whoever lives it.
| Profession | Generic pillar (cloned) | The same topic with an angle of its own |
|---|---|---|
| UX designer | "Design trends 2026" | "Redesigns clients asked me for and why I said no" |
| Tax adviser for freelancers | "Tips for paying less tax" | "The same VAT mistake I correct for new clients every quarter" |
| Backend developer | "Clean code best practices" | "Technical decisions I regretted and what I would do today" |
What the right hand ones have in common
All three start from experience ("asked me", "I correct", "I regretted"), carry an implicit opinion and answer something the audience genuinely wonders: whether my designer will push back when I am wrong, which tax mistake I am making without knowing, which technical decisions will come back to bite me. None of them needs anything invented: every week reality brings a new case to tell inside the same pillar.
More on creating content with judgement and without templates
How to test your pillars over a month
Do not marry your pillars on day one. A pillar on paper and a pillar that survives four weeks of publishing are different things, and you only find out by publishing. Set yourself a cheap trial month before declaring them official.
The mechanics are simple: define three or four candidate pillars and split the month's posts between them so each gets at least two or three appearances. You do not need to publish daily for this, whatever cadence you can already sustain is enough. What matters is not the volume but giving each pillar enough chances to see how it breathes.
- Assign each post to a pillar before writing it. If an idea fits none of them, note it separately: either you have a pillar too many or one too few.
- Notice which one is easiest to fill. The pillar you can think of five posts for effortlessly is a sign you have a lot inside. The one that makes you squeeze to produce two, be suspicious of.
- Measure conversation, not applause. A pillar generating replies, questions and private messages is alive. One that only harvests likes may be working for the algorithm without building you anything.
- Note which one you feel like writing. Your own boredom is data: if by week three you are dragging your feet on a pillar, you will not sustain it for six months however well it performs.
How to know a pillar is dead (and when to retire it)
Pillars are not forever. Your work changes, your audience matures and some topics run out. Insisting on keeping one that no longer gives you anything means losing weeks of content on autopilot, which is exactly what this was meant to avoid.
There are three clear signals a pillar has died, and it is worth telling them apart from a passing dip:
- You repeat yourself without noticing. When you start rewriting posts you published months ago in different words, the pillar has given what it had. Reality no longer brings you new cases, you are recycling.
- Writing it bores you. Do not underestimate this. If opening that pillar makes you sluggish consistently, that sluggishness ends up showing in the text and the audience smells it before you do.
- It stopped generating conversation. Not one weak post, but a sustained drop in real replies over several weeks. Your audience is telling you, with its silence, that the topic no longer serves them.
Retiring is not failing
When a pillar gathers two of those three signals over a month, retire it without ceremony and replace it with one of the candidates you kept in reserve. Do not announce that you are dropping it, do not hold a funeral in a post: simply stop showing up there and make room for the next one. Rotating pillars periodically is not inconsistency, it is proof your profile is alive and that you still have new things to say.
The next step: from pillar to calendar
Having your pillars clear resolves the "what do I talk about" but leaves open the "when and in what order". Without a minimum structure, good pillars stay as intentions: you publish three posts from one, forget another for a month and return to the chaos of improvising every Monday.
That is an editorial calendar's job: spreading your pillars over time so none eats the others and so you do not depend on the inspiration of the moment. It is this article's sibling and the natural step after defining your pillars. We cover it separately in the LinkedIn editorial calendar guide. And before building anything, it is worth having settled the question of how much you can realistically publish, because a calendar designed for a frequency you will not sustain is little use.
If at any point in all this you doubt whether a pillar has an angle of its own or a cloned one slipped in, that is exactly the conversation Sheena has with you inside PunkVoice: she does not invent the topics for you, she flags when a pillar sounds like a template and pushes you to sharpen it until it is yours.