Micro pillaring, or creating “micro” content, is cutting down your longer form “pillar” content into shorter, more easily accessible content for social media. This could mean cutting 20-30 second clips from a 3 minute video and sharing those clips across various social media platforms, or pulling quotes from a recent article or blog that you posted.

When you’re looking to advertise yourself or business to a larger audience, often on social media, you want to be able to efficiently engage your potential audience and show them what your business is about.

On average, people use social media up to 135 minutes a day (Statista The Statistics Portal). Thus, using social media to market your content is the fastest way to reach people as they scroll through their feed. From there you can link the whole video and find your audience who is interested in what you do.

Creating “Micro” Content

Make “pillar” content
Before you start making any micro content, it’s important to remember what your business’ goals are, and what kind of content you usually strive to create. You want to continue to make this, often longer form, “pillar” content. The goal is not to change your content, but adapt what you already make into smaller pieces for social media.
Break it down
Once you have some longer form content that you want to use to advertise your business, it’s time to break it down into smaller pieces. Take your time with this process, and really try to narrow down your content into pieces that, while small, still reflect your business’ purpose and values. If it’s a piece of writing, find a few quotes that stand out, if it’s a video, pick the most important narrative moments and transitions.
Keep it short
Keep the clips short. Shorter videos have a higher completion rate than longer videos and our brains are better able to hold quick bits of information rather than long, detailed content. If they like your content, then they can follow you and eventually see your long form material.
Mix it up
Once you’ve mastered taking your long form content and breaking it into smaller pieces to advertise on social media, now you can take it one step further. The last step is to diversify your social media accounts and post slightly different content in different places. Different social media platforms are better for different kinds of media, so adapt your content to each platform. On Twitter you can post quotes from articles or your clients and include links to videos. On Instagram however, you can directly post a 20-30 second “highlight reel” of video material, or share a few stellar photos from a recent event or video shoot.

Now that you have the tools, it’s time to start making your own micro content. Take one piece of content you have and derive something else from it. If you have a blog, take a photo that relates to it. If you have a photo that you’ve shared on facebook, change up the dimensions and share it to instagram.

Just have fun with it and find what works best for you and your business. If you need ideas, check out our website for examples.