Write your content pillars and a backlog of specific post ideas ready to script.
Open the themes you grouped in Lesson 2.2, "Find pillars in the questions customers already ask", and keep them beside you. You are going to turn them into a backlog: a list of specific post ideas, tagged by theme, that covers well over a month of posts and sits somewhere you can open on a bad day and pick from.
Without a plan, the pattern is familiar. On a Sunday evening (an invented scenario) you sit down to plan Monday's post, no ideas come, you spend 40 minutes scrolling other accounts for inspiration, and you end up posting a product photo with a "Happy Monday" caption. With a backlog, you pick an idea from the list. You finish with 3 to 5 named content pillars, each with a one-line purpose written from the buyer's side, and at least 20 specific post ideas tagged by pillar, all in one place you open often.
A pillar is a recurring content theme. From the groups you made in Lesson 2.2, pick 3 to 5. Choose the groups that hold the most real customer material. Then check the set against Lesson 2.3: between them, your pillars should cover teaching, proof and the people.
Give each pillar a plain name you would say out loud. "Party planning help" works better than "Celebration solutions". Only you see these names, so they only need to be obvious to you.
Under each name, write a purpose line: one line saying what the buyer gets from that pillar, written from their side. Mei Ling (an invented example) runs a cake business making cakes for parties, including children's parties. Her set has four pillars. Party planning help: parents feel in control of the cake part of the party, weeks before the day. In the kitchen: people see the care and the process behind each cake. Customer cakes: people thinking about ordering can see real cakes made for real parties. Before you order: common questions about timing, flavours and delivery get answered before anyone has to ask.
Most backlogs fail at this step. A list of topics looks like a plan but gives you nothing to film. A topic is a broad subject, such as "Cake sizes", that still leaves you deciding what to say. An idea is specific enough that you could write its hook right away: "How to work out what size of cake feeds 20 children, and what to order if you are unsure."
Every idea in your backlog should be one of three things: a specific claim, a question in the buyer's words, or a specific story. To test an idea, ask whether you know exactly what the video would show. If you would still have to decide what to say, it is still a topic. A good idea brings a picture to mind.
Mei Ling turned her topics into ideas this way. "Cracks" became why her cakes used to crack on top and the one change that fixed it. "Delivery" became what happens to a cream cake in a car with no aircon for 40 minutes. "Booking" became the two weeks before a party: when to order, when to confirm, when to collect. "Our story" became the first cake she sold and what she charged for it.
Write at least 5 ideas per pillar. With 4 pillars, 4 x 5 gives you the minimum of 20 ideas. Writing more than the minimum helps, because some ideas will turn out weaker than they looked, and some weeks you will not feel like filming the top idea on the list.
Uneven counts are a signal. If a pillar struggles to reach 5 ideas, either customers do not ask much about it, so it may not be a real pillar, or you have not collected enough material yet. Before you drop it, go back to customer messages and reviews. If one pillar has far more ideas than the others, say 20 against 3, buyers care a lot about that subject, and it may deserve to be split into two pillars.
The best backlog is the one you will open on your phone in a spare five minutes. A notes app, a shared spreadsheet or a board in a project tool all work, as long as everything is in one place. Do not spread the backlog across several apps and a notebook.
If you use a sheet, give it these columns:
Idea, written as a claim or question Pillar Job: the role the post plays, which is teach, prove, people or objection Source: where the idea came from, such as a customer message or a review Status: idea, scripted, filmed, posted
Add a new row every time a customer asks a question the backlog does not cover yet. After a few months of doing this, the backlog fills itself. You will use it in every module that follows: Module 3 takes ideas from it and writes hooks for them, and Module 6 spreads it across a 30-day calendar.
Now write your own: three to five pillars with a purpose line each, then at least twenty specific post ideas, each tagged with its pillar.
Write three to five pillars, each with a one-line purpose. Then list at least twenty specific post ideas and tag each with its pillar.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).