Internal reference doc. Defines the 4 topic pillars billyschlotter.com content is written toward, confirmed by Billy 2026-09-04. Not for publish — Type/Tags keep it out of the auto-publish router regardless of Status.
These are topic pillars (what we write about) and are separate from the LinkedIn format pillars (What I’m Seeing / Teach One Thing / Behind the Work / Contrarian Take — how a given piece is written). A blog article picks one topic pillar (Notion Pillar property → WP category) and can use any LinkedIn format for its angle.
1. Paid Media & Analytics
Direction: The performance-marketing operator’s take — Google Ads, GA4, attribution, measurement. This is the most direct line to the 15-year execution credibility (“not account management”).
Focus: Campaign structure and bid strategy, Quality Score / diagnosis, GA4 conversion tracking and configuration mistakes, attribution windows and cross-platform revenue mismatches, Performance Max, GTM setup. Real client patterns (anonymized), not platform news recaps.
Avoid: Generic “5 tips for Google Ads” listicles anyone could write. Doesn’t have to trace to a specific client fix — covers anything Billy has real knowledge of or a genuine interest in, not just diagnosed cases.
WP category: Paid Media & Analytics (id 20)
2. Systems, Operations & Automation
Direction: The build-it-yourself infrastructure angle — how Billy runs a lean consulting practice on self-hosted tools, AI agents, and automated workflows instead of a bloated SaaS stack. Newer differentiator, less crowded, ties directly to the independence-by-45 story.
Focus: Self-hosted infra choices and tradeoffs, n8n/automation workflows for marketing ops, where AI agents genuinely save time vs. hype, the operational discipline behind running solo/lean. Practical and specific — what was built, why, what it replaced.
Avoid: Deep technical infra posts that only make sense to other operators running the same stack (Docker/Komodo internals) — keep the audience business-owner-readable; technical depth stays in ~/.agent-memory/, not the blog.
WP category: Systems, Operations & Automation (id 21)
3. Email & Lifecycle Marketing
Direction: Klaviyo and other ESPs, plus e-commerce marketing execution — the retention/lifecycle side that most SMBs underinvest in relative to paid acquisition. Platform-agnostic: Billy knows Klaviyo, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and others well, so don’t default to naming one.
Focus: List health and segmentation, flow design (welcome, abandon, post-purchase), Shopify integration specifics, deliverability, the case for lifecycle spend vs. more ad spend. Name a specific platform only when the piece is genuinely about that platform’s implementation.
Avoid: Generic email marketing advice with no real platform specificity, and defaulting to one ESP as the only example — this pillar’s value is the depth, not a brand name.
WP category: Email & Lifecycle Marketing (id 22)
4. Leadership & Business Building
Direction: The entrepreneurship/independence-by-45 storyline — running the Ghost consulting brand alongside the Northland Motorcars in-house role, decisions made building toward full independence.
Focus: Lessons from running a consulting practice on the side, hiring/vendor/pricing decisions, what changed doing in-house + consulting simultaneously, milestones on the independence runway (without exposing private figures — no account balances or specific dollar amounts from the Vera/finance work).
Avoid: Generic “leadership tips” content — anchor every piece to something Billy actually decided or is deciding.
WP category: Leadership & Business Building (id 23)
Rotation
No fixed ratio set yet — revisit once a few articles are live in each pillar and engagement data exists. Start by filling gaps: pillars 1 and 3 have the most natural backlog from client work; pillars 2 and 4 will need dedicated ideation.
Mechanics
- Notion
Pillarselect (Documents & Notes DB) — pick one per article before Status → Final. - Router (
Content — Final Doc Router) passesPillarthrough; publisher (Billy Blog — WordPress Publisher) maps it to the matching WP category. No Pillar set → falls back to “Digital Marketing” (id 15). - Existing
Tagsfield (SEO/Analytics/Ads/Page Speed/etc.) still populates WP tags independently — finer-grained than the pillar/category.
Related
- [[project_content_strategy]] — weekly brief → LinkedIn + site + newsletter model
- LinkedIn Personal Brand — 90-Day Plan (format pillars)
- [[billy-blog-content-pipeline]] — pipeline mechanics + 2026-09-04 incident/fix history