June 03, 2026 | Read online

I don’t wanna just ~thought lead~, I wanna give you more helpful examples. More thinking from the social strategy process, more things to make your job easier. Today’s kicking off something I’m quite proud of. Let’s just jump into it—we’re talking:

How to fix the boring Content Pillars model
The best way to get boring bosses to approve crazy ideas
Why it’s so important to experiment with social.

—Jack Appleby

Some ridiculously cool professional news…

I’m so excited about this. I'm working with Adobe Express to build social media frameworks to make the lives of social media professionals easier!

I've been lucky enough to become pals with the senior social & influencer leads over at Adobe, and we talk a lotttt about how to help social pros grow in their careers.

So they pitched ME an idea: rebuild the social media strategies, templates, frameworks, & systems I've used over the last 15 years in a way that EVERY social media manager can access & use themselves!

So over the next few months, I’m creating Adobe Express templates of my favorite frameworks. Best part: they’re editable, downloadable, remixable, and FREE for anyone to use!

Here’s the first one for ya: a way to spice up a format I know you’ve used.

A better way to build content pillars: Tried & True vs. Trying New

Wanna get crazy social media ideas approved?

Here's how to pitch your boss on insane, experimental approaches to your brand's social media using the most old-school, totally-typical social framework I know you've built a million times.

So you know what Content Pillars are.

Most brands have 3-5 approved pillars that serve as organizational direction for your brand's content. They're usually themes or product features to keep your social strategy focused on the most important marketing messages. Your bosses & clients love 'em because they're simple & understandable.

But here's how to use Content Pillars to pitch YOUR favorite ideas—the ones that bosses always kill, or clients are a little afraid of.

I call this approach Tried & True vs. Trying New.

TRIED & TRUE: content pillars you KNOW will work, based on what's previously worked for the brand or strong examples from the industry.
TRYING NEW: content pillars that are a little more out there, that you want to try, that are still on brand, but push your brand's content forward.

The basic thinking: you're hedging your bets by offering ideas that you're certain will deliver results as a way to justify trying new content simultaneously. It makes your content strategy low risk, high reward!

More importantly, I want you to actively call out this strategy to your bosses & clients. I'll even write the pitch for you:

"In modern social media, it's incredibly important we keep trying new things. The feeds are extremely competitive—we're trying to steal attention from not just other brands, but insane influencer content, baby photos, AI slop, & every other piece of content in the feed. Because of that, we're organizing our content pillars by TRIED & TRUE and TRYING NEW. 60-80% of our content will be based off what's worked for our brand, what's always delivered results, while 20-40% of content will be experimental by nature, taking big swings to find new ways to bring the brand to life."

Now here's my favorite part: after 1-3 months, when you report results on your content pillars? If one of the experimental pillars works, it becomes one of your Tried & True pillars! Then you pitch a new experimental theme for your next quarter! And hey, if your experimental ideas don't work? THEY WERE EXPERIMENTS! You try new experiments next quarter!

I built you a template in Adobe Express that explains the approach even further. Access it right here, remix to make your own, and toss it in your next deck.

So excited that Adobe Express partnered with me on this!