Creating content is hard work. Creating good quality content consistently is even harder. But crafting good content is an important part of your inbound marketing and making sure that the same content isn’t being plastered across all platforms is part of an effective strategy. For example, a business could post their professional blog on LinkedIn, post a survey that supports the blog (and links to it) on Facebook, and YouTube might show a short discussion based on the blog topic. Each channel would attract a slightly different audience and require a slightly different content to keep them engaged. But this doesn’t have to mean triple the work.
You can often repurpose your content to use on a variety of channels and make it look unique. Here are a few ideas:
- A blog post on numbered tips could easily translate to Slideshare.
- A series of blog posts could be combined to a longer article or whitepaper.
- A webinar could be recorded and edited to a series of short videos you can post on YouTube.
- A Twitter Chat can be transcribed and edited to a blog post (citing all comments).
Reusing content on different sites is a no-brainer, but by tweaking the format (presentation to article or whitepaper to infographic) you gain the option of tweaking the tone to make it appeal to another audience. You gain the ability to show another side of your company personality. Now, it’s also important to stay on brand with this so you really can’t change up your colours, etc. but you may be able to loosen your branding to appeal to a new audience. If you choose to go this route, be sure to have this worked out for the first few posts before you start. And don’t be afraid to tweak along the way – you can never tell what works until you try it.
There are many small businesses that don’t segment their audiences by social channel, and this is fine. You can also do this to reuse content throughout the year to generate opt-ins and leads. This can be done by using older (but still relevant) content as follow-up content to their original opt-in. For example, that 10-page Case Study may not get too much attention sitting on your website, but as an image-driven Slideshare deck it may work perfectly as a follow-up to your webinar on that software you’re selling.
It’s easier than you think and allows you to explore content in a different way. After all, if you spent two months writing a whitepaper you don’t want that to go to waste so quickly. By transforming it into an infographic you can use that research and content in another format – perhaps even to generate interest in the original piece.
As a small business you should explore ways to squeeze everything out of every piece. If you need help with this, get in touch!
