You’ve probably heard the old adage you must give to receive. If applied to online selling, you must give something to get money in return. Most companies today have some semblance of a content marketing strategy in order to exchange knowledge for purchases. Those who give nothing, sell nothing.
Good content attracts qualified prospects, creates awareness of your products and services, engages on topics your ideal buyers care about, and moves them closer to a purchase.
Too bad there isn’t an easy button for content creation, right?
Not only do you need to invest time and effort into creating something — what you create has to give benefit. Creating quality content takes even more time, thought, and sometimes a little blood, sweat, and tears.
So what is good content? Simply put, it’s something with value. Value can be viewed in two ways: Educational — which informs, educates, and engages logic. Emotional — which appeals to emotions associated with needs, wants & desires.
If you aren’t super tech-savvy or quick at executing on all the available marketing channels the internet grants us, you’re in for an even bigger time commitment than most. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just create something once and become content marketing wizards? Or if you could give a longer lifespan to what you already have, so you can carve out extra time for creating something new?
The secret is doing more with less. Instead of spending time you don’t have to create, take the treasure trove of content you already have, and use it in new ways to make it bigger and better without having to add more to your already full to-do list. To start, think of the content you already have. It can be:
Social media posts
Audio files — i.e. Podcasts, Mp3’s, sound clips
Web pages — i.e. blog posts, landing pages
Imagery — i.e. Infographics, graphics, illustrations, collages
Video — i.e. stories, animations
Ads — online or print
Digital Pdfs — i.e. E-books, Slideshows, Checklists
Print materials like Brochures, catalogues
Photos, screenshots
…and whatever else you’ve got. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to speak to using these tactics for blogging.
Now that you’ve identified your content, look for two things:
Your best performing content (it will have a high number of views, reads, comments, shares, and likes).
The content you feel should have performed better (it will have a low number of views, reads, comments, shares, and likes).
How to do More Content Marketing By Creating Less
1. Republish or repost something that already exists
Re-posting ensures that your hard work gets seen and consumed as your audience grows. This gives you a much-needed break between new publications and a small break in which you can come back refreshed and ready to create with the energy creating requires. In case you missed my point, post your content more than once.
People are busy and not everyone will see your content the first time you publish. Those who’ve followed you for a while typically appreciate reminders, especially if they hadn’t paid close attention the first time or are now closer to making a purchase decision. When you commit to creating something of value make sure it gets read.
A quick word of warning.
If you’re going to repost something, keep in mind that there should be some space in between your posts. Spamming will forever be frowned upon and you don’t want to irritate your followers by showing the same thing over and over again. While repetition can be an effective marketing tactic, too much repetition gets annoying.
There are some rules around duplicate content on the internet you should note. For instance, if you were to post the same thing twice on your website, it will be penalized by Google for being a duplicate (or worse, plagiarism).
To avoid this penalization, update your existing posts with new statistics, links, graphics, or any curated content that helps elevate what you've already created. Even small updates such as fixing spelling and grammatical errors can help. This allows you to improve your piece over time, without taking up too much time and so it achieves more visibility and engagement in the long run. 2. Promote your content like crazy
Marketing Guru, Neil Patel says that you should spend 20% of your time creating new content and 80% promoting it. Take this advice to heart and promote the poop out of your old blog posts. This ensures your hard work is visible for others to find and consume.
Remember, posting more than once on social media is A-OK. Only 10% of your social audience sees your content and not everyone is online when you initially share something, so your content isn’t likely to hit the same person twice.
Old posts get more views (and incrementally make you more money) if continually shared in Facebook groups. Like with reposting, avoid spamming your followers and other group members, unless you’re ready to be unfollowed or locked in Facebook jail. Put some time between promotions and always be courteous of others.
Try A/B testing your posts when promoting your content. This is where you test slightly different variations of your content. This can be as mynute as a hashtag change or a full change in messaging, copy, or imagery. Be sure to review which variation performed better after you’ve promoted it, so you can perform more A/B tests in the future and nail down exactly what your audience wants. To package your promotions slightly different, you can:
Create a series of From the Archive posts by sharing an old article on social media, in an email newsletter, or any other channel you use to promote your content.
Schedule social media posts with variations in hashtags, copy and the times you post. Use a content recycling tool like SocialQueue or MeetEdgar to repost the exact same content with a some space in between.
3. Repurpose what you already have
This is where you take your existing content and repackage it. Repurposing content can be somewhat time-consuming but will help you create more content that will attract and engage prospects without having to use more brainpower and time to create new original pieces. And it looks shiny and new so you can gain more traction on other channels or the ones you already use.
Carefully repurposing your content helps you make your original idea more polished over time and create a bigger impact in the long run.
10 Ways to Repurpose Your Blog Posts:
Take a blog post and make it into a video
Make the different sections of your blog posts into a series of Instagram stories
Make a series of blog posts into an e-book
Take a blog or social media comment you’ve replied to and create a follow-up post based on your response
Take a popular quote from your blog and make it into a graphic quote in Canva
Take a single point from your blog post and elaborate on it in a new post
Take different sections from an article and create a social media post for each section
Take your best-performing blog post and make it into an infographic
Do a live video on a topic you’ve posted about on your blog
Use the blog comments to identify outstanding questions on your topic and use them to update your article
Use these three ideas to save yourself time and get more eyeballs on your creations. Take what you already have and polish it in a way that makes your value and expertise more visible and thorough, and your content, bigger and better over time.
Happy time-savings!
This post was originally published here.
References:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content https://app.grammarly.com/ https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/ab-testing/ https://neilpatel.com/blog/content-marketing-roi/ https://smarterqueue.com/ https://help.meetedgar.com/en/articles/281287-queue-best-practices-how-to-strike-the-perfect-balance-with-your-social-media-content https://www.causely.com/blog/why-only-ten-percent-of-your-facebook-followers-see-your-posts