How to make the most out of your content marketing

You spend a lot of time making all of this great content. Perhaps you send it out in a newsletter and share it on Social Media (SoMe). But then, nothing happens with it – ever again. What if some of your followers missed this epic content? Or the newsletter was forwarded directly into the trash because the recipient just did not have the time?

Content Marketing is all about recycling to make the most out of your efforts. This is also known as Content Repurposing; the act of transforming your content to other formats, angles and different channels.

So, start the long-term planning of your content and the distribution of it, so it can live a long and engaging life out there.

It’s all about that base

Before getting into the nature of repurposing, let us rewind a bit with the basics of Content Marketing. Content Marketing is a technique used to create and distribute valuable content to attract and acquire an audience to convert into customers.

Content is much more than text. Content is all the valuable information you communicate through different channels, e.g. images, video, audio, motion and text. And these elements can be combined in numerous ways.

Think about your website as a base for your content. This is where you want to lead your audience to so they can take the next step in their Customer Journey, e.g. sign up, look at more relevant information, book a meeting, take contact, buy something and so on.

Make sure to plan a number of good-quality content pieces throughout the year for your content base. Let us call this Hero Content. Hero Content could be a collection of articles, brochures, case study, webinar, whitepaper, research, a great video, etc. Put all of your love into your Hero content, because this will work as your content base.

The amount of Hero Content depends on the type of business, internal resources, channel mix and target group. For some companies, 3-4 pieces of Hero Content per year is more than sufficient to cover all channels with repurposed content. For others, one per month will do the trick.

As a rule of thumb, remember to optimize the content for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization) with relevant keywords. And you will get full value out of your content base. But this is a story for another time.

The next step is to make a plan

To become a Content Ninja your secret weapon is a plan! This ensures that you do not waste time each Monday morning trying to think of the next brilliant thing to post. A plan will not only save you time but also help you strategically by choosing the right channels, formats, segments, angles and goals for this content, so you can get the most out of it.

Start planning your Hero Content throughout the year. When should it be produced, posted and distributed?

Then take each content piece and ask yourself; how could this content be adapted to a new format that delivers value to the audience?

For instance:

• A case study could be used as part of an email flow to convert leads into customers
• A research could get new value by updating the statistics behind
• An article can be converted into a small video
• A whitepaper could be broken down into a number of newsletters
• A video could be used for advertising with a great copy to dress it up
• A number of blog posts could be setup as an eBook
• A webinar could become an in-depth article on the topic

All of this content could be used for several posts for SoMe, for advertising, for email marketing and/or automation flows.

Plan out when to produce and to distribute these ‘new’ content pieces in your Content Plan.

Sounds difficult? Check out these 9 different ways of doing this

At JS we help our customers power up their stories through content such as brochures and film.  Let us have a look at how an Interactive Brochure with a recruitment topic can be used and reused – in 9 different ways:

1. The online brochure is placed on a Career Page on the customer website so potential candidates can get an idea of how it is to work there. The brochure images are placed on the website to show the workplace environment
2. The brochure is shared in posts on SoMe such as the LinkedIn Company Page with different angles. E.g. employer branding, CSR, job openings
3. The employees are incited to share and engage with the content
4. If the project includes video, e.g. testimonial videos from employees, these can be used for job ads so the applicants can experience the job from an employee’s point of view (Social Proof)
5. Several posts with image galleries are distributed on SoMe so that possible candidates can reflect themselves in the images of potential coworkers. The images are especially useful to create a red thread on Instagram
6. The best copy of the brochure is distributed in the Company Newsletter and shared on SoMe
7. A link for the brochure is integrated into the employees’ email signature so others can access it easily
8. If there is not a film included with the brochure, the images can be transformed into a motion picture with music and text overlays. This film can be used for advertising on SoMe (YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn e.g.).
9. An article can be adjusted and posted on the company blog. The content should be optimized for Search Engines to get traffic from Google e.g.

After we hand over a project, the company will have access to a Content Bank with finalized formats such as a brochure and all of the images from the photoshoot – including the images that have not been used for the brochure. If the project includes film this will be uploaded to the Content Bank as well with video elements from the brochure, e.g. short testimonial film (Snap videos).

This Content Bank is a powerful way to repurpose your content to fuel your channels with valuable content that attracts, engages and converts your target audience to long-term business relationships.

So start recycling today.

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