Any marketer will tell you that content is a crucial part of a solid marketing strategy. What they might not add is that producing a steady stream of blog posts, videos, white papers, infographics and more is an endless, daily grind that can crush the spirit, invention and productivity of your creative team.
Repurposing content – e.g. tweaking an existing blog post for a different format – is one way to relieve this pain. Every good content marketing program will repurpose written or visual content in other formats in order to squeeze the most out of ideas. It saves time and energy required to constantly come up with new ones. And because different types of content reach different people, repurposing content allows a single idea to engage new audiences across multiple channels.
You’ll still need to create lots of quality content to feed the content beast. But pushing every single piece you create further will give you some breathing space and the time you need to ensure you’ve got the right balance between quality and quantity.
So, let’s imagine you’ve got a blog you want to repurpose. Here are 12 easy ways to get the most from your post.
1. Infographic: Turn interesting stats or facts from your blog into engaging infographics to share on social channels. It’ll be worth the effort: infographics are three times more likely be shared than other visual material.
2. Tweets: It’s not easy to summarize a blog post in 140 characters. But you can highlight one or two of the main points in carefully crafted tweets or unleash the full force of a tweetstorm if you have more to say.
3. Visual quotes: Does your blog feature inspiring or insightful quotes? Try overlaying these quotes on an image to create compelling shareable memes that are very popular on LinkedIn.
4. Video: If you can create a batch of those quote-filled images from your post, a service like Animoto is a simple way to put together a high-quality slideshow video that is great for grabbing the attention of Facebook users.
5. Presentation: Turn your blog or series of related posts into a presentation and post it to SlideShare, where 70 million unique visitors search for inspiration and information every month.
6. Webinar: Once you’ve created your presentation, let your followers know you’re going to deliver it on a Google Hangout and invite them to discuss the key points. Once you’re done, upload your webinar video to YouTube.
7. Podcast: Alternatively, simply record the audio to create a podcast that you can post to iTunes or Stitcher, or upload to SoundCloud. Most podcasts work best as a discussion so get someone in to ask the questions.
8. Live streaming: Use talking points from your blog post to start a discussion and interact with a live audience on Periscope, Facebook Live or other live streaming platform.
9. eBook: Could your blog work as one in a series of related posts? Creating an eBook is a way to brings thematically linked posts together in one place and can work well as a giveaway or a lead generation tool.
10. Repost: Adapting your post for blogging platforms like Medium or LinkedIn Pulse can help you reach more people. Just make sure you tailor your tweaks to suit each platform.
11. Quora: Find a question on Quora that your post answers and copy and paste the relevant parts, including a link back to the original piece. You could also ask a question of your own and use the answers to create a new blog post.
12. Syndication: Content syndication services such as Outbrain allow you to promote your blog to people reading related content. This is a paid-for service (usually pay-per-click) but can be a handy way to get your content in front of specific audiences.
Don’t forget your process
Repurposing offers a number of benefits but it does require having a solid creative process in place. You don’t want to give back that precious time you’ve saved by getting tied up in knots over the review and approval process for each of the dirty dozen redrafts.
Ensure you have a centralized system of record like Hightail, where video, infographics, images and other content can be shared and discussed quickly, and in context, and where feedback and approval can be provided with the minimum of fuss. That will help ensure each new iteration is consistent with the original and with your organization’s brand.
Those are our favorite ways to making content go further. How do you stretch your ideas? Let us know in the comments below or tweet us.
Hi Scott, thanks for putting together the great guide! You can also repurpose a series of blog posts in email marketing – as a lead nurturing campaign or an email course perhaps. On other note – do you know about a tool called Animatron (https://www.animatron.com)? It lets you easily make animated videos to accompany your blog posts or any other content you create and helps increase engagement and entertain your audience.