Content creation is a valuable marketing tactic, but depending on your resources and bandwidth, producing new content at high volumes might not be realistic. And it isn’t always necessary. One of the easiest solutions to creating new content is to repurpose marketing content you’ve already created. Here’s a good approach to repurposing your content.
Conduct a Content Audit
Before you start to repurpose marketing content, you should conduct a content audit. Create a spreadsheet with the title, type (e.g. blog, article or eBook), when it was published, who wrote it and the intended audience. This will help you get organized and understand what content you have.
Get Creative
Creativity is an essential component to making content repurposing work. It might not be automatically clear how and what content should be reused. This is where brainstorming can help. Using your content audit, think of how certain pieces of content can be rewritten or repurposed to reach new people or to highlight important messages or product features. Here are some examples of how content can be reused:
- A webinar can be transcribed and republished as an article
- Several blogs can be turned into a white paper
- A collection of articles can be combined into an e-book
- Articles or blog posts can be highlighted for podcasts
- Case studies can be divided into newsletter articles
- An infographic can be designed from information in a benchmark study
Think of how different content can be pieced together. Be creative with what you already have to get the most out of it.
Create a Content Calendar
Now that you have ideas for extending the life of the content, create a content calendar. A content calendar, or editorial calendar, is a schedule of your content based on channels.
A content calendar is a way to visualize and schedule when your content will be published and where there are holes. It also allows you to see what types of content and topics you are producing most often and where you should direct your attention next.
If you find yourself lacking in one area, it is a perfect opportunity to repurpose content rather than starting from scratch. For example, if you find you have several blog posts that talk about a particular aspect of your product and your content calendar indicates that topic area needs more content, you can use the blog posts to create an article, an infographic or another type of content asset that would be suitable for your target audiences.
Consider Curated Content
Another way you can repurpose content is through a curated content approach. Curated content is content that is created by other organizations that you share on your digital platforms. It’s relevant content for your audience, but it doesn’t take internal resources to produce. Third-party content can be re-worked to include perspectives from your subject matter experts. The curated content approach is another good way to fill some of the holes in your content calendar.
Better Content, Better Results
Are you ready to elevate your content marketing strategy and plan but don’t know where to start? Register for the Marketing Pro Series Build a Breakthrough Content Strategy and Plan course. This course guides you through the creation of a content marketing strategy tailored to your business and a ready-to-execute plan that drives interest and action for more leads—moving more quickly—through your sales funnel. It also includes one-on-one expert coaching.