If your corporate New Year’s resolution is to pump up your content volume, or simplify your content marketing team’s workflow, one of the best strategies is to repurpose content in new ways. Giving older content a new look can help you engage new audience segments and convert them into paying customers.
Enterprise marketing teams have a gargantuan task. Producing all the content that their audiences need and getting it into prospects’ hands at exactly the right time, can take precious time away from the creative process. Even new content can get stale under that kind of pressure.
The practical solution? Get the most out of your investment in content marketing by reusing the great work you’ve already done. Here are several ideas that can help you get more mileage out of every piece of content you produce.
Start with a Content Audit
At least once a year, take a comprehensive look at all your content. Define your goals for the coming year and evaluate whether your current content strategy is on track to achieve those goals.
Then, look at past content for the perfect candidates that can help you meet those goals. For example, let’s say that one of your goals is to convert X number of your blog readers into serious prospects.
As you look through your past content, you find a blog post that addresses many of the questions your sales teams encounter out in the field. Like most blog posts, it’s not an in-depth look, but according to your content analytics results, it attracted a lot of interest, converting casual browsers into email subscribers. You could use this hidden treasure from the past to:
- Create a white paper for decision-makers among your top prospects by updating it and adding more in-depth information
- Form the basis of an infographic for a boosted social media post
- Film an informative video for your most loyal subscribers
After the Content Audit, Then What?
Your teams’ imagination and your prospects’ needs are the only limits on how to use the content you find during your annual audit. Once you find promising pieces of content, use these ideas as a springboard for your creativity:
1. Make It Evergreen
Suppose you’ve created a video or blog post that dealt with the challenges that the coronavirus pandemic brought with it. Naturally, it attracted a lot of traction when you first posted it.
Fast forward a few months. How can you make that post relevant after most Americans receive a vaccination?
Simple. Rewrite or re-record it as a practical guide for how to react during any crisis.
That’s only one example. We’ve found that most current, event-focused content can become evergreen with a little extra research and rewrites. Repurposing these posts can give your audience new insights on how they can adapt their businesses and lives to whatever changes come down the pike.
2. Create a Guide
If yours is like most corporate marketing teams, you create your blog and social media posts to bring value to your audience. That long-term strategy pays off large dividends as you position your company as the go-to authority in your field.
Expand that helpful advice into a downloadable guide that your audience can have close at hand to refer to when they need it. Keep the guide focused on the topic, but feel free to link to other resources that they can read or watch for a deeper look into some of the areas you cover.
3. Engage All Your Audience’s Senses
Visual learners, studies show, comprise 65 percent of the world’s population. Obviously, repurposing mostly-text blog posts into infographics or videos is a no-brainer for your content teams.
However, don’t forget that the reverse is true. Otherwise, you’re leaving 35 percent of your possible conversions on the table.
Repurpose videos and infographics into easily digestible text for blog posts, email newsletter copy, or even ebooks. As an avid reader myself, I can tell you from personal experience that I pass over most of the videos in my search results.
I much prefer to read something rather than hear it on a video or audio presentation. It’s easier for me to remember, and I can print it, highlight the parts that pique my interest, and refer to it when I need the information it contains.
Don’t neglect people who learn by doing – kinesthetic learners. Find ways to engage them in your content. Whether it’s easy-to-understand directions for completing a task, a checklist that breaks down a complex process into easy-to-do steps, quizzes, taking action on an issue, or using a how-to video to learn a new skill, interactive content is a must for these activity-oriented followers.
4. Break Long-Form Content into Digestible Chunks
Ebooks and white papers are excellent tools for your bottom-of-the-funnel audience segments. They contain the highly technical details that decision-makers need to drive purchases.
However, many people, especially those who are only looking for information, haven’t the time to read long-form content. Make it easy for them to digest the information in those longer pieces by breaking the text into smaller, easy-to-understand chunks, both in a blog post series and companion videos. Repurpose statistics and images from infographics as Twitter posts for instant impact.
5. Translate It
If your company has a global reach, repurpose some of your best-performing English-language content into your other locations’ native language. Make sure that you use a highly experienced translator, though. Google Translate has too many humorous lost-in-translation moments to depend on for official communications.
6. Create Digital Assets from Print Publications
These days, we often think about only online resources when we talk about content marketing. But you probably have some print assets as well. Brochures, catalogs, flyers, or pamphlets can take on a new life online when you repurpose them as blog posts, webpages, landing pages, or e-commerce platforms.
7. Turn Lemons into Lemonade
No matter how much their leadership prepares, companies can count on facing a crisis or two over time. Instead of reacting with a defensive, emotional piece, first listen to the criticism, as Mackenzie Scott points out in a recent post.
As you and your teams digest negative comments, identify the core issues. Some commenters might be misinformed, while others might simply be “trolls,” people who seemingly live to stir up trouble online. Others will likely have rational objections to your company’s actions to deal with the crisis.
Ignore the trolls, but gently correct the misinformed with content that cites facts and links to evidence supporting those facts. Take the blame when blame is due, yet take a positive tack by posing solutions that address the people’s concerns.
However, the best way to build the kind of trust that can help your company steer safely through crises is to keep the lines of communication open during good times. Create proactive content that can head off problems before they occur.
Content collaboration with your sales teams can give you a wealth of ideas based on objections that they face in the field. Similarly, your customer support team can give you a good idea about some of the issues customers have with your products or services. Use that intel to craft content that addresses these challenges head-on.
Undoubtedly, you and your team will discover even more imaginative ways to repurpose your content as you use these ideas as a springboard. We’d love it if you would share some of your ideas with our readers in the comments below.
To put your ideas into motion, it helps to have a central location where you can store, create, publish, and analyze your content. With the DivvyHQ content marketing platform by your side, you can easily access your past content, collaborate on ways to reuse that content, and create new content from it that can reach new audiences. Try it free for 14 days today!