By Carly Stec
Oct 9, 2014
Topics:
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For anyone first starting out with content marketing, the struggle is real.
Armed with a library of a dozen blog posts, an ebook (or two) at best, and a Twitter account lacking action, it's easy to feel like the odds are against you.
Not to mention that with limited time and an even more limited budget, the thought of increasing content production is seemingly laughable.
The good news is, you don't need a encyclopedic collection of content to start driving traffic and leads for your business.
"Create less, promote more," says CEO of WordPL.net Salma Jafri.
Rather than sitting around waiting for your fairy content mother to provide you with more, your focus should be on doing more with what you have.
To help you get started, we've detailed 6 ways to reposition your existing content that have worked for us in big ways.
Don't start from scratch every time
Setting up your content to go the extra mile has its perks. Here are just few of them:
- Reach a wider audience by providing people with more different mediums
- Increase visibility on social networks
- Give your brain a break
6 ways to reposition your existing content:
1. Create a newsletter
A weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly newsletter serves as an effective way to stay in front of prospects and customers.
Recently, we launched The Best of IMPACT, a monthly round up of our top performing content delivered to your inbox. By providing people with a ton of great information on a particular subject all in one place, they'll have no reason to turn to one of your competitors for answers.
2. Write a roundup post
Meetings. Phone calls. Emails. Presentations. More emails. All in a day's work, right?
With a full plate of responsibilities, it's likely that your audience doesn't always have time to stop, drop, and read your latest post.
However, just because they may not have a chance to get it while it's hot doesn't mean that it's not of interest to them. Rounding up a week's worth of posts for a Sunday recap is a great way to reintroduce your latest content to get more eyeballs on it.
3. Publish on LinkedIn
In a Twitter chat this past weekend, Jay Baer explained that he uses LinkedIn publishing as a place to repost his blog's "greatest hits."
If your resources are limited, syndicating a blog post from your company blog to your LinkedIn will provide you with a second chance at engagement.
LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful publish platform because it takes care of the promotion for you. Any time you publish an article on their publishing platform, each your connections will be alerted immediately.
Not to mention, your audience on LinkedIn is made up of like-minded professionals. Often times this type of niche following makes it easier to earn attention and get people talking about your content.
4. Remix your social messages
Social media posts don't have to be treated like a "one and done" type of thing, especially when you're working with a limited inventory .
In fact, our marketing director and I have a list of previously published tweets that have proven their ability to drive engagement time and time again. We call them "Hall of Fame Tweets", and we add them to our queue whenever we're looking to drive some extra traffic.
The important thing to remember when reusing content on social media is positioning.
Look at all the different ways we spun this one offer:
1. Ask a question
2. Add urgency
3. Provide an example
4. Empathize
5. Turn blog posts into ebooks (& vice versa)
Breaking down long-form offers is an underutilized marketing technique that allows you to continue to provide value, while simply altering the medium.
We've created 6 separate posts by recycling content from our How to Rank Higher in Search Engines ebook. That's nearly a week's worth of content.
Not to mention, those 6 blog posts have generated a collective 3,500 views for our company with little to no work required.
While ebooks can come off as a big bite for some of your audience, a blog post that addresses a smaller subset of the bigger picture can often be easier to digest.
Conversely, 3-5 blog articles covering a similar topic can be combined to create a premium offer. Again, all it takes is just a little work for a lot of leads.
6. Turn ebooks into SlideShares
Looking to squeeze even more out of your ebooks?
Break your ebook content down into a compelling, visual SlideShare presentation.
With a little help from our favorite tool, Canva, we were able to pull some valuable quotes from our Selling Your SaaS ebook and reintroduce them as an interesting deck.
Check it out:
Work with what you've got
Unless you have a ton of hands on deck, scaling your content marketing strategy isn't easy.
Needless to say, an understanding that each piece of content you produce can serve multiple purposes is a great place to start.
When in doubt, create less, promote more.
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