Why is content marketing so important? First, it’s an inexpensive digital marketing solution that allows you to showcase your value proposition. You produce the content and you control the message. Second, it’s a low-cost lead generation approach that allows you to produce new business opportunities long after you’ve posted the content piece. Third, it builds your brand and can position your enterprise as the must-read source of information for your market.
Content marketing is an absolute must nowadays. Unfortunately, far too many companies become consumed with trying to cover too much at one time. They try in vain to produce content that covers every topic imaginable. Eventually, they become overwhelmed by it all. They’re unable to keep up with their own aspirations. However, it doesn’t need to be this way. Your content team doesn't have to cover everything, you just have to focus on what you know.
There are some simple strategies that can help you produce exactly what your customers want. These strategies are predicated on expanding your content’s reach beyond your website or company blog. They’re predicated on taking a single topic or idea and showcasing it from different angles. The goal is to get your best content out across the web so that more prospects enter your opportunity funnel. So, what’s the best strategy to employ?
Repurposing Content
No, repurposing content is not penalized by Google. This is a long-held belief that simply isn’t true. Search engines will penalize your website for duplicate content, copied content or any content where you’re trying to game the search engine in a manipulative manner. However, repurposing your content doesn’t involve copying or duplicating. It merely involves expanding on an idea. It involves increasing your content’s reach by leveraging all the different types of content platforms so that more of your ideas are seen, read, viewed, watched and shared.
Repurposing your content means taking a theme and expanding upon it through multiple content mediums. It means presenting different versions of the same idea for different buyer personas. It means showcasing a solution from different angles and publishing different forms of content to increase visibility for your products and services. It means creating a series of posts and content pieces that follow one another. Don’t think of repurposed content as copying. Instead, think of it as a step towards becoming that all-important expert. Here are some of the ways you can make repurposed content work so that your content’s reach is constantly expanding.
How-To-Videos: Companies often become intimidated by the thought of producing their own how-to videos. However, who else is more qualified to talk about your products and how to use them than your company? Don’t be intimidated. Video-sharing websites like YouTube are free, easy-to-use and a great resource for building your brand.
Search engines are also getting better at ranking videos which means a well-written video description goes a long way to getting found online. Have a product demonstration. Talk about how your product works and outline its features and benefits. You can repurpose content by doing a video that expands on a previous article or provides more detail on a landing page on your website. Videos are a great digital marketing strategy so be sure to use them.
How-To Articles: Producing a how-to article with high quality images and vivid photos is a great way to repurpose content from previously published how-to videos. In fact, you can use portions of the how-to article to define the content within your video on YouTube and vice versa. You can include links to that article within the description field of your video, and include embedded links within the video directly to a given landing page or third-party blog post. How-to articles provide customers with a step-by-step process on how best to use your products and are an excellent way to repurpose your content.
Infographics: Would you be surprised to hear that infographics are the most shared content online? Don’t be. Humans are visual creatures. Bright colors and vivid images catch our attention. Customers gravitate to a colorful infographic that provides data and information in a clear and concise manner. Pinterest is the main social media website for infographics. You can combine infographics with other content pieces and really increase your reach.
Solutions-Based Sales Content for Different Buyer Personas: Let’s assume you have a product or service that is universal across multiple buyer personas. That solution means different things for different customers. It’s the same product or service, but it’s presented differently for different personas. This is a perfect example of how a single theme or product can be repurposed to showcase a different value for different people.
News and Emerging Trends Content: The focus with this approach is to tie your content pieces to recent news and emerging trends within your specific market. If your company came up with a new approach to doing things, or has an upgraded product that utilizes new technology, this is a great way to show how that technology helps different customers within your market, different buyer personas and what that technology means for future product releases.
Third-Party Websites and Social Media: Content pieces that ask a question and provide a solution are great for third-party blog posts and social media. Outlining a common industry-wide problem at the outset of your content and then explaining a customized solution, is a great way to repurpose content. Again, you can repurpose an idea, a concept, a product, a problem, or a solution for different buyer personas, different situations, and different customer segments.
It’s common for repurposed content to become more popular than the original content piece. Expanding on your original ideas means you’re able to present those ideas from different angles. Getting accustomed to a given problem and outlining the best possible solution doesn’t make your content redundant - it makes it useful and helps to position your company as that must-have resource.
If you need guidance on how to repurpose your content so that you're reaching a larger audience and generating better opportunities, connect with us. We'll work with you to assess your current strategies and to explore ways to take your business into 2018 and beyond. Contact us today.
Written By: David Carpenter
