You’ve dumped time and money into your content marketing strategy, but you’re quickly running out of both. Give yourself (and your wallet) a break and get the most out of what you’ve already produced by recycling your blog posts, eBooks, videos, and infographics.
Use existing content for social media posts
Running out of things to say on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn? Go comb through the content you’ve already put out there and use snippets to increase engagement. A quick clip from a YouTube tutorial, a quote or statistic from a blog post, or an old infographic make for fantastic tweets and posts. This not only gives you more material so you’re active on social media, it also acts as a new way to share old content without using the same tired heading or title.
Get out your camera and make a video …
Today’s consumers love videos, and if you’re already focusing on written content, you have plenty of fodder at your fingertips. Film a tutorial of a how-to post on your blog, ask someone you’ve previously interviewed to do so in a video, or break down an infographic you created and go into more detail on your experience with the information in a chat video. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be an expert videographer to make quality videos.
… or try out an infographic generator
Likewise, if you have a statistic heavy or how-to post or video, try to whittle down the information into an easily digestible, aesthetically pleasing infographic. As with videos, you really don’t have to be an expert here – there are plenty of intuitive infographic generators out there, including Piktochart, Canva, and Google Charts.
Turn blog posts into eBooks, and eBooks into blog posts
Regular blog posts drive traffic to your site and encourage engagement, while eBooks provide high quality value to regular clients and customers willing to sign-up and provide you with their information. If you already have one or the other, use them to create new content.
Do you post on your blog regularly? Comb through your content and organize posts into groups that make sense as eBooks. You might have to make a few tweaks to create seamless transitions between topics, or update some passages so they fit the book’s overall goal.
Did you spend the time to put together an eBook, but you’re having difficulty posting on your blog as frequently as you’d like? Break the eBook up into separate 500 to 800 word posts and start adding them to your blog. Again, you might have to tweak a few things, including adding intros and conclusions, but you’ll spend a whole lot less time doing this than you would writing entirely new posts.
Refresh old content
Even when you shoot to create evergreen content, sometimes statistics change, new ideas come out, or you’ve found a better way to do something and want to share. When this happens, go through your old content, refresh the information and advice, and then update the post, graphic, or video and repromote it. To maintain an existing blog post’s SEO value, don’t create an entirely new post with a new URL; instead, change the content along with the post date so it’s front and center on your blog. For transparency purposes, add an “updated on ‘date’” under the title. Your longtime readers will appreciate the fact that you’re not trying to pull a fast one on them.
Capitalizing on the time and money you’ve already spent on content marketing takes a bit of creativity, but also ensures you’re getting the most out of your budget and marketing hours.
