How To Get More From The Content You're Already Creating
If you’re creating content for your business, you’ll know how quickly it can become a bit of a treadmill.
You write a blog. Send an email. Create a few social media posts. Think about what you’re going to post next week. Then realise you haven’t put anything on LinkedIn for a while. And somewhere in amongst all of that, someone tells you that you should probably be making more video. (plot twist: you should! So should I)
It’s a lot.
But every time you create something useful, it doesn’t have to be used once and then forgotten about.
A good piece of content can give you ideas and material to use across your marketing for weeks or even months. You can change the format, pull out different parts of it, approach the subject from another angle and adapt it for different platforms.
And rather conveniently, this blog gives me a perfect example to show you what I mean.
Start with something worth repurposing
For me, a blog is a really good place to start. You might like to use a podcast episode or some published media that you've appeared in.
I’ve got room here to properly explain something, answer a question or share my thoughts without trying to squeeze everything into a social media caption. It also gives me a useful piece of content sitting on my own website, where people can find out more about me and my business.
But once I publish this blog, the job's not done.
There are several different ideas in what you’re reading right now that I can come back to individually.
The idea that we remember our own content far more than our audience does could become a LinkedIn post.
The section about email could become a post about what to do when you have no idea what to send your email list.
I could make a short video about going back through your old blogs rather than constantly trying to think of something new.
And, surprise, surprise, this blog will also find its way onto Pinterest.
None of those needs to happen this week. In fact, I can guarantee they won’t all happen.
Repurposing doesn’t mean repeating yourself over and over, on all the platforms
This is probably one of the biggest things to remember.
I’m not going to publish this blog today, email it to everyone tomorrow, post every point from it across my social media this week and create a pile of Pins before Friday.
That would rather defeat the point.
Instead, I can spread those ideas out.
I might share the blog itself when it goes live, then come back to one of the ideas from it a few weeks later. Another point might appear in an email next month. Something else could become a video later in the year.
And six months from now? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with going back to this blog again.
We tend to remember our own content far more than anyone else does. By then, I’ll probably feel as though I’ve talked about repurposing plenty. But someone following me might have seen one post about it - or none at all.
And there will be people following me six months from now who aren’t following me today and have never seen any of my content.
Your email doesn’t have to be your blog in email form
Email is another place where repurposing can save a huge amount of time.
Rather than sitting down and thinking, “What on earth am I going to email about this week?”, look at the content you’ve already created.
I could send an email about this same blog, but I don’t need to summarise the whole thing.
I might take just one idea - perhaps how often we create something useful and then immediately move on - and talk about that. I could add something that’s happened since I wrote this, share an example of how I’ve repurposed it, or answer a question someone has asked after reading it.
Sometimes it will make sense to send people through to the full blog. Sometimes the email can stand completely on its own.
The idea is already there. I’m just using it differently.
And then... there's Pinterest...
This is where repurposing gets really interesting.
Pinterest gives me another way for people to discover this blog, and I’m not restricted to creating just one Pin for it.
I can create multiple Pins leading here.
One might focus on how to repurpose content. Another might be about getting more from your blog content. Another could focus on using one idea across Pinterest, social media and email.
They’re all pointing to the page you’re reading now, but they’re approaching it from different angles and can target different searches. But all lead to additional traffic coming to this blog.
And those Pins don’t all have to be created or published at once either. I can come back to this blog and create new Pins for it in the future.
Unlike a social media post, where most of the attention tends to happen fairly quickly after you publish it, Pinterest content can continue being discovered much later. I've got pins from a couple of years ago that still generate clicks, saves and clicks to the blog on my website.
That gives this blog - and the time I’ve spent writing it - a much longer useful life. It's really earning it's keep!
Look beyond the obvious platforms, too
Repurposing isn’t limited to blogs, email, social media and Pinterest.
Think about everything you create as part of your business.
A presentation you’ve given could become a blog. Questions from a workshop could give you months of content ideas. A conversation with a client might highlight something that needs explaining on your website. A podcast interview could lead to several posts. A particularly good email could become the starting point for a longer article. All of those FAQs you find yourself answering. It's highly likely that each could become fresh content.
Even your older content is worth looking through.
If you wrote a great blog two years ago, have another read. Is it still accurate? Could it be updated? Is there an idea buried in there that you’d approach differently now?
You’ve probably got far more to work with than you think.
Make your content earn its keep
Creating good content takes time.
Whether you’re writing it yourself or paying someone else to create it for you, it doesn’t make much sense to put all that effort into something, publish it once and immediately move on to the next thing.
This blog won’t disappear into my archives now that I’ve written it. I’ll use it as a source of ideas for my social media, emails and Pinterest content over the coming months. Some of those pieces will link back here. Others might simply take one idea and run with it.
And I’ll probably come back and update the blog itself at some point too.
You don’t have to squeeze every possible piece of content out of every idea.
But when you’ve got something useful to say, it’s worth giving it more than one chance to be seen.
Ready for your content to work harder for you? Reach out for a no obligation chat, or just take a look at how we can work together.