Sharing content consistently across multiple channels via multiple media formats will allow your team to publish volumes of fresh and helpful content that will attract more readers. These readers will remember your company, and not only come back to your marketing platforms, but also trust you and approach you more often for your solutions and services. All because of the authority you carry thanks to your valuable content being “everywhere.”
Separately, multi-channel marketing and content repurposing are each powerful strategies in their own right, but the smartest marketing experts know they are most effective when they work hand-in-hand.
What it Means to Repurpose Content and Why We Do It
Content repurposing is simply creating multiple media formats of the same information to distribute and then re-distribute. When done correctly and effectively, an existing piece of content is reformatted, recycled and re-shared in different formats and on different platforms than it was originally published.
Creating fresh and engaging content on an ongoing basis is a challenge for many marketing teams. It takes a lot of uninterrupted time — the kind of time that most marketing teams do not have. Instead, they can employ some tactics that will allow them to get the most out of every piece of existing content and appeal to as many different viewers as possible.
There are many advantages to content repurposing, including:
- Saving money on content creation
- Breathing new life into older content
- Using information already at hand that you know your audience is drawn to rather than trying to create more of it
- Maximizing exposure for your company
To give you a better idea of what content repurposing is and how it is done, here are some quick but valuable examples to draw from.
Ways to Repurpose Content
Repurpose your reports, catalogs, and whitepapers through imagery
If you’ve just published a report or whitepaper, excerpts (even just a sentence or two) containing compelling information can be used in social media posts or on your website to attract readers to the larger content. Similarly, posting modified product images and descriptions directly from your catalog, rebranded to your company, will save time and draw attention as well. When doing so, the descriptions should be more informative and helpful than what you get from the manufacturer.
Tie everything to your customers’ problems. Illustrate why your products are their solution. Using this same strategy, know that video is extremely popular on social media and very easy to create from simple images. Quick slideshow videos made up of images and captions about “how stuff works” always grab attention. Make sure they link directly back to your website or product page.
Repurpose testimonials and case studies
Nothing boosts your credibility more than a testimonial or case study. Granted, these can be difficult to come by, but, if your company is doing a good job and your marketing and sales teams are up for it, a quick call to customers to elicit testimonials about their experience with your company can pay off with great dividends. You can also collect testimonials through a “how’d we do?” type of survey.
Salespeople and customer service reps should regularly document and share their customer success stories with your marketing team, and those success stories should be turned into case studies. Testimonials and case studies should be shared as far and as wide as possible. Devote a full page of your website to testimonials and another to case studies.
Case studies should be written in two ways to help propel your sales cycle — in a long format (for those close to a purchase) and a short format (for those simply doing some research). In addition to having a page devoted to testimonials, your testimonials should also be peppered throughout the other pages of your website as well.
There are many ways to repurpose your testimonials and case studies. Create social media posts with links to case studies or share images of a product or the team that helped a customer. Include information that tells a story of success. Use attractive images of testimonials in quotes shared on your social media channels and your branches’ Google local pages. You can also create videos or audio of the customers themselves to share whenever and wherever possible. When prospective customers want to know more about your company, they’re more likely to come across these case studies and testimonials if they’re shared widely enough.
These are just a few ways to repurpose your content. Once new content is created, a good rule of thumb is to spend as much effort promoting your content as the effort you invested in creating it. If no one finds your content, your time creating it is wasted. On the other hand, if your content isn’t valuable in some way, don’t spend a lot of energy promoting it, because you’ll be drawing traffic to something that serves no purpose.
Promote Your Content With Intention
When promoting your content, remember that people are searching for answers. Do not assume what your customers already know. You must be clear and intentional about why your content is worth their time and attention.
To get more eyes to see that your product is the solution to a problem, shorter blog posts, videos and other media containing a link back to your longer content should be distributed on a regular, consistent basis to ensure the message travels far and wide.
The companies that consistently share content that is clearly intended to help customers and prospects with a problem or offer a solution are the companies that will consistently win new customers.
Tagged with content, marketing