You’ve written a great piece of content. You’re very happy with it. It took a lot of time and effort.

Wouldn’t it be nice to get the most out of it?

This is the age of information. We are all creating a lot of content for our websites, print media, social media, newsletters, email marketing.  It can be a full-time job.

This article is about being savvy.

How you can write one piece of content and then re-purpose it.

Why re-purpose your content?

Apart from making your life a little easier, there are other reasons to re-purpose your content.

Content marketing is 20% great content and 80% about getting the message to your target audience.

Different content types appeal to different audiences. Some people prefer visuals, whereas others enjoy reading an in-depth blog post.

Transforming a piece of content into a different type might enable it to be consumed by a larger portion of your target market.

Give your content every chance. Place your message in every format and channel where your ideal clients hang out.

5 Ideas for re-purposing your content

1. Turn your content into a Blog

Does your website have a blog?

Your website is your ‘mother ship’ and traffic from all sources can be driven to your website where people will learn more about your business.

A blog allows you to create content that’s helpful for your client and show you are an expert in your field by expressing your opinion or going into greater detail than you normally would on your website pages.

It helps you show up in search engines and to drive traffic to your website giving you the opportunity to convert these visitors into customers

And, just because you’ve written about a topic doesn’t mean you have covered every aspect of it.

You can create spin-off blogs that build off the original idea and goes into more detail or onto a slightly different topic. For example, a spin-off of this article about re-purposing content could be a guide to creating facebook posts from existing content. It’s a related topic and you can link the blog articles to each other to increase authority.

2. Create a Newsletter

Are you able to produce a valuable newsletter for your client database?

The content that you have produced can make a great newsletter article.  You can even just provide a ‘teaser’ in the electronic newsletter with a link through to your blog if people want to read more.

This method also has the added advantage of driving people to your website.

3. Post on Social Media

You could use a statistic, a quote, or just a useful piece of information that’s taken from your content piece.

Posting snippets and bites of information on your social platforms will help to drive traffic and keep people interested in your brand, without you having to create anything new.

I like to highlight any areas of my article that I think would make good snippets and post them on social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter along with an image.

4. Create marketing collateral

Turning your content into something people can pick up and read in your reception area or waiting room may be useful.  It can be as simple as printing the article in colour and laminating it.

Can you turn your content into a How to … or a Tips Guide …?  Valuable information that clients may be able to take with them or put into new client packs? Only choose content that will continue to be relevant and useful.

Another option is a reception TV screen, posters, flyers; think outside the box and you will surely come up with lots of ideas to re-purpose your content.

5. Get creative with Video

Do you have someone in your organisation who is great in front of the camera?  Let them explain the content of the article via video.

‘People like looking at other people’ and video often gets more engagement than written posts.

In summary, re-purposed content gives you more bang for your buck.  You’ve taken the time and effort to write an article, let’s leverage it !

These are just a few ideas, there’s also Infograms, e-books, whitepapers, that all provide that extra boost in traffic to your business.  But, these are all topics for another day.

Why blog?  Check out this article I recently wrote for Patrick Rowan & Associates.