Five ways to recycle and extend the lifespan of your content marketing

Last week I outlined five different ways you could refresh your content marketing to go beyond the standard stuff, such as blog posts and social media posts. People process information in different ways, which is why it’s worth creating content that touches upon text, visual and audio to reach a wider audience for your message.

The tools to create most of this content are relatively cheap (often free) and easy to use. The tricky bit is coming up with the material that will connect with audiences. By listening to what your customers are saying, you will soon find topics that will get them interested and keep them engaged. Ultimately, the idea with content marketing is to turn your audience into consumers of your products and services.

Another aspect of getting the most out of your content marketing is looking at how it can be repurposed for different mediums and audiences. It can be easy to write a blog post and then forget all about it after it has been published and pushed through social media. However, you’ve probably put a fair bit of work into researching and writing the post, so why not use that raw material and reconfigure it into something else? 

Here are five easy ways you can extend the life of your content marketing material.

Turn stats in a blog post into an infographic

Data in the form of stats and figures usually populate blog posts, sometimes cited at random spots in order to emphasise a point or bolster an argument. You can extract those stats and turn them into the basis of an infographic. An infographic is a graphic representation of data that presents information quickly, clearly, and in a visually appealing manner.

All you need is about 5-10 interesting stats and you can create a highly shareable infographic that will extend the life of the information you have already presented in a blog post. There are plenty of free infographic tools online and they are usually fairly straightforward to use. If you have someone on staff with some graphic design flair, get them to put their visual talent to work on it.

Transcribe your videos and podcasts

Not everyone wants to sit through your YouTube video, no matter how proud you may be of the camera work and art direction. Some of us just want the information in written form so it can be quickly read and digested. There are numerous ways to transcribe your videos, including the automated transcription service on YouTube. Once you’ve transcribed your video, you can post the content almost verbatim as a blog post or use it for social media posts.

Rewrite blog posts as videos

Just as you might transcribe your videos into written form, you can also easily turn written material into video or audio. You don’t need to get too fancy with your video; a tripod, decent quality smartphone, and a relaxed straight-to-camera presentation style are all you really need. You might have to rewrite the blog post in a way that makes it more conversational, but in general, most blog posts make a decent basis for simple videos. The more of these you do the more adept and comfortable you’ll be at it.

Break longer blog posts down into snackable bites on social media

Most of your blog posts, videos, podcasts and other content marketing material will contain little pearls of wisdom or conversation starters that are perfect for social media posts. Scour your content for these pearls and use them in your social media posts. Look for interesting stats and facts that will attract the attention of your audience. You don’t even always have to link back to the original piece you have taken a bite from — sometimes it’s enough to source a tidbit and repackage it as something like a ‘fact of the day’ post on Facebook.

Extend blog posts into white papers or even ebooks

In all likelihood you have a blog post or video that you put a lot of work into and it’s sitting dormant, not getting too many views since you first published it. That piece of content probably contains the seeds of a fantastic white paper or even ebook. All it might take is to break down the essential learnings and then extend upon them into a longer form piece.

For example, you might have a 500-word post about a key piece of research that supports one element of the value proposition of your product or service. But how about finding another piece of research that bolsters your case in another way? And then another. Pretty soon you have a 1500-word white paper or even a 3000-word mini ebook that you can use to entice people to sign up for more of your marketing material. It might even be as easy as combining a number of existing posts into an ebook.

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