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One Content, Multiple Effects: How to Run Multiple, Successful Campaigns with A Single Piece of Content

It is a new decade, and we don’t feel the need to tell you how important content is to every marketing endeavor.

The fact that you are even treading this shows that it is highly likely you have a lot of content campaigns running. After all, this is the kind of heading that only appeals to you if you have been doing content for a while but would like to do it better.

By doing it better, we are not focusing on improving the quality of content you are writing alone. Today, we take a more calculated approach towards getting the most juice out of every single piece of content that has ever been developed by your marketing team.

What is Content Repurposing?

Before we get into the meat of the post, we might just as well get some confusion out of the way.

Coming up with fresh content every time is a hassle. We are in the industry/ market research business, among other things, and we know how much time goes into the development of any piece of content that will be considered good at all.

Even at that, not all of your content will catch on.

Of course, there is research to back it, but that does not mean it will always do well. Going on this way to develop content for multiple channels every time might start to tell on you later. This stress has led many businesses down the spiral of losing their quality in favor of churning out more content or just cutting back on content in all.

Content repurposing takes all that out of the mix.

This single concept makes it possible to take a piece of existing content – or one that is just about to be created – and optimize it to be posted multiple times while still retaining its originality every single time. It is one of the many magics of content marketing, especially for those who do not know about it.

By embracing this protocol, it becomes possible to keep supplying multiple channels with the right kind of content without having to go back to the drawing board each time before the said content is produced.

Now that we know what it is, why should you consider content repurposing at all?

The Many Benefits of Content Repurposing

The kind of marketing channels you use, and the campaigns you run too, will determine the specific benefits you get from repackaging your content for multiple campaigns. However, there are also general benefits that cut across various industries.

Having embraced this ourselves, here are some of the many perks that we get from repurposing our content.

1. Engaging multiple channels

There was a time when blogs were the only content marketing channels available to brands and businesses. Then, it was much easier to develop a new piece of content every time a blog post is needed, and no more.

Fast forward to today, and we have social media in the mix. With 7 out of 10 internet users being active on social media, businesses have come to understand that this is yet another channel that they cannot afford to ignore.

Thus, there is the need for content there too.

While we are at that, podcasts are on the rise. In the year 2019 alone, 22% of Americans started listening to weekly podcasts. This is a growth from 17% of the same demographic for the year 2018 – and the new decade promises even more appeal for the brands with a podcast.

With that, it can become almost impossible to create a new piece of content for all your channels every week. For a business that tries to handle two blog posts weekly (on the average), post on various social media platforms, run ads and still keep their podcast active, it won’t be surprising if the content marketing team hits a creative brick wall sometimes soon.

Enter content repurposing, and the problem is kicked to the curb.

2. Keeping Quality Intact

Following from the above, it is much better to spawn other content strategies from one that works than having to churn out multiple contents at an obscene rate.

Doing the former will ensure quality is kept across all channels where the said content is being posted to. On the other hand, it would become increasingly difficult to keep a good hand on the quality of submissions when a huge amount of content is being demanded weekly.

Beyond saving your business the stress, content repurposing also saves your reputation as a thought leader and serious contender in the industry you are in.

3. Keeping the Posting Schedule

A combination of the above points shows that if care is not taken, you might fall short of your posting schedule if you don’t have a great repurposing strategy in the works.

Blog readers, social media followers, podcast listeners and other audience engagement channels that have gotten used to your posting schedule might now have to look elsewhere if you stop supplying fresh content the way they are used to.

This form of customer churn is highly detrimental to your business. With US businesses already losing a massive $136.8 billion per annum to customer switching (which they could have avoided, by the way), you don’t want to get a slice of this cake.

4. Reinforcing a Message

Research shows that there are about 70 million posts published every month on the WordPress platform only. You have to take into consideration the fact that there are other website content management panels besides WordPress, and users of such solutions are not slowing down on their monthly posting either.

This is not an interesting piece of statistic though. Seeing as all that volume of posts can be overwhelming for the audience, it is little surprise that 43% of people admit to skimming blog posts.

Now, an average blog post takes some 3.5 hours to write. This is not to mention the hours of research that would have gone into the development of that piece too. You don’t want to do all that work only for someone to skim through the message you want to pass across.

Again, this is why you need content repurposing.

In the course of skimming, your reader might have missed a salient point you were trying to get across. This could be the snippet you use on your social media channels, and it effectively drives them – as well as new prospects – back to the post. Among other techniques, that is.

Making It Happen

Now that you are ready to get started, we won’t beat about the bush. The following steps will have you running multiple successful content marketing strategies from a base content structure in no time.

1. Start with Strong Research

Take the research efforts you put into creating a single blog post, multiply it a lot of factors, and pump that back into the creation of the content you want to use across different channels.

The reason for this is not far-fetched.

The things your blog audience are looking for might not be the same kind of content the social media followers signed up for. Thus, you have to make sure your research is all-encompassing, such that the same piece of content can be well re-distributed to different corners of the digital space.

When conducting your research, the content ideas you come up with should be an intersection of content that:

  • the audience yearns to see and know about
  • you are highly knowledgeable about and
  • you can present in a simplified format.

This kind of content is referred to as ‘cornerstone content’ since it is the one that other forms of content will be built on and around. That said, this is not the time for you to put many ideas into the same piece for a rich feel. Quite the opposite.

Go with a single idea/ concept, and make it pop.

2. Look Inwards

If you have been creating content for a while now, you might not need to go all the way out into developing a new cornerstone article from scratch.

We want to believe the other pieces of content on your blog have been created with the highest respect paid to strong research, a nod to fine writing skills and a great presentation to match. If all that checks out, this is the kind of content that can be reused on multiple channels.

Likewise, the list does not just end on blog posts. If you have any of:

  • eBooks;
  • promotional materials;
  • videos;
  • guest posts; etc., lying around, they can also be repurposed to suit your needs.

3. Identify your Marketing Channels

A good thing to have at the back of your mind when turning your ideas into content is the other channels that this same piece of content could be used for. That way, you can bring the said content to life in a format that allows for use on other channels.

For this, work with your content marketing team to know what channels your message goes out to. That includes all of the blogs, print media, social media channels, and more.

4. Choose Posting Format

Companies like to blog, so we won’t even dwell on this matter for long. More often than not, your blog is the first place the content you have created will go on. Likewise, most blogs are created to be heavily text-based which is not a bad thing.

Now that you have put up the piece on your blog, let’s talk about how to make sure it works for other channels:

  • Audio blog – with a simple plugin, you can make sure your blog is read back to the audience if they so wish for that. Offering the form of an audio blog on every post allows people who don’t have much time on their hands to passively engage with your content. Believe it or not, this will also allow you to appeal to a bigger demographic. Chief of this is dyslexic people who would like to enjoy your content, the visually impaired, target audience who are ESL learners/ citizens, etc.
  • Instagram – comb through your post for controversial picks and set up a poll on your stories. Offer the audience the answers, and let them know there is more to be gained by following through the link to the main post. The same can be done on the Instagram timeline where you can share beautiful infographics or graphically-enhanced statistics that will pique the audience’s interests.
  • LinkedIn – Your audience on LinkedIn will determine what they will be most interested in. Just like a movie trailer, package the important points in the content you have just developed into short and concise texts to be shared on your LinkedIn timeline. Of course, remind the audience that they can get all your thoughts on the said content by following through.
  • YouTube54% of consumers already want to see more video content from the brands that they love, so why are you denying your audience this simple craving of theirs? You don’t even have to put your face behind the camera if you can create amazing explainer videos that are as engaging as they are visually stimulating.

The best thing about creating videos for YouTube is that you can repost them in snippets for other social media channels again.

  • Twitter – besides getting in on the trends and conversations, you can also initiate yours with statistics on twitter. Look for relevant hashtags that resonate with your existing content, leveraging them for how much juice you can get from it.
  • User-generated content – this is one you don’t have control over, but it works anyway. As the name implies, it works on making the user/ audience generate the content for you. You can set this in motion by building your blog posts with tweetable statistics, allowing for sharing of your images on Pinterest, calling for video entries in line with a piece of existing content, etc.
  • Podcasting – if you are camera shy, podcasts hold another avenue for you to explore. We did mention an important piece of statistics about the growth of podcasts in the opening parts of this piece, and that is just one of the many reasons why you should embrace them this decade. Need we say more?

5. Create Evergreen Content

Last, but not least, is the place of evergreen content.

Reporting on a news item can get you a lot of clicks and views for the day, but you might not see any significant activity on that post after a couple of days has passed. This is not evergreen content.

Say, you create something titled How to Effectively Reduce Gas Consumption in Your Vehicle, though, we can bet you will keep getting hits on this kind of content. More cars are getting on the road daily, and people are increasingly wanting to feel thrifty.

In your quest to use the same content for multiple channels, the onus also lies on your team to keep developing evergreen content. That way, you can always go back to a relatively old post to comb through for important statistics, metrics – or anything else the audience will be interested in – and post that on another platform.

Even though it’s one content you created a while back, the very fact that you did right on that piece makes it a lifetime asset for your marketing campaigns.

Conclusion

That was quite a read, but it does show you how possible it is to not burn your content marketing and creation team out while still coming up with fresh content for your audience across multiple marketing channels.

How about you start combing through for cornerstone content/ creating new ones of your today, and see how repurposing can take your business to the next level?

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