Your organization has probably created some stellar content. Maybe not in every channel or maybe not consistently, but it’s there. Do you have a steady blog, a brilliant set of experts at your fingertips, or a great podcast?
Let’s talk about how to take what you’ve got and repurpose it, remold it, and release it into the world in the form of a winning content marketing campaign.
Step 1: List out your assets
What are your content marketing strengths? What is at your fingertips or even better, already published, that you can leverage?
For example:
Written content: whether it’s years' worth of blogs or a solid 30-page whitepaper, these can be a gold mine of good content. Even if parts of your blogs are outdated, look for easy fixes to update them. Once finished, you should re-release the pieces and use them as a strong foundation on which to build other content.
Does your customer service arm get asked the same questions over and over? Chances are, they may have a set of answers at the ready. Answering frequently asked questions thoroughly and systematically on dedicated pages will not only aid your customers (and your customer service team), but search engines may pick up on these targeted pages.
We’re willing to bet you’ve recorded webinars or panel events you’ve hosted recently. But has anyone looked closely at those transcripts? This content is especially rich for the writers on your teams, and here’s why. Spoken explanations and verbal content is quite different from what people will write out in content briefs; it’s often less complicated and uses less jargon than written outlines. Give a transcript to a good content marketer and that person could likely create blog posts, web pages, and/or social media posts from the raw material.
When is the last time you looked at your YouTube account? These assets are easily forgotten and in some cases, took a lot of budget to create at one point. What videos (and don’t forget their transcripts!) do you have that could be repurposed?
Do your users contribute their own content? Whether it’s recipes with your products, social posts with photos, or customer stories, UGC (user-generated content) is not only authentic and often creative, it highlights your customers, promotes shareability, and showcases how your product can be used.
If you want to be extremely thorough, consider conducting a Content Audit. (Here’s how).
Step 2: What do we do with these assets?
So now what? The answer to this depends on your audience and your business goals.
As you’ve watched or read through these content nuggets, you’ve been thinking about how they could be repurposed effectively. But it’s up to you to determine where your marketing strategy is lagging. Identify the gaps where your customers are waiting to hear from you and use your existing content to do it.
We can all agree that:
SEO-optimized content drives organic sessions.
Webinars drive brand awareness and show thought leadership.
Blog content can drive website sessions and lead to conversions.
Social media can drive brand awareness & product awareness and engage prospective customers.
Which of these is a gap in your strategy?
Here’s an example:
A B2C company realized that the customer service reps were often getting the same questions over and over. The content marketing team also checked Google Search Console and found that some of these specific long-tail questions were being typed into search at the rate of 100 per month. They knew it was time to create easy-to-follow pages, some with branded how-to videos, which would be a set of resources for customers, for customer service, and would be returned on search pages when people go looking. Bonus: those how-to videos are perfect for social media, YouTube specifically.
Mapping new (repurposed) content into gaps can be a cost-effective part of the content marketing strategy for any size organization.
Read More in These Additional CONTENT MARKETING Tips:
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