One of the most powerful things you can learn in marketing your business is how to successfully repurpose the content you created for one platform to many of your other marketing outlets. Simply put, the act of repurposing your marketing content saves you time, money in new ideas and generates a bigger impact from what you already have. But does it save time overall?
Why time is the perennial struggle in content marketing
Social media, email marketing, blogging, it all requires fresh content - something new for your audience to consume. This is quite honestly backbreaking work if you consider that the average business is posting daily to at least three to four social platforms.
If you are an SME without staff to assist you in your marketing, then the struggle to keep up with everything often feels like it is to the detriment of your time in your business, rather than the benefit of increased sales.
This is where repurposing your marketing content comes in. It saves you time in ideation, it saves time in graphic, video or photography ideation and it generates more traffic to the point you were making.
Do you save time overall? Or are you just swapping your time from the ideas part of the content creation journey to content generation?
I have to say it really depends.
Let’s say you write a detailed guide on your blog for a subject matter your audience often asks about. You have pumped it full of value and wish to get it out there to your audience for consumption. You create an email marketing campaign for it and social media posts too. When you come back to it later on to repurpose it, you still need to create an email campaign and social media posts, so the content generation is exactly the same in time. Here’s the but. But if you deliberately layout the blog in a way that you can quickly take snippets from it, then there is a time-saving in the ideas of what that repurposing looks like.
Some of my clients come to me because the ideas part is where they are stuck. They find it difficult and extremely time-consuming to create new ideas day after day, week after week. It takes them far longer to think about what to create, than the actual creation part. My job is to create fresh content that they can easily repurpose later on.
So, can you really save time by repurposing your marketing content? Yes and no.
When to repurpose your marketing content
I often get asked when and which content types to repurpose and the truth is that every piece of content you produce if produced to repurpose later down the line, can indeed be repurposed.
Let’s consider an example. Imagine You posted a Facebook Live video on your latest product or service. The video could be uploaded and shared to all of your social platforms, as well as on your website and in your email campaigns. If, as you drafted your talking points, you covered say, the contents of that product or service, or how this product/service will be delivered, then there are two new content ideas right there. You can either take video snippets, or a series of photos to go with a written portion of text directly from your video.
One idea can suddenly become several. One hour’s worth of repurposing could save hours of idea creation if that’s where you get stuck.
The key things to remember when repurposing marketing content
Penalties for social media repurposing from channel to channel, or even on the same channel are rare. If you reword a portion of your captions or switch to a new image, a single piece of content can be republished at a later date. This will give your content plenty of opportunity to shine.
Focus on adding value. Reposting a blog post link on its own is boring content production. Give your audience a reason to engage with you and then take your call to action - visiting your website.
Evergreen content always works well for repurposing later on. Evergreen content is a piece you created that has as much value today as it did at the time of publication. These could be product or service FAQs, which usually remain the same over time and answer commonly asked questions.
Look at your data. If you have published a piece of content previously, then your analytics will give you all the insight you need to establish how well it performed with your audience. Social media is very good at showing you exactly what worked and what didn’t, so dive into those social insights to find out which pieces are worth repurposing (here’s how). Equally, you’ll have access to Google Analytics for your website performance data. Although the true data is slower to materialise by comparison to social media (Google needs 3-6 months to register new blog post data in most cases, whereas socials can give you direct data in 24 hours).
One easy content piece to repurpose is…
A blog post.
If you haven’t started blogging on your website yet, then I recommend you read my guide on the value of business blogging. It is simple, impactful and returns results in sales lead opportunities.
It is also great for repurposing if you build out your content well. A blog post can become a video, a webinar, an ebook, a marketing email and several social media posts. One idea, several content pieces.
So why should you repurpose your marketing content if it doesn’t save you lots of time?
Whether repurposing your marketing content saves you time or not, it does allow you to get more eyes on the valuable and targeted content you originally produced. The more people see it the more interactions you potentially gain, the most essential of which is answering your call to action.
Remember in a world where content is being stuffed in your audience's face minute after minute, they might miss your important message the first time around. On the other hand, they might not need your message the first time around. Repurposing allows you to remarket to an existing audience, as well as reach new ones. Crucial if you are looking for new leads and sales.
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