As a small or medium-sized business (SMB) owner, it’s a challenge to come up with new marketing concepts, but repurposing existing content is a surefire method for driving ongoing traffic to your site and a simple way to amplify your message without investing a lot more time or effort. That last part's important because, as an SMB owner, you’re busy managing everything for your business, including marketing.
Repurposing your content increases ROI by taking each initial creation and spinning it into multiple pieces of content. You’ll reach more potential customers as you publish the content on different sites (e.g. guest posts) or various social media channels, and your SMB site will get an SEO boost through the new backlinks you’ll create.
Since it often takes multiple touches before someone buys, repurposing helps reinforce your message. Plus, it increases your authority and credibility because you’re positioning your SMB brand as an expert. You’ll be the one they remember when it comes time to ask a question or complete a transaction.
Here are several best practices SMB owners can apply when repurposing their marketing content to get more web traffic, demonstrate industry knowledge and, ultimately, increase sales.
1. Syndicate your blog posts
Content-syndication networks allow you to get your blog posts in front of people who are reading other related posts. Paid services such as Outbrain and ARC will present your posts as “recommended reading” on their blog networks, and sites like Business2Community and Medium will syndicate your posts for free, which is a good option for SMBs to start with.
2. Use excerpts for social media posts
If you’ve been using social media to drive traffic to your SMB, you’ll always need a pipeline of content. Repurpose your blog posts by pulling out excerpts and publishing them on your social media channel. Pull out the best sentence or two from a post, combine it with an appropriate image and publish it on social media.
3. Change the medium of your content
Marketing content can take many forms, so why restrict your valuable information to just one? Here are a few quick ideas on how to change the format of your marketing content:
Repurpose a blog post into an infographic.
Repurpose a blog post series into a welcome email autoresponder or email newsletter.
Turn a presentation to a downloadable PDF lead magnet.
Create a podcast from a valuable blog post by reading it out loud, recording it and publishing it on iTunes, Stitcher or SoundCloud.
Turn a video or speech into a slide deck and publish it on SlideShare.
Convert a How-To post into a screencast video and publish it on your site and YouTube.
4. Update blog posts
For an updated post to be considered repurposed, you’ve got to do more than merely change a few words. You must update it with new stats or data, entirely new sections, new images and more. Consider tying several posts together as part of a series. Update each post with new information and link them to each other so readers will click from one to the next in the series.
5. Write a case study based on a post
Use the topic of an old blog post and write a case study from it based on one of your customers. Write about the problems they encountered and how they solved them with your products or services. Publish the post as a case study on your website and link it back to the old post. Customers and prospects love case studies, because they’re able to relate to the stories and imagine themselves solving their problems with your products too.
6. Write a guest post
Guest posts on related websites are great for your SMB, as they increase traffic, demonstrate your expertise and establish you as an authority. Use an old post as inspiration for the guest post or see if they’ll let you republish it as is; some of them do.
7. Create a transcript from a video
Videos are wonderful sources to repurpose from. The simplest way to repurpose one is to create a transcript of the video. You can use a paid service or try Google Docs’s voice-typing feature for a free option. Speechnotes is another free option you can try. With either tool, turn on your microphone and start reading to create the transcript. These services are simple transcribing tools that print out word-for-word what you say, so you’ll need to go back into it to clean it up.
Repurposing content is a time-saving way for SMBs to create new marketing content regularly, without a lot of effort. Choose the way that works best for you and start repurposing today.
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