Creating content is an important part of running a business, especially one that operates primarily online. And spoiler alert: these days, just about every business is an online business.
Here’s the thing: if you’re going to create content consistently, you’ve got to have a content strategy in place—or a plan for what you’re going to publish online for your business.
If you don’t have a content strategy in place, you’re more likely to have marketing that’s all over the place, or what I refer to as “the dartboard approach,” which dilutes your brand and creates an aura of confusion within your audience (who may wonder what it is you actually do).
Instead, when you’re strategic about what you publish, everything you’re doing can work together—and you can stretch your content as far as possible.
And it doesn’t matter what your budget is—whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a small mom-and-pop shop, it’s in your best interests to get the most out of your expert-driven content so you can:
- Help perfect-fit clients and customers find you.
- Establish expertise in the areas you want to be known for
- Ensure your audience is hyper-clear on what you do (not confused)
But what does that look like? And how can you repurpose everything you create so you get as much out of every idea as possible?
Good news—that’s exactly what I’m talking about. So if you’re looking for advice on creating a content strategy that helps you get the most bang out of everything you do, keep reading.
What is a Content Strategy? (and why you need one)
First things first—let’s make sure we’re on the same page about content strategies. A content strategy is made up of the planning, creation, and implementation of creative content for your business. It brings your vision to life and ensures that the content that you are sharing is leading you back to the goals that you want to reach.
When I help clients create content strategies, we look at their goals and the types of content they need to achieve them. That means the resulting document calls out blogs, emails, social media posts, videos, and other types of content to share.
I love condensing it into a simple Excel or Google Sheet to get a high-level view of all the content and how it works together. (I’m not a dinosaur, by the way. I love project management tools for keeping track of all the moving parts and tying them back to our main planning sheet.)
But there’s one thing most people I talk to get wrong. By focusing too much on coming up with new ideas for content for each channel, they miss the opportunity to go deep and make every idea hit hard. So I often find myself pulling them back to focus on core initiatives so we can stay focused.
The method to my madness? Focusing on fewer ideas and leveraging them further. In other words—repurposing existing content. In addition to being less work for you, it’ll help your SEO go farther.
Why You Should Repurpose Your Content
Repurposing your content allows you to shift the focus from the volume of content you create to the quality. Keep in mind, there is a difference between repurposing and crossposting.
With crossposting, you post the same content across multiple channels without making any modifications. When you repurpose content, you can take one piece of content and adapt it to the channel you’ll be posting on.
In a world where everyone wants to go viral and content is pumped out at an alarming speed, it can be easy to burn out from creating content. And let’s be real—most small businesses don’t have the time or budget to go in a constant cycle of creating and publishing over and over and over. I like to focus on sustainable marketing efforts that fit into our goals instead of doing #allthethings all the time.
Repurposing your content can reduce that stress because you already have the content, all you have to do is modify it to fit its intended purpose.
For example, if you write an article showing your expertise on, let’s say—brand messaging (wink wink), you can take some snippets from the blog and turn them into social posts, emails, videos, and more that all direct people back to the main article on your site, increasing your traffic and drawing in a new audience. And since different people respond better to some content types over others, you’ll cast a wider net.
So how can you take your content and make it go further? I’ve got you covered!
What Can You Create with a Single Blog Post
You can repurpose most content, whether you start off with a larger piece of content or expand on a smaller one. For example, if you start with a video, you can create a podcast episode and a blog. To keep things simple, you could start with a blog post and then break it down into multiple content pieces. Below, I’ll show you some of the content you can create from a single article.
1 Medium Article
Medium is a platform where you can publish articles and build a following through their existing members rather than starting from 0 on your site. Even if you already have an established following on your site and a great mailing list, it doesn’t hurt to post your article on Medium and use its SEO features to drive readers to your site.
5-10 Social Media Posts
Depending on the overarching topic of your blog post, you can break it down into smaller sections, say the paragraphs of your blog, and use these subtopics to create social media posts. Using the example of how to ride a bicycle, you could make a post on the safety equipment you need, and maybe another on the types of bikes.
1 Infographic
Some people are visual learners, and crafting an infographic based on an existing blog could help your audience absorb the information. This is especially true if you work in a technical field with industry-specific terminology and concepts. You can also take this infographic and distribute it through social media if you want to!
1 LinkedIn Newsletter
Creating a newsletter on LinkedIn can increase your site traffic by directing your readers to your site. You can also increase the number of backlinks, giving your domain more authority and a chance to rank higher in your SEO. LinkedIn Newsletters are easy for your readers to share since all they have to do is hit the share button, and it’ll pop up on their profile and their followers’ home feed.
5-10 Emails
Similar to the way you would do it with the social posts, you can take the subtopics from your original blog post and turn them into individual email subjects. In fact, you could also create an email sequence based on the blog as a whole or send certain topics to specific segments of your audience. Then again, you could also send an email to your list telling them about your article to get even more clicks.
Tips for Repurposing Content
Now that you’ve seen some of the types of content you can create from a single blog post, you might be wondering how to best approach repurposing. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- You can repurpose new and old content—Regardless of how recent your content is, you can repurpose it. Just make sure that your older content is refreshed and accurate if you’re going to re-distribute it. You can absolutely refresh content at the same link and keep all the good SEO link juice.
- Don’t feel like you need to make content for every channel—Having content in a variety of media channels is helpful, but you also don’t have to create multiple content pieces. You can just create one or two on the platforms that perform the best for you.
- Don’t hesitate to repurpose content more than once—Remember, not everyone might see your content on the first post. Some may not see it until months or even years after it was posted. Especially if you are growing your following, don’t feel bad about repurposing content multiple times.
Wondering What to Write in the First Place?
If you’re stumped about what kind of content you’d write about, don’t worry. I’ve got an approach that can simplify the ideation process.
Think about what you’d like to be known for, even if it’s in a broad sense. Once you’ve identified what you want to be known for, you can go deeper until you have multiple topics to write about. This is how you create ‘content pillars.’
Let’s go back to my (totally unbiased) brand messaging example. If you want to be known for brand messaging, you can start with that as a category. Then you might break it down into categories like market research, marketing strategy, copywriting, and sales. From there, you can take each category and make a list of the types of questions you answer (like when your mom asks you, “What exactly is copywriting anyway?”) From there, you can get more specific about best practices.
Look, it’s easy for me to talk about this, but I know how hard it is to find a starting point (just ask the eleventy-billion ideas that are gathering dust in my ClickUp).
If you have a broad idea but are having trouble getting started, I can help. Past clients have told me I have a superpower for diving into their brains and making everything make sense.
Ready to Create Your Content Strategy?
There’s no doubt. An efficient and effective content strategy can drive traffic to your site and increase your business’s revenue, but if you don’t have enough time or resources to consistently post new content, repurposing content is a great way to make what you have go further.
Creating a long-form piece of blog content that highlights your expertise can take up a lot of your time. So, why not squeeze out as much as you can from this piece you worked hard to produce?
If you need help with a new content strategy and its implementation, schedule a call with me and we can go through the options together.
Or… want me to teach you? I’m putting together a bundle with my ebook, workshops, and methodology for planning and writing your content. The bundle will be going live late Q3 2024. Get on the waitlist below. (If you’re on the waitlist, you get the best deal early-bird style.)
