If you already know about the benefits of content marketing, you’re well on your way to becoming a savvy online marketer who attracts views, likes, comments, shares, and, ultimately, interest in your business. This skill is critical for technology firms, whether you’re a web developer, IT professional, or software outsourcing company.

But did you know there’s a way to get even more mileage from your content? Reusing that social media campaign, blog post, Article, or video can give you double or more the exposure for just a little extra work. This practice is known as repurposing. Here are some strategies for getting started.

Toot Your Horn

If you’ve developed an informative blog post or article, be sure to promote it on other channels. For example, call attention to it on your website’s home page, create a link to it on LinkedIn or Twitter, or post it to your company’s Facebook page. 

Don’t just post a generic invitation to check out your latest article. Instead, include the benefits of reading the piece. For example, you could write, “Did you know that employee error is the biggest cause of cybersecurity leaks? Read this week’s post to learn what to teach your workers about protecting valuable data.” 

Convert to Different Formats

Take that same blog post, the one about teaching employees how to protect company data. In addition to promoting it on various social media channels, you can convert it to other types of content. For example, LinkedIn allows you to write articles directly on the platform. You can copy your original blog post exactly or modify it for LinkedIn readers. Medium is a similar channel that provides an opportunity to get your material in front of an entirely new audience. 

You could also expand that original blog post into a white paper or ebook, which you could then add to the resources section on your website and promote separately as an in-depth piece. Or, how about hiring a videographer to turn the principles discussed in your blog post into an engaging video that you can upload to your YouTube channel?

WordStream offers some useful suggestions for converting specific content. Here are a few examples: 

• Turn a webinar into a video tutorial.
• Convert a PowerPoint presentation to Slidedeck.
• Rework a Quora response into a blog post.
• Compile information from blog posts into a newsletter.
• Use a blog post as a springboard for a podcast episode.

Promote Older Content

If you’re doing a good job with your content marketing, it’s likely much of your content is evergreen, meaning it’s relevant at any time. For example, as a software outsourcing company, you may have written an article three years ago about the benefits to small businesses of outsourcing software development. That article is still meaningful today and you can resurrect it by promoting it as you would new content.

Keep in mind that, though this content is relevant, you may need to make small adjustments to it to ensure it’s up to date. The benefit, though, is that you get the promotional perks of calling attention to the article and to your services without having to come up with something entirely new.

Just as you can promote older content that’s still relevant, you can convert older content that might be slightly out of date to make it timelier. For example, say you’ve written a blog post on the topic of “IT Mistakes to avoid in 2018.” You can rewrite the article for 2020, incorporating anything that’s changed in the last couple of years. Take into consideration the comments you received on the previous post and do some additional research to freshen up the subject.

Get Inspired

Maybe you’ve run out of ideas to reuse your content in the ways mentioned above. If that’s the case, you can still use your old posts, articles, Infographics, videos, or slide decks to make your job easier. Go through them and keep an eye out for subtopics that could be expanded as topics of their own. 

For example, say you’ve developed a video with the high-level subject of “Critical Elements to Include on Your Website.” Maybe one of those elements is the About page. In thinking it over, you may realize there’s a lot more you could say regarding the About page. So, now you have a jumping-off point to create that new video — or blog post or article or slide deck or PDF — with a lot of your research already done. 

In Summary

Now that you understand the concept of repurposing, think about how you can repurpose each piece before you even create it. When considering blog post ideas, for example, ask yourself how they could potentially be used as a starting point to develop corresponding videos or podcast episodes as well. Build these ideas into your editorial calendar to make the most of each concept.

Repurposing your marketing content allows you to get more mileage from your promotional efforts. Deploy the suggestions here to build your content collection or use them as a starting point to come up with some creative ideas of your own.