In my last post, I gave you some ideas for creating key marketing content, and roughly how long it might take. Today, I wanted to make crystal clear that each iteration does not have to have unique content. In fact, repurposing, cutting up, re-using, and re-formatting one piece of content will save you time and increase both your impact and your reach.

So, if you’ve taken the time to create a piece of marketing material, here are 20 ideas for squeezing every last drop of value from it. Most of which take time and energy, rather than money, so that you can make your marketing budget go further.

With a nod to John Watton,  named B2B Marketing Magazine‘s ‘B2B Marketer of the Year’ a few year’s back, this is a quick blog on what he affectionately calls “pimping your content”.

First off, what do we mean by content and content marketing?

We all produce powerful content all of the time, for example a presentation you put together for a client, a talk you gave at a networking event, some training material you’ve produced for staff or clients. These are all a great starting point for a bit of market-facing content. In fact, if someone has been willing to pay for it, it’s probably excellent content. You can, of course, generate content specifically for marketing purposes. For example, commissioning some research to prepare a paper, or writing a How-to guide or checklist.

So, let’s say you’ve gone to the trouble of collating some compelling and relevant thoughts that people who might buy what you sell would find interesting (whether you initially thought of it as marketing content or not), here are…

20 ideas for things you can do with your marketing content:

  1. Turn it into a paper that can be downloaded from your site as a PDF in return for data capture. Many people will call this an ebook, personally – I’d like to see more than 50 pages to call it a ‘book’
  2. Knock up some slides and put it on SlideShare.
  3. Video yourself giving an abridged version and pop it on You-Tube.
  4. Embed your SlideShare or You-Tube content on your website. (Either freely available, or behind a sign-up page).
  5. Upload your video to your Facebook page (it travels better if it’s uploaded to their platform, than posting a You-Tube link).
  6. Use the content to create one, or several, short articles of around 500 words, use these as blog posts at the bottom of which you signpost your presentnation, video or paper. (What do you mean you don’t have a blog? Ridiculous! See: Series of posts on blogging)
  7. Use the content to host an online event, like a live web seminar or Google Hangout.
  8. Contact local networking groups, like Business Link or FSB and offer to give a talk on the subject.
  9. Tweet a link to your download, SlideShare, You-Tube, press article, etc.
  10. Post your content as an update on your social profiles.
  11. Add a link to your email footer. (Rotate between the format types)
  12. Offer it as a guest Blog on relevant other blog sites. (See: Moving beyond your own blog with guest posts and articles.)
  13. Use it as the basis for intelligent comments on Blogs and Forums, ideally with a link back to your download, presso, etc.
  14. Add to a library of comment that you have available when responding to press features.
  15. Turn the content into a short training session and offer it as value-add to existing clients.
  16. Use the same content to run a paid-for training event for your market.
  17. Create an email sequence that drip feeds the material over a period of time, use this as a lead magnet (or subscriber reward).
  18. Run an internal ‘show & tell’ to get your team up-to-date on the subject.
  19. Create a set of ‘key point’ image-based slides and export as images (with URL of full article) – post to Twitter, Facebook Page, Pinterest.
  20. Create square versions of the above to share on Instagram.

Oh, and you can then put all this lovely stuff in your email newsletter.

In small business marketing, every penny counts – so if you have some content make sure it works really hard for you.

Please don’t be shy in using it, re-using it and re-using it again. At the B2B Marketing Lead Nurturing event (30 Sept 2009 – and yes, it is still true!), John sagely reminded us that if, as marketers, we’re totally bored by a piece of content, then the market has probably only just noticed it. And, even if people have seen it before, repetition is important in creating recall (See: The Awareness Equation), and putting the same info in a new format can make someone look again, or reach someone completely new (See: Is your content formatted for the way people’s brains are wired?).

If the material is relevant, interesting, and not date-defined, you can probably dine out on it for six months to a year, at the very least. Probably longer. I mean, for each new follower on Twitter, for example, it is effectively a brand new piece because they’ve never seen it before… don’t be shy in showing them your best stuff.

© Bryony Thomas – The Watertight Marketer

Bryony Thomas

Bryony Thomas

Author & Founder, Watertight Marketing

Bryony Thomas is the creator of the multi-award winning  Watertight Marketing methodology, captured in her best-selling book of the same name. She is one of the UK's foremost marketing thinkers, featured by the likes of Forbes, The Guardian, Business Insider and many more, and in-demand speaker for business conferences, in-house sales days and high-level Board strategy days.

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