Feeding the content beast isn’t easy. Whether it’s your blog, company Facebook page, LinkedIn profile or website, there is always a marketing channel – or two – that is craving fresh content. Even with the support of a marketing agency or on-staff content manager, consistently generating enough of the right content that resonates with the right audiences can be a challenge. Here are four tips to help feed the content beast without sacrificing quality.
1) Repurpose and Reformat
Perhaps your CEO recently authored a great bylined article for an industry trade and you’re eager to increase the reach of his/her helpful tips. If he/she gave 10 tips, each could be broken into a separate tweet that links back to the article in your online newsroom. Maybe you authored a whitepaper or “How To” guide for your company. Take a few of those great “How To” tips and turn them into some “What Ifs” for a blog post that drives readers to download your premium content. You may even have great video footage of your spokesperson from a recent conference or TV package. Embed the video on your blog, craft a post that dives deeper into the topic at hand and put some teaser copy with a link in your next e-newsletter.
While by no means exhaustive, the above examples show how companies can get more mileage out of existing thought leadership. The key is to find new ways to add value as you repurpose to ensure audiences don’t feel inundated with duplicate information.
2) Take Your Online Content Offline
Is the sales team looking for more case studies to share with prospective clients? Could your Q&A posts give them additional touch points with prospective clients while helping to move them down the sales funnel? Taking select online marketing content offline and using it to educate clients and support the sales cycle can help satisfy the need for new content without increasing the content creation burden.
3) Bring Your Offline Content Online
Does your company have existing collateral materials – think fact sheets, sell sheets, etc. – that could enhance your blog content or provide fresh fodder to engage your social media communities? While you may have to follow the first tip and do a little reformatting, there is no need to reinvent the wheel when you already have great content at your fingertips.
4) Train Your Team to Have an Eye for Content
From the sales team to the C-Suite, your entire team should have its antenna up for potentially great content. This can include having the sales team track commonly asked questions so that marketing can craft some blog posts that answer these key questions; collecting the team’s post-conference notes to cull out some tweetable factoids; or asking key staff to send along interesting articles from industry trades that can be shared on social media. More content curators = more ready-to-use info at your fingertips.
While the formatting requirements of every marketing channel are unique, finding creative ways to repurpose and repackage existing materials can help to ease the content creation burden. Regardless of the channel for which you are creating new or repurposing existing content, be sure to remain audience-centric while keeping clarity and brand consistency top-of-mind.
Content (inbound) marketing is a great way to tie marketing and sales together.
