How to make content marketing more cost-effective

Repurposing with a purpose

Content marketing is a large investment both financially and strategically for any business. This post is designed on the principles that if you are investing a lot into content creation it makes sense to be creative in how you use your content in order to get the most out of it.

Advantages of re-purposing content

There are always loads of things we don’t do simply because we ‘don’t have the time’. I can’t suggest how to find more time, but I do have suggestions about how you can save time and improve your content marketing.

Why reinvent the wheel when you can repurpose content? In an era when content marketing is essential, it is time to start thinking outside the box about how to use your existing content effectively as well as how to create new material. Maximising the usefulness of one piece of content will save you time and money.

Re-purposing will also add value and increase the reach of your content because you will be making it available in a variety of different formats which will be appreciated by different people using different devices at different times. It also multiplies the number of sharing possibilities for your content.

Eight ideas for re-purposing content

We often consider video as the basis of a content plan due to the nature of our business. This will differ between businesses but just for example; a video has a visual element which could be a slideshow, an infographic, or a presentation, an audio element - which could be a podcast and a textual element from the script which could be a blog post/guest post (with some simple tweaks).

1. Create a textual transcript of your videos
A textual transcript can be used to create a blog post or an article on the same subject. In fact, it might be possible to create a series of articles from one transcript. For SEO purposes you should already be creating transcripts for closed captions/subtitles for your videos because they are rich in keywords and search engines can find them in a way that they are unable to find video and audio files.

2. Create a podcast
Take the audio file from your video to create a podcast or similar. Podcasts can be downloaded by users and listened in their own time. Like videos, audio files can also be shared on social media platforms and embedded on websites and blogs.

3. Film events that will make good videos
If you give a presentation, film it. Maybe you are hosting a conference; film the different speakers and you can then create a few videos. Again, you can also create transcripts and podcasts from this content.

4. Create a SlideShare of presentations
Use Slideshare to share presentations. This is just another way to make your content useful for longer.

5. Create a Webinar

A webinar is a web-based seminar and can be a lecture, seminar or workshop that is transmitted over the Internet. You can record your webinars and turn them into videos that can be posted permanently on your website or your YouTube channel. Again, you can create transcripts, blog posts and podcasts from these.

6. Create an infographic
Infographics are another very visual way to share information with an audience. You could make an infographic from some of your existing content. If you have carried out a piece of research and have gathered some statistics that may be of interest to others in your field then an infographic is a perfect way to present these.

A good tool for making Infographics is Piktochart - you can put together a nice infographic in about 90 mins.

7. Create an eBook
Collate all of your best content into an eBook. If you have lots of articles that fit under a particular umbrella, think about putting them together to create an eBook, or two!

8. Create a ‘best of’ list
You can create a ‘best of’ list to draw attention to old content in the present day. It could be as simple as ‘Our top 10 most read articles this year’ or you could be more specific e.g. ‘our top 5 articles on video marketing this month’.

9. Re-purpose press releases
You can also use your own press releases to create blog posts or articles. Why not? This is what you are hoping others will do with them!

Repurposing with a purpose

Repurposing content is definitely a smart thing to do. It makes complete sense to maximise the reach of existing content. However, it is important to re-purpose with a purpose; know why you are doing what you are doing. You should always be acting with a marketing strategy in mind and part of that strategy should be an awareness of your target audience.

An understanding of what devices and platforms your audience are using is going to be essential to your decision making around how you re-purpose your content. For example, it would be pointless turning video content into an article if your target audience is teenagers who your market research has shown do not like to read articles.

Finally, have a point to re-purposing your content. Imagine the same person coming across each piece of re-purposed content based on one original piece. They are likely to notice when you have just copied exactly from the previous format. One goal of re-purposing is definitely to save time, but put some effort into introducing something unique into each piece so that it stands alone and also so that it makes sense in its new form.