7 ways to make your content investment go further

“Content Marketing is all the Marketing that’s left.” Seth Godin

If you want your online business to succeed, you have to invest in content marketing. But, with uncertain times ahead and online competition becoming ever steeper, you need to squeeze every last drop out of your content investment. I'll show you how.

1. Repost your content on Social Media

Don’t just post it once. Achieving organic (unpaid) engagement on social media is getting harder all the time (Hootsuite) but, with an increasing focus on trust signals and brand strength separating the wheat from the chaff online, it’s arguably never been more important.

Look at your Insights and Analytics – your posts will be getting a fraction of their potential impressions so don’t be afraid to post them again.

Although there is a strong case for posting directly from within the social media platform for new updates, when it comes to uploading your entire blog back-catalogue, management tools like Meet Edgar really come into their own. Using your RSS feed, Meet Edgar enables you to upload your entire blog history and schedule items to repost at intervals of your choosing.

My top 3 tips for successful reposting:

1. Research the best times to post for your industry using the built in analytics platforms for each social media channel: Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics and LinkedIn Page Analytics, and create a schedule.
2. If you have a limited following and not much data to go on, you can check out one of the myriad best times to post on social media’ guides, such as these from SproutSocial and Hootsuite.
3. Edit the accompanying text slightly for each post so it fits in with best-practice for each platform. Facebook posts should be no longer than 80 characters, Twitter between 71 – 100 and LinkedIn no more than 25 words.
4. Use hashtags, but sparingly. Check out our guide to hashtag best practice to make sure you’re getting the balance right.

2. Publish your articles directly on LinkedIn

If you're reading this, you're already active on LinkedIn. But are you making the most of its publishing platform?

Re-posting content on LinkedIn is a great way to increase your own industry authority as well as that of your brand, and grossly underused by brands.

Worried about duplicate content? Don’t be. In the vast majority of cases, Google will correctly identify the original source of an article (i.e. your website, not LinkedIn). To be on the safe side, though, we recommend posting your blog on LinkedIn a few days after it’s gone live on your site.

3. Turn your blog into a podcast

In September 2019, OfCom reported 7.1 million adults tuning into podcasts each week in the UK, yet this is still an underused platform for UK businesses.

Choose 5 of your top performing blogs (those which had the most engagement or clicks from the SERPs) and record them. You don’t have to invest in expensive recording software but it goes without saying that quality is key. Free tools like Audacity or GarageBand (for Mac users) can help you achieve a professional finish.

4. Make a video

You don’t need me to tell you that video is massive. But here are some stats for you, just in case:

85% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, with 88% of those reporting a positive ROI from video (HubSpot 2020 state of video marketing report)

If you’re not already harnessing the power of video in your marketing, it really is time to start. If you’re there already, then make sure you’re making the most of your content investment by transforming your blogs into vlogs.

As well as using them to populate your YouTube or Vimeo channel, include the videos on your website as an alternative option for people who’d rather not read the article. Google will reward you for having a variety of media on your site and your dwell time will increase (good for overall SEO). And of course, share the video on your social media channels as well.

5. Use it as email content

If you’re emailing your clients or leads regularly and haven’t invested in a professional email copywriting service, you’ll probably know how hard it can be to drum up content. Time spent chasing colleagues for the article they promised you months ago, editing sloppy submissions or just drawing a complete blank on content ideas are all part of daily life for whoever’s unlucky enough to be responsible for the business newsletter.

Bear in mind that (if you’re doing it right) the main purpose of your blog content is to drive new traffic to the site from search results. No matter how much they love your brand, existing customers will not be returning to your site in droves to read the blog. But why should they miss out? Adding a couple of blogs to your newsletter will add interest and remind them of the fact you’re an industry expert. Watch your email CTR go up.

6. Turn it into a downloadable Ebook or Whitepaper

Long form, evergreen articles are perfect for free downloads and whitepapers. Take one that’s a few months or even years old (if it’s truly evergreen, it won’t be out of date) and reformat it into a nice-looking pdf, or use specialist software like Designrr’s ebook-creator to make something beautiful.

Promote the free download with a website Popup, a landing page (MailChimp has recently launched a simple but flexible landing page creator), on your social media channels and within your other – related – blogs.

7. Offer it up as a guest post

Sometimes, even the best blog articles can struggle to gain traction in the SERPs. If you’ve exhausted all your blog optimisation options and the article’s still not bringing you any traffic, consider offering it up as a guest post to a business with a similar target audience to yours.

Choose a website with a Domain Authority that’s the same or higher than your own (to check your DA, try Moz’s free Link Explorer tool) and offer the blog for free (Google frowns on paid link schemes). To benefit from the guest post, make sure you link to a page on your own website within the article (another, related blog article is ideal). Once a website accepts the article and it’s live on their site, delete it from your own and make sure to no-index it.

Final thoughts

What do you think? How do you re-use your blog content? Have I missed anything? Let me know in the Comments section below.

If you enjoyed this post and would like more content marketing tips, click on the FOLLOW button above or below.

Derryck Strachan is a content marketing specialist and Managing Director of Big Star Copywriting.