How to Get the Most out of the Content You’re Already Creating

One of the greatest challenges of content marketing is having the time and resources to research and create content. Even then, the majority of content created gets little to no organic traffic, which leaves content marketers with the content conundrum: aim for quality or quantity? In reality, this is not a choice.

After all, there is no substitute for high-quality, thoroughly researched content that speaks directly to your audiences and answers the questions they are asking. The challenge is that many organizations are producing a lot of low-quality content to fill a content quota. So, it’s not really a question of whether to produce more content or better content. The answer to the content conundrum is to get more traction out of the high-quality content you are already creating—and step away from the mindset that you should be creating content for the sake of having more content.

Here are 3 content marketing strategies to get the most out of your content efforts:

1. Pillar posts and content hubs
2. Repurpose, reuse, and refresh
3. Evergreen promotion

Create pillars and content hubs to establish expertise

Okay, so you’ve found a topic your audiences care about, and you have the expertise in your organization to address it with authority. Perhaps there is an industry trend, and your company has the perfect solution. Maybe you’ve done keyword or competitive research, and you’ve found a sweet spot where you feel your company has something to say that hasn’t been said.

Whatever the motivating force, you now have a content topic—the message. Next, you need the medium. How will you structure your writing? Will it be a blog post, a whitepaper, an eBook, an infographic, a webinar, or a webpage? Instead of limiting your content to a one-and-done strategy, consider creating a content hub.

Visualize your content as a hub with spokes. In the center is your long-form content where you cover the topic completely—such as a white paper. From there, think of other ways you can get your message across. Boil your white paper down to the key messages and create an eBook or series of eBooks. Take stats from the whitepaper and create an infographic or two. Pull out key ideas and create a series of blog posts. Create a webpage where your audiences can click on all the content you’ve created on this topic.?

The key to this strategy is to make sure you provide links and obvious ways for your audiences to navigate from one piece of content to the next. Make sure the new content links to other assets that support the ideas presented.?

Expert tip: As you create new content, go back and add links from the older content to the new content.?

Sometimes, this strategy can be implemented in reverse. Look back through your content inventory, and group blogs and other assets by topic. If they aren’t already linked, create a linking strategy for them. If the topic is key to your business, you may even want to create a new webpage—or hub—where your audiences can easily find all your content on that topic.?

Give your blogs new life by identifying 3 or more that address the same topic, industry, or trend and write a pillar post that introduces each topic and links out to the existing blogs. Go back and update the links in each of the existing blogs to refer to the pillar post and the other blogs in the hub.

Creating connections between your content is helpful for your audiences looking for information and gives the search engines a clear message that you are an expert on the topic.?

Repurpose, reuse, and refresh your content

How often do you review your content inventory? Leaving content to languish on your website is a waste of time and resources. Stop thinking of your content as a completed task. Instead, think of it as a living, breathing entity that requires a little care now and again.?

Keeping a content inventory that you can sort by date, topic, industry, and any other category will help you identify opportunities to make evergreen content work. Of course, some content is meant to be timely and will not qualify for your recycle program. However, you may be surprised how much content you’ve already created that can be made new again and help keep your website content fresh and audiences engaged.

4 ways to keep your content up-to-date:

1. Identify content that had good engagement when it was first released
2. Find content that should have done better
3. Create content groups with content not associated with a hub
4. Discover content that addresses a trending topic

Once you’ve identified the content that is worthy of a refresh or that deserves a second chance, making some minor tweaks to the content can often yield very good results. Before you start updating, reread the content. Reading your older content with fresh eyes may uncover changes that would make it more appealing or engaging.

While you’re reading past content, look for opportunities to implement updates, such as:

• Keyword and semantic keyword placement: Did you use your target keywords in the first 120 words of the content piece? Are keywords and semantic keywords used in subheads and bullet lists??
• Research and statistics: Did you cite research or use statistics? If your stats are more than 2 years old, they’re probably out of date. Search for more recent research and replace outdated numbers and conclusions. Be sure to read through the asset to make sure your statements and advice match the new statistics.
• Linking strategy: Can this asset be linked to other, newer assets on the same topic? Are there external sources that support your POV and can help lend credibility? Can you add a link to this asset from newer content??
• Content hub: Do you have enough content on this topic to create a content hub?
• Images, video, etc.: Can you embed a video or images that will make this content more engaging?
• Pull quotes, bullet lists, etc.: Can the addition of pull quotes, bullet lists, or other content structures make this content asset more scannable and easier to read?

Creating and nurturing evergreen content solves two challenges: it can ease the need to create new content all the time—especially if you also have an evergreen strategy on social media—and it helps overloaded content and marketing teams ensure that the available content is of the highest quality.

Expert tip: Look for ways to get your content into the Snippets in the search results. Asking a question in the title or on the first line and then providing a succinct answer is a great way to improve findability.

Put old content back into your promotion calendar

Depending on the type of asset, you may be promoting your content through organic-only, paid+organic, and/or email channels. Regardless of the method, not everyone you are targeting is going to see your content the first time—especially if you are growing your audiences over time. For these reasons (and a few others), it’s important to implement an evergreen promotion strategy for your content.

Social media and email promotion are key to organic content marketing. If the social media person or group is not in the same part of the organization as the content team—or if that role is covered by an outside agency not reporting to content marketing—it’s imperative that the content leader be part of the social media strategy discussions and decisions.

The editorial calendar and social media calendar should reflect the same messaging and timely sharing of new content. In addition, a robust social media calendar will have room for announcements, corporate events, and evergreen content promotion. Making evergreen content promotion an integral part of social media planning ensures that updated content is getting a chance to perform again—or for the first time.

Putting high-ranking older content back into the promotion cycle once it has been reviewed and updated is an obvious choice. But, sometimes, there is a piece of content that you feel should have performed better than it did when you first published it.?

Timing, season, current events, and a wide range of other external factors could have affected the popularity of your content the first time around—or maybe you found a way to improve it for a second pass. After looking through it and providing updates, re-promoting your orphan content can yield good results.?

Of course, content that doesn’t perform well—even on the second run—can tell us as much about our content strategy and our audiences as our popular content. Use your underperforming content as a bellwether and a guide to help you refine your messaging and discover the topics your audience is most interested in learning about from you.

Expert tip: Implementing a newsletter or subscription strategy is a solid promotional tactic that allows you to surface a mix of new and evergreen content for your audiences.

Evergreen content can continue to drive audiences to your website while sending a message to the search engines that your website is up-to-date and providing the quality of content worthy of appearing on the first page of the search results. Get the most out of the content you are already creating by taking a little bit of time each quarter to keep it fresh.

If you find yourself underperforming in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), in addition to identifying new topics to attract your audiences, look to your existing content inventory for opportunities to create content hubs, write pillar posts, and refresh, republish, and repromote content that still has relevance. If you don’t change the title or the URL, you will be building on the engagement your older content got the first time.