B2B companies have long used content to build trust and credibility with their prospective customers.
Businesses publish MILLIONS of new pieces of content daily, from blog articles to e-books to webinars and podcasts.
Take the research giant Gartner, for instance.
A quick glance at their website shows they publish content in multiple industries and formats… Every. Single. Day. Video series, webinars, e-books, blog content, and more.
Each piece of content represents hours of creation.
Take the typical blog article. Surveys show the average blog post takes four hours to write. That doesn’t include the editorial planning time spent evaluating the story options, audience fit, and prioritizing which pieces to create next.
Imagine how much MORE valuable such content can be when each blog post can also become a series of social media posts, or a webinar can become a blog post.
And for smaller companies with a content team of one or two writers? For them, repurposing top-performing content pays additional dividends.
Just last month, I had a client ask me to write an educational email promoting a two-year-old blog post. The client said the post consistently gets traffic and is still relevant, so let’s promote it.
That’s a low-lift effort for a potentially great payoff.
Promoting Old Content Pays Off
Pretend you’re a Marketing Director and notice you have a tried-and-true blog post that performed well a year ago, but now traffic has dropped off.
You review it and realize it’s still relevant.
Why not send an email to encourage prospective customers to click through to it?
Assign it to a freelancer and check it off on your to-do list.
When your customer base shows interest in a piece, it’s smart business to update and reuse it.
Another client recently had me rewrite an article that did well last year. We updated it with new statistics and a slightly different angle but otherwise it refreshed a top-performing piece.
Then, there’s content repurposing.
Content repurposing takes it to another level.
As it sounds, you’ll take a piece of content and turn it into other formats.
Content Repurposing Examples
Conference presentations, podcasts, and long articles are ripe for repurposing.
Imagine this scenario.
Three executives at a small company are all speaking at different conferences in the next six weeks. They each have slide decks and speaker notes.
They can deliver that content once on the conference stage and enjoy any accolades. They can also make that presentation earn its keep.
For example, for extra mileage, you can turn the presentation slides into a LinkedIn Carousel for another piece of content. Then, you could shape the presentation into a series of blog articles for the company website.
You could also turn those talking points into graphics to share on social media and maybe even an infographic.
That’s three different pieces of content you could get from one presentation.
For B2B companies, the problem is not a lack of content. Instead the problem is getting the most from their content and reimagining it in another format for greater impact.
3 Benefits of Content Repurposing
1. Less planning time
Identifying and prioritizing the “what” to write and “why now” takes time. Time that stretched content teams may not have. With content repurposing, you’re taking existing content and reimagining it in a new way.
2. Reach new audiences
Not everyone watches videos or listens to podcasts. When you make the material available in different formats, it appeals to different learning styles. If you’re one of those who’d rather read a well-edited transcript to watching a video, then you know.
3. Gives new life to high-performing content
Not every piece of content performs well, but when your metrics show a “winner,” it makes sense to repackage it for maximum impact. Bonus, all that hard work doesn’t go to the “content graveyard.”
Content Repurposing Is In-Demand
With the current state of the economy, many in-house teams are challenged to do more with less. They need to publish high-quality material regularly, but they may have fewer people or budget to work with.
Instead of publishing three times a week, they may have cut back to once or twice. Yet, the executives still expect business results. Content repurposing is a smart way to get more out of their existing content.
To bridge this gap, some B2B writers offer content repurposing services.
Some freelancers focus on one repurposing niche, like e-commerce writer Kaleigh Moore who turns podcast episodes into SEO-optimized articles. Others turn e-books into infographics or webinars into articles.
If this sounds intriguing, you can do it too. The same principles apply to finding content repurposing clients and content creation clients.
- Identify clients with a strong content program.
- Decide how (and what) you want to repurpose. It’s easier to sell specifics like “I turn your webinars into well-researched, SEO-friendly articles.”
- Create a brief “script” for yourself.
- Use LinkedIn and email-finding tools to ferret out potential names and contact info.
- Reach out to your prospects with your script.
- Follow up.
There are dozens of ways to slice and dice bigger pieces of content into smaller pieces for greater reach.
Now, it’s your turn. If you’re writing a blog article, offer two or three accompanying social media posts with the article. If you’re writing an e-book, offer to write a meaty article about some element in the e-book for the blog to direct traffic to the e-book.
If you’re an avid podcast listener, you could create an entire business out of repurposing podcasts into articles and social media graphics.
Go ahead and try it out!
