Amanda Nelson is the senior manager of AppExchange content and community at Salesforce and was a recent guest on our podcast, B2B Nation: Smarketing Edition.
In the episode, we discussed:
- When/why you should repurpose your content
- What to consider when developing a repurpose strategy
- How to measure your content for “repurpose-ability”
- The ultimate form of repurposing: writing a book
Below are some of the highlights from our conversation.*
Repurposing should be a best practice for every marketer.
“You really don’t want to reinvent the wheel every time you create a new piece of content or campaign. What’s great about repurposing content is not only that you’re using content you already have, but you’re using your best content and finding new ways to reach your audience.
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“When a piece goes live, it’s not the end, but the beginning of promotion. You can always find new ways to reuse it and recycle it, thereby reducing the amount of time you spending creating new content.”
There are two ways to repurpose something.
“You start with that big meaty piece of content like a webinar, podcast, or ebook. That’s what takes the most time, money, and resources. It might also be gated so you’re able to generate leads from it. Once you have that content, you can slice and dice it and reuse the pieces:
- Every chapter from the ebook is a blog post, and the first chapter is a SlideShare.
- Make it a podcast, or do a webinar with the author.
- Share content from that ebook on social media.
“The opportunity to put all your focus on this big great piece of content will lend itself to lots of fruit later on. That’s the main way we typically do it.
“If you don’t have time to create a big ebook, there’s another option available. Take your best blog post, webinar, etc., and make an ebook out of that.”
There are two forms of content you should never repurpose.
“Repurposed content should fall in the top and middle of the funnel. When you get to the bottom of the funnel with data sheets and case studies, you don’t typically do a lot of repurposing. The other kind of content that isn’t repurposed often is time-sensitive content like the Oreos blackout tweet heard round the world. Definitely a one time thing.”
Engagement is important, but so is ROI.
“Shares and views are great, but is it driving ROI, revenue, or leads? Certain types of content might be more appropriate, depending on your target metrics. You can get more shares and likes, but fewer conversions, if you’re doing an infographic or a ‘clickbait’ blog post. If you want higher conversions, you might consider a blog post or ebook with fewer viewers but ones that are more active and specifically looking for that information. I actually like to repurpose a mix of different content types.”
We made an awesome repurposed campaign for Dreamforce.
“We had all of our ad partners give out pins for Dreamforce attendee lanyards. Then we gave out prizes for people with a lot of pins. One of the pieces of content we created that did well were these infographics that showed what you could wear at Dreamforce, how to dress with comfy shoes, whether to wear jeans, and so on.”
“We included the pins with that infographic and started to tie in other campaigns. The infographic was sliced and diced for each social channel, and we brought it all together for a recap blog post for Dreamforce and beyond.”
Repurposing opportunities are endless.
“If you’re constantly measuring and seeing what’s effective, you can take your top performing content and do more with it. And you should. It will keep giving you that SEO juice if you’re linking back to your site and sharing on multiple social networks.
“We had Guy Kawasaki for a webcast once, and we had him do some videos at the end with quotes and best practices. These videos linked to a blog post, which linked to the webcast, which is gated with a web form. Having that connective tissue throughout your blog posts, social channels, and online network is important.”
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B2B Nation: Smarketing is a podcast for B2B sales and marketers, featuring expert opinions and advice on the most important topics in the industry. Check out our other episodes on iTunes, or follow on Twitter: @B2BNation_Smar.
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