Remember all that content you were going to have completed before you left for holiday break? Remember the editorial calendar that was going to include all of Q1 2015 that you scaled back to be only January, 2015, that you scaled back to be … well … nothing?
The holidays were great, and you were able to only half occupy your mind with pending work deliverables scheduled for early January. If you are like me, you even planned to use some of your off time to work ahead on a few work tasks, then the holiday events and the family fun got in the way (in a good way, of course).
But you know content is important to your business, and you’re definitely not alone: 86% of B2B companies are using content marketing. If you find yourself behind in your planning of content for your company’s blog these first few weeks after the holidays, you should consider repurposing content that performed well in 2014.
Why Repurpose Content?
Sometimes it’s important to recognize that some of the best content marketing we can produce is already in the works and actually may have done quite well in 2014.
Repurposing can take the form of a summary of successful content, a breakdown of larger content into smaller blog posts, or even a wrap-up of smaller pieces of content into a larger presentation or eBook.
Our own Lee Odden has pointed out five ways to repurpose content. These five repurposing methods bear repeating here.
- Turn Powerpoint decks into articles / blog posts
- Aggregate email interviews
- Break up a long article you’ve had published
- Repurpose press releases
- Revise old blog posts
Know What has Worked and Why
Have a handle on your analytics and see what is doing best for your blog. At TopRankBlog, Lee identified some of our best social media marketing content to feature in the post Our Top 10 Social Media Marketing Posts of 2014. In looking at our blog’s analytics, Lee saw that the top read blog posts pertaining to social media marketing told a story of varying social networks, as well as social media conference coverage. The post received more than 1,300 shares on social media.
As he compiled this post, it became evident that several of the posts that he was curating were written by different TopRank team members. This offered the opportunity to repurpose the content by asking for input from each of the contributors.
I asked each contributor to the top five posts in Lee’s top 10 list, to share what they learned from putting the post together. These quotes I then used in the post 5 Lessons From Our Top Social Media Marketing Posts of 2014. By bringing in a number of different perspectives into a new blog post, I was able to earn our blog another 1,100+ social shares.
Get It On A Calendar
If repurposing some content buys you time to look ahead a bit in your blogging schedule, we highly recommend that your next step be to put together an editorial calendar. By now you’ve probably learned that editorial calendars and planning are the key to producing consistent content. Many successful marketers are already working off a Q1 2015 editorial calendar and probably have been since just before the end of the year.
There are plenty of editorial plan templates available, and many content management systems and automated marketing tools offer free templates that vary enough so that you can certainly find one that fits your needs.
If you’re looking at basic editorial calendar setup, our friends at Content Marketing Institute provide a great resource to set you up on the right path.
Repurposing On Purpose
To learn more about content repurposing, be sure to check out Lee’s presentation at Social Media Marketing World in March 2015:
How to Create Personalized Content for Specific Target Audiences Without Breaking the Bank.
Creating original content takes resources many small and medium sized businesses don’t have. Content curation and repurposing are great ways to gain more value from content investments, but at what cost to quality? Learn how to plan social content repurposing as a form of personalization that increases content relevancy, efficiency and impact.
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