Content marketing for non-techies: 7 tips for repurposing content

Creating high-value content is no easy task. Once you’ve taken the time to carefully select a topic your prospects will appreciate, research your topic and write it specifically for the appropriate persona, should you call it quits?

If you’re like most content marketers, brainstorming fresh topics can become laborious after a while. The good news is your posts don’t have to face a “one and done” fate. There are several tips out there for repurposing content, but many of them seem a little overwhelming for those of us who aren’t geeks (no offense, geeks).

Here are a few simple ways non-techies can revamp, recycle and repurpose content to keep the momentum going:

1. Keep the meat, change the sides. With a little homework, you can turn a post written for lawyers into one that is relevant for physicians or some other high-value audience. If the overall premise of the post is practical advice or best practices, the majority of it should be universal. Research stats, examples and other practices that apply to the new audience, apply them and your post is meaningful to an entirely new group.

2. Create a “best of” post. Review your stable of content and pull out the very best tips, tricks and advice you ever gave. Organize this gold mine of content into a format that makes sense, then turn it into a blog post. Or better yet, a series of blog posts (you’re welcome).

3. Group posts on a similar topic into a white paper. Sometimes, the sum is greater than the parts. Review your previous posts and find three or four that relate to a similar topic of interest. Write a compelling title and an intro that summarizes your key points, then promote it as a white paper on your site and social networks.

4. Republish elsewhere. Think outside of your own blog. Revise the content slightly for the new venue, whether it’s LinkedIn Publisher, SlideShare or some other platform, and you have the opportunity to reach a new set of followers with only a few small tweaks.

5. Turn a comment on a post into another post. If you’re getting thought-provoking questions and comments, congratulations. People are actively engaged in your content. Why not turn their questions into your opportunity to be an expert? Take the comment on your post and expand upon that topic in a follow-up post. Be sure to be respectful to the original commenter, as not to scare anyone else away from making comments on your posts in the future.

6. Turn your stats into infographics. Who can resist reading an infographic? There’s just something about seeing information presented visually that resonates with readers. Visme is a cool new website that allows even non-designers to create custom infographics. Pull a few interesting stats from a post and give it a shot.

7. Pitch it as an idea for guest blogging on another site. Research other sites with similar audiences to yours. If you don’t see anything too close to your post, pitch it as a guest blogging idea. Of course the content will need to be refreshed, since you won’t want to botch this opportunity to impress what could be a very well-established audience base.

For those of you feeling overly ambitious in repurposing your content, you can also step up your game with these slightly more technical tactics:

• Record a reading of your post and turn it into a podcast

• Break your content up into bite-size bits and hire a designer to create an ebook

• Record a video discussing the post and your POV with another expert

Want to learn about getting more mileage out of your content? Contact me at heather@rep-ink.com.