Creating content is a tough task. You have to spend time on research, writing and marking-up for it to look appealing, promoting, etc. With the many channels we have to target right now, getting productive is no longer a choice: It's what you can't do without.
For a few years now, I've been using content re-packaging to become a more productive and efficient writer.
Content re-packaging is using the existing research to create other formats of digital content. For example, one thoroughly-researched article may be re-packaged into an eBook, infographic, video, Slideshare presentation or even a smartphone app!
To better demonstrate the benefits of the tactic, let me describe what we've been doing with our Twitter chat to cover lots of channels and give more exposure to our brand.
1. One expert a week.
At the beginning of the year we committed to inviting one expert a week to talk about online marketing with our community manager... using Twitter.
We picked the hashtag #VCBuzz to let our users follow the conversation and participate. We picked the Twitter chat app to give our chat a home. After one our of chats, we collected our mentor's tweets and packed them into an article. That's how our blog has been updated every week consistently.
This way our community has been engaging with our brand weekly and we've been earning trust by featuring niche influencers on our business blog every week!
But we haven't stopped there!
2. Youtube videos (and not stopping there).
Every Twitter interview can be easily turned into a cool video using freemium tools like Animoto. All you need is copy-pasted quotes and screenshots. That's what we did on a semi-regular basis to make sure our official Youtube channel is regularly updated.
We created thematic video round-ups whenever we could curate several Twitter chats into one topic (here's an example).
Soon enough we had enough videos to put together a Udemy course(you can find more platforms like this in the list of these startup resources).
Apart from that we've also been using videos to diversify our email marketing thanks to GetResponse video feature.
So here you go: Weekly commitment resulted in the Twitter awareness, regularly-updated blog, active Youtube channel and the brand Udemy course. The latter has worked particularly well for traffic and awareness building.
3. More possible content types.
But why stop there?
We used the same quotes and screenshots to put together short PowerPoint presentations to publish at our brand Slideshare account. We were doing simple infographics showcasing best advice from our experts to promote on Pinterest and Slideshare.
At the end of the year we had enough content to put together a mobile app! Using Buildfire.com we created a mobile course compiling all our blog posts in a better-structured magazine.
Buildfire is really easy, even for a complete newbie. They have a top-notch support that basically helped me create the whole thing from scratch and it supports push notifications. We are planning to use them to send app users updates when the new chat is published: This way we'll keep them engaged. The app is still being reviewed by Apple Store, so I guess, more on that in the future articles.
Now imagine that all of those re-packaged content pieces link to our site funneling the users to convert. Besides, many of them rank for our brand name or long-tail keyword phrases directing people to our site. We have built lots of digital assets to better control our navigational search results and turn random visitors into believers.
Content re-packaging is not a low-fruit tactic: It requires lots of time, commitment and creativity. But it can boost your content marketing efforts by allowing you to target more marketing channels and build more traffic sources for your site.
