Content Marketing for Small Business

Content marketing is a great way to position yourself and your business as a trusted expert. It’s also the cornerstone of your online strategy – content attracts prospects and clients to your website in a way the glossiest ad never could.

But finding the time to create content isn’t always easy. Publishing a weekly blog is hard enough for most small businesses and hiring someone to do it for you isn’t always realistic.

This is where “repurposing content” comes into play. Repurposing content – i.e. changing the format of existing content or changing the target audience for it – is a great way to manage your content strategy without spending everyday writing!

Here are eight ways your small business can start repurposing content:

Maintain a Blog

Blogs are a great way to draw traffic to your site and position you as a trusted expert in your field. But your blog is also a great starting off point for developing your content strategy. Aim to post 1-2 blogs per week. Some post more. But 1-2 weekly posts should be enough so that you have a solid stable of content. This will help keep readers coming back and to give you plenty of material to repurpose. Look through your blog posts and find the most popular ones in terms of traffic, social shares, email open rates, etc. Popular content on your own blog site stands a good chance of being popular in other formats.

Repurpose Blogs on Article Distribution Sites

Here’s another example of getting more mileage from your blog and to get more traffic back to your site. Re-write your blog posts for article distribution sites like eHow, eZine, HubPages, and other free articles sites. This helps build external links. The more content that links back to your site the more clout you’ll get from search engines and your site could rank higher. It also extends your audience to sites that have an established readership. You may need to make a few changes to your blog so as not to confuse search engines. For example, change the title, come at the topic from a different angle, or re-write it with a different audience in mind.

Turn Your Blog Into a Video

This is a lot easier than it sounds. Simply select key points from your blog (“how-to” and tip-based blogs are great for this) and record audio. You can accompany it with a slide show, film yourself, or use good old pen and paper to communicate key takeaways (here’s an example). Then introduce the video in a new blog, via social media, your newsletter, and host it on YouTube and Vimeo.

Share Presentations

SlideShare and Docstoc are useful, SEO-friendly, vehicles for sharing that last stellar presentation you gave. Choose content that can be easily communicated visually. For example, an explanation of how your new product fits in the marketplace.

Write an eBook from Your Blogs and Vice Versa

If you’ve been blogging long enough, it’s likely that there are recurring themes in your blogs that could be woven together to create an eBook. eBooks can be offered as PDFs or converted into flip book formats using software like Flip Builder or FlipSnack. Offer downloadable assets on your website. Be sure to put a lead capture device on your landing page so that you get the contact info of those who download it. eBooks can also have a shelf-life offline. Print them out offer them as giveaways at events.

Once your eBook is created, find ways to promote it and, of course, blog about it!

Create an Infographic

Everyone loves infographics; they’re easy-to-read and invite social sharing. They’re also surprisingly simple to create, especially if you’re working from existing content. Use a service like Easely.ly and Piktochart, both of which offer templates that you can customize with your own content such as survey results, “how-to’s” from your blogs, and so on.

Break Articles into Chunks

Look for ways to expand on ideas or content that you’ve already explored in a blog. For example, if you wrote a list-based blog like “The Ultimate Guide to Cash Flow Management”, look for ways to break it down and explore each point in your list in more detail across other articles.

Repurpose Live Events

Workshops, webinars, presentations – can all be repurposed to create other content (and generate leads). Why not record a video or audio podcast of your latest customer workshop or training session? Offer a segment of it as a teaser on your website, and encourage viewers to sign-up to receive the complete session.

Webinar content is also a great source for blog material or the basis of a white paper or eBook. Don’t forget to use the blog to promote an on-demand version of the event too.

How have you repurposed content? What’s worked for you? Send us your thoughts on Facebook or Twitter.