Making content marketing easier by re-using blogs

I often talk about the importance of blogging for your business. Blogging got me to number one on Google as a virtual assistant in Derbyshire and it has been a great way to generate new leads for my business as people can see my knowledge and expertise at a glance.

Something I haven’t really touched on before is how you can make your content marketing even easier by re-using your blogs.

Known within the marketing industry as “repurposing”, all I’m talking about here is how to take the core content from a blog and turn it into something else, such as a video, meme or a downloadable freebie.

So, let’s get discover some of the ways I re-use my blog content and how you can do the same for your small business.

Use your blogs to create topics for Facebook lives and video marketing

To be honest with you, I probably use my videos to decide on blog topics as much as I use my blog posts to create videos, but that’s because the two go together so well.

Often when I share my blog posts on social media, I get a lot of comments, alternative points of view and questions about the topic. These are perfect to use as the basis for a video that enables you to re-use the content from the blog but dig deeper and answer those comments and questions to give your target audience even more value.

You don’t have to add “more” though, and you don’t even have to brave going live either. Websites like Lumen5 will turn your blogs into text-based videos with music that you can share on your website and social media for your audience that prefer something more visual than text-based.

Blogs are a great source of social media content

I’m not just talking about sharing your blogs on social media here (although you absolutely should!) but re-using the text to create memes, quotes and infographics.

A ton of text on a webpage can be difficult to read at times, so breaking it down into smaller and easy to access chunks that you can splash around your social media is a great way to get the same information across.

In fact, it’ll work better because 1) you’ll link back to your blog where they can read the entire piece and get the “full picture”, but you’ll also be 2) creating lots of touch points that help your audience and establish your credibility as a business owner and knowledgeable in your field.

It takes on average 8 touch points for a prospect to become a viable sales lead. A touch point is literally how many times they touch upon you/your content online and see what you’re about. A monthly blog creates one touch point, but if you can re-use it as a video and a few memes, you can see how easy it is to get noticed by your target audience.

Successful blogs are a great source of lead magnet inspiration

You’ve probably heard the advice that you should have at least one “lead magnet” on your website to attract people into your circle of influence and convert them from prospect to customer. A lead magnet can be anything from a downloadable freebie like a “how to guide” or mini-course, through to a discount off a product or service.

The most common example of a lead magnet is a downloadable that can be accessed when you’ve signed up to a mailing list (although that opens up a can of GDPR worms), I have only recently starting to build a mailing list again after the success of having my downloadables available for the 5th birthday of my business.

Your blogs can help you determine what’s popular and useful to your audience (by checking out your website analytics), learning from any comments or questions that have been raised around it, and then using the content as a basis for your freebie.

Some examples might be:

• Turning a blog about getting started with Mailchimp into a 5 day email challenge
• Creating a website essentials checklist for creating a new website from a blog about the same topic
• Turning a how to audit your website for GDPR into an audio file that people can listen to as they work through the steps on their own website

As you can see, there’s a whole range of options you can turn your blog into to make the most out of your content marketing. That’s why I love blogs so much, they work so well for SEO and establishing your authority as a business owner while giving you a wealth of opportunities to quickly and easily create new pieces of content without having to go back to the notepad and paper for a brainstorming session.