You understand the pain of the women you serve, and you’re full of ideas for your blog and email list. You know how to connect with what people are going through and express how you can help them.
The problem?
It takes a long time to create high-quality written content. It takes energy to craft your message perfectly, so that the women who read it say, “Yes! That’s me!”
(Don’t want to read? Get the essentials in this short video!)
You also know that writing once isn’t enough. You need to stay connected with your audience by offering the ideas and inspiration they crave, and reminding them you’re here to help.
But where do you find the time, energy, and resources to get all this writing done while also running the rest of your business?
Thankfully, there are strategic ways to reuse and repurpose your written content in other forms so you can get more results from each of your content creation efforts.
In this article you’ll learn 9 easy ways to reuse your long-form content. Using these methods, you’ll get more mileage out of the content you spend time and money creating.
How to repurpose my blog content for email marketing – and vice versa?
Many clients ask, what’s the difference between my blog articles and my email marketing content? The answer is: you decide.
There are two schools of thought about blog vs. email content:
- Strategy 1: Make blog and email content different. This strategy makes the case that when a person gives you something as valuable as their email address (aka access to their inbox) it’s best to repay it in kind. You can do this by sending your highest-quality, most personal content via email. Your blog, on the other hand, is free to the masses. Making your blog content SEO-friendly might be a higher priority than making it personal.
- Strategy 2: Make blog and email content the same. This strategy says that many people who are interested in your products or services are not going to remember to check your website – so remind them via email! This strategy is also effective for driving traffic to your website. Offer the first portion of your blog article in the email and include a compelling CTA (call to action) linking to your website, where the reader can get the rest of the article.
A great way to decide which email marketing strategy is best is to try both. Measure how they work and ask yourself these two questions:
- Do you get more engagement using strategy 1? If so, is it because the content is so personal? Maybe you get heartfelt replies with this strategy.
- Do you get more clicks to your website using strategy 2, because your readers want to finish the article from the email?
Try each strategy with at least 10 emails before drawing a conclusion. Then, pick the winner!
On the other hand, you might have a gut feeling that one strategy is a better fit for your business. If that’s the case, go with your gut.
Your intuitive sense is a form of data. Intuition come from subconscious knowledge and observations formed over years of experience. If one strategy grabs you that’s all the reason you need to try it. (Make sure you track your metrics though. If you’re not seeing the results you desire, it might be time to try a different strategy.)
If you select Strategy 1, you can still repurpose your blog and email marketing content:
- Take your most popular email marketing content (best open and click-through rates) and six to 12 months later, review it, update it, and publish it to your blog!
- The reverse strategy also works. Take your most popular blog posts (based on total pageviews or organic search traffic), pare them down and add personal content. Then send them via email.
If you choose Strategy 2, then it’s clear how to repurpose your blog and email marketing content (i.e. they are the same content).
For example: my client Pam of Mindful Decluttering & Organizing prefers the first strategy: she likes to use different content for her blog and her emails. She hates it when people make you click away from email to read a full article! (Note: If you hate something, it’s probably not the right strategy for your business. It doesn’t mean the strategy is wrong – just not the best fit for you!)
However, Pam loves to strategically reuse content. Last year she wrote an email about how to declutter if you’re not Marie Kondo. It was one of her most popular emails, with over a 30% open rate!
Using its popularity as inspiration, the next step was to write a blog post on the same subject. The blog post went into much more detail than the email and sure enough, it became the third most popular blog post on Pam’s website!
How to repurpose my blog/email content on other platforms?
By using your content in multiple ways you save yourself time and money while enhancing your exposure. Women are looking for the solutions you provide, but some of them may prefer a different platform. Click to Tweet!
That’s why it’s important to publish your content in multiple places:
- Publish your best content on LinkedIn
After you publish content to your website, make sure to share it on LinkedIn, too. There are three ways to do this: by publishing the article natively on LinkedIn Pulse, by sharing it as a content upgrade in your feed, and by publishing it in the groups you are part of. I recommend doing all three! - Partner with your colleagues
Are there micro-influencers in your niche that you can partner with? How about people who offers services that complement your own? Or your business-friends? Offer your content as a guest post! Some prefer that guest posts be original content, but many will be happy to share a version of your content as a guest feature (if you’re concerned about duplicate content, read Myths about Duplicate Content).- Make it more relevant by using examples that apply to your collaborator’s audience – perhaps they can suggest some. Not only does this enhance your exposure and generate inbound links to your website, it also gives your collaborator a break from creating fresh content.
- Publish your content on Medium
Medium and its affiliates are another great option for spreading your content beyond your own website.
How to repurpose my blog/email content in other formats?
Some people prefer to receive content in different mediums: sound, video, or graphic. Can you repurpose your content in one of these forms?
- Audio: record yourself reading your blog post. Yes, it’s really that simple! You could even turn it into a podcast, but a simple audio recording that you include at the top of your article or in your email is plenty. That way, people can listen to your content while cooking dinner or commuting.
- Video: do a Facebook or Instagram live talking about the subject of your content. You *could* simply read it aloud, but it would be more interesting to take a conversational approach. Ask for your audience’s opinions. Workshop some examples. Once the Live event is complete, download it and add it to your website.
- Graphic: could your content be turned into an infographic? Or heck, even a flow chart that you draw on paper and scan? Visuals catch the eye in a different way than even the most clever and compelling titles and headlines.
How to repurpose your blog/email content by bundling it into a product
Do you have a number of themes or topics you discuss on your blog and in your emails? Perhaps you’re a mentor and coach who helps women let go of fear and embrace their desires, like my client Karen. One of the topics Karen frequently discusses is pleasure, via live videos, emails to her list, blog posts, featured guests, and more.
Bundling all her content about pleasure into one product would be a great way to make the content go farther. Even better, it would serve her clients and prospects, who are eager for resources and information on the topic. Karen could bundle written content into an ebook and compile video content into a webinar. These products could be used as lead-magnets on her website, or even be made available for sale.
How to repurpose my blog/email content with cornerstone content?
Cornerstone content in and of itself is a subject for another article, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it here.
Cornerstone content is a long-form (even longer than a blog post) article on your website that provides a comprehensive overview of one of your brand themes. It acts as a “hub” for that theme: it links to your blog posts on related sub-themes, and those blog posts link back to the cornerstone content. It serves your readers by connecting them with the information they need. It also supports your website’s SEO.
Your most popular content is a great signal of the kind of cornerstone content to put on your website. This can go in both directions:
- Use your most popular content to inform the cornerstone content you create. How do you figure this out? Take a look in Google Analytics a your most popular website pages and blog posts. What common themes unite them? Use these themes as the base for your cornerstone content and subsequent blog posts.
- For each theme that emerges, brainstorm related topics that you can reference in the cornerstone hub and explore in detail in future, in-depth articles.
- Use your cornerstone content as a theme foundation, providing a broad overview of the topic and the many ways it relates to your clients and your brand. Then embellish each component in its own blog post with detail, examples, inbound and outbound links, images, and more.
- Once you have a theme for your cornerstone content, you can write blog posts on related topics that serve your readers and link back to your cornerstone content hub. Cornerstone content is rarely “finished” – as your business grows you will find more sub-themes to write about and link to your hub!
Let your content thrive
The problem for you is rarely I don’t know what to write about. If you’re a woman in business and provide services or products to other women, you know your niche well.
Don’t let even a crumb of your knowledge and expertise go to waste! When you put energy into writing content for your blog or email, give yourself, your business, and your audience the gift of making that content go as far as it can.
It will help you connect with and serve more women. It will make your marketing more efficient and versatile. It will also save you time, energy and money. What’s holding you back?
If you’d like to get more out of your blog and email content but you’re not sure where to start, I hear you! Let’s set up a free 30 minute consultation to figure it out. Reach me at eva @ simplyputstrategies . com and we’ll set up a chat.
(To learn how to repurpose your content on your social media platforms, check out 5 Resourceful Ways to Repurpose Blog Content Lest it Die in Internet Anonymity)
Care to share?
You have to overcome a lot of inertia to share on social media! I’ve made it easy:
- Facebook: When you create great content, you want to get as much as you can out of as possible. Take a look at these 4 ways you can reuse blog content on other platforms/websites/mediums to optimize your hard work AND to make sure your message gets out to the people who need to hear it. http://bit.ly/cleverly-reuse-blog-content by @SimplyPutStrategies
- Twitter: When you make great content, you’ll want to use it in as MANY ways possible! Learn 4 clever ways 😏 to reuse your blog content in other places http://bit.ly/how-to-reuse-blog-content to feel smart/optimize your work/be cool. #contentmarketing #digitalmarketing #blogger by @evajannotta
- OR retweet this!
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BhukTWvFUCF/
- Pin this post! 👇
