Stretch your content – turn one blog into 10 assets
AS PUBLISHED ON THE STUFF WEBSITE
The truth is that continually creating new content – whether it’s for your blog, or another marketing channel – takes up a lot of valuable time.
Yes, regularly publishing content positions you in the market and brings in prospects, and therefore income – but if it’s eating into working hours, then it can feel counterproductive, and something’s got to give.
Work it
The smart solution is simply to make your content go further. Stretch it. Each piece of original content – a 700-word post, for instance, or a vlog or podcast – can be repurposed for other channels and formats, from social media posts to video scripts to gathering them into an e-book.
There are multiple benefits to stretching content. First, you’re freeing up more time for chargeable work. Also, using a wider range of communication channels enables you to reach not only a greater number of prospective clients, but a broader cross-section too. Because you’re covering more formats, you’ll be connecting with clients on the level that works for them. Not to mention a much greater ROI for each content piece.
Triangulate it
The stretching process can be visualised as a triangle. Forming the apex is a single, long-form piece of content: your anchor piece. Below it is a broader layer representing a wider range of repurposed posts or snippets. Then a final broad layer represents the full range of material you extract from your original anchor.
Curata’s e-book, The Content Marketing Pyramid, illustrates this process as a layered pyramid – from the ‘high-effort and rare’ material at the apex to the ‘low-effort and often’ base.
Precisely what form of anchor you start with – white paper, long-form blog post, vlog, podcast, etc. – depends partly on your creative scope, but also on how you plan to atomise that content.
Here are a few ways to approach it:
White paper: Pick three or four key points from the anchor piece and rewrite them into micro-posts for your blog or LinkedIn, or for a series of emails to drive readers back to the original material – which you can offer as a downloadable pdf ‘lead magnet’ in exchange for their contact details. If you commissioned graphics for your white paper, they can be repurposed for Instagram, LinkedIn, SlideShare and other visual channels.
Blog post: Much of the above applies here. You could also record yourself reading the material – and even film yourself recording it – to produce a podcast or vlog, which can direct prospects back to your website. Another option is to grab a pull quote and get your graphic designer to overlay it onto an image for social media. Only a fraction of your followers see the original blog share on their feed, so make sure you share it again over time with different snippets, pull quotes and images.
Vlog: Video, broken into chunks, converts naturally into video-based blog posts. Or, if you’re prepared to add more content, use segments of a video interspersed with new interviews to create a series for YouTube to draw in subscribers.
Podcast: Transcribe it and offer it as a downloadable pdf, via Facebook or LinkedIn. Text, after all, is key to search engine optimisation. You could also post micro-excerpts that lead viewers back to the full podcast on your website.
However you break down that anchor material into smaller formats, remember always to finish with a call to action – whether it leads people to your other channels or to get in touch with your business.
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Aggregate it
The alternative to atomising your existing content is to pull it together into a new format. This is a viable option once you’ve published a substantial amount of material (in any format). So, taking again our triangle, the broad base is the wealth of material, and the apex is the aggregated format.
With a moderate amount of revision, you could collate blog posts, or even white papers, into an e-book pdf, which can serve as an additional lead magnet or income stream.
As noted above, if you’ve recorded a number of useful podcasts or vlogs, these could be converted into an online course, which positions you as a thought leader in your field.
Plan it
Your goal in all of this is to achieve a trifecta. By repurposing content, you’re making your marketing budget go further, diverting useful time towards chargeable work, and reaching more prospective clients through a wider range of channels.
Once you’ve gone some way down this path, when creating or commissioning new content, you’ll be able to preplan how your material will serve multiple uses; content stretching then becomes part of your overall strategy.
Use a shared planning tool to keep your team and suppliers working to the right frequency, on the right channels, and with the right spread of content. Tools such as Monday.com’s communications planning boards are a way to keep everyone informed and tracking progress. Ours studio utilises the automations inside Monday for greater accuracy and flow in our deliveries.
Create a library
When every article or case study is repurposed into 6-10 pieces of content, you soon build a lot of valuable assets that can be reused again and again.
Create a folder structure by keyword, so when you are developing each month’s content, you can have a spread of themes and ideas to keep your audience engaged.
Atomising and stretching content is something we do for all our clients, so they get a much higher return on investment than one article alone can offer.