When applied to marketing content, the three R’s — reduce, reuse, recycle — will save time, increase efficiency and ensure you’re getting the best bang for your content buck.
Writing articles, blogs and press releases, producing webinars and more take a lot of time. As a busy professional, you know the marketing value of creating this content, so why not get as much use out of it as you can with minimal additional effort?
Content Crown Jewel: Your Website
Your website is the best place for potential clients to learn about you and the services you offer. Driving traffic to your website should be the No. 1 goal of any content marketing strategy.
The key to bringing people to your website is posting valuable, informative content, like blogs, articles published in industry publications, videos and such
But just writing the articles and posting webinar recordings isn’t enough. You must let people know the information is there by sharing links to the content however and wherever you can.
Sharing is Caring
Social Media: Every website content post should also be shared on the social media platforms you and your company use. Once posted on a company social media page, employees should share the post on their individual profiles. If you belong to a professional association whose members would appreciate this content, you should post it on the organization’s social media groups, too.
Other Web Pages: Let’s say you’re an employment law attorney and you just wrote and posted an article about new vaccine mandates in the workplace. Be sure a link to that article appears on your online biography and the appropriate practice area descriptions, and vice-versa. You’ve brought people to your website — now keep them there with links to more information and the opportunity to cross-market.
E-Newsletter: Whether your organization individually sends every piece of content to topic-specific curated lists of subscribers or a quarterly newsletter to one list, be sure to include a link to each piece of content (not the entire post itself) in your e-newsletters. Be sure to summarize enough information in an introductory paragraph to motivate the reader to click through to the entire piece.
Email: Even if your organization sends the content via an e-newsletter, you should think about your clients and other contacts who would benefit from reading your post, and email the link to them, along with a personalized note. This is a great way to build relationships and keep you top-of-mind.
Email Signature: If your organization allows you to modify your email signature, then adding a link to your most recent content is another way to expand its reach.
Internal: Whenever your organization posts a new piece of content, everyone in your organization should know about it. Not only is this an important cross-marketing exercise, but it provides the opportunity to share with their clients and connections via social media and emails. Many organizations (TW2 included!) will send an email with links directly to the social media posts so internal stakeholders can quickly engage with the posts and share them.
Content Sharing Partner: There are businesses that, for a price, will share your content further to industry-specific lists. This ensures your content is seen by a wider swath of readers.
Additional Content Uses
Repurpose: In a 45-minute webinar, you likely cover a lot of ground. Same with a white paper or a report. Look back at this content for “nuggets” that can be pulled out as the basis for its own content. For instance, maybe you spent 10 minutes of a 45-minute recorded presentation on commercial real estate trends discussing how COVID-19 is impacting leases. Repurpose that section for an article for an industry publication, then it becomes another piece of content to share once published.
Branded Printouts: Going to a conference or a meeting with a potential client? Use your content as a handout to provide additional value and show you’re thinking of how to help others. Be sure your contact information is included!
Resharing content as described above are very direct ways for you to reach your target audience. While we didn’t discuss the search engine optimization (SEO) benefits above, it should be noted that your website’s rankings in search engines will also receive a boost from popular content and more traffic. (Feel free to contact us if you want more information about this.)
If you have questions about your content marketing strategy, TW2’s marketing content conservationists are here to help!
Denise Nix
Senior Consultant
TW2 Marketing
TW2 University is where we share interesting and helpful information we learn through our marketing and communications consulting and in our adventures connecting with a variety of professionals through virtual and in-person events. Subscribe to email updates here.