Reuse content: How to feed your content marketing machine

It can be challenging to always come up with new material to feed your digital content marketing strategy. You want (and know you need) to get content out there, but for busy small business owners or small non-profit organizations, the idea of constantly producing new digital marketing content can feel extremely overwhelming.

On a regular basis, there are blog posts to be published, email newsletters to push out, and regular social media content to post, not to mention videos, podcasts, infographics, and more to create — all in an effort to stay connected with your audience. 

We’re here to tell you that while regular content creation is important, it does not need to be daunting. The key is to reuse and repurpose. By doing so, you are multiplying your distribution efforts without always reinventing the wheel.

There are many different ways to approach a reuse and repurpose content marketing strategy. Here’s one.

Start with a blog

As a small business owner, blogs are an excellent way to showcase your expertise. Writing regular blog posts shows your target audience that you know what you are doing. As a non-profit, writing regular blog posts is a way to stay in constant communication with, and show impact to, your donor community. It is less about showing that you are an expert, and more about pulling back the curtain on your organization to show your community how you are spending their money.

In either case, the most effective way to stick to regular blogging is to start by writing an editorial calendar. It allows you to plan topics ahead of time, keeps you consistent and on-brand and, most importantly, gives you the opportunity to avoid working at the last minute. 

Push that blog into inboxes

Your audience is busy and may not have time to check your website for the latest blog post. Take it, write a summary, add relevant links and push it out to subscribers in an email newsletter. Now, rather than waiting for your audience to come to you, you’ve gone to them.

Remember your social media audience

Next, link that blog post on all of your social media channels. Your audience will not feel spammed by this because while there is some crossover, your social media audience is not the same on each platform and those folks are not all the same as the ones who subscribe to your newsletter. By posting on all of your social channels, it ensures the maximum exposure for that single blog post. (Pro tip: Make sure to tailor the post for each platform, editing for length or hashtags, depending on the channel’s best practices.)

Then…do it again. A few days or a week later, don’t hesitate to repost that blog to your social media channels with a different image and new caption copy. When it comes to organic content, social media algorithms are not your friend, which means only a small percentage of your audience likely saw the post the first time. By pushing the content out again, you increase your chances of capturing a larger slice of your audience.

Need help getting started with that first step? We write blogs and plan editorial calendars for all types of small businesses and small non-profit organizations. Give us a shout!