You’re Probably Underusing Your Content… Here’s What to Do Instead

Some of my favourite moments from when I ran my own digital marketing consulting company were chatting through my clients’ digital strategies and planning out what we hoped to achieve in the following month – these conversations got me amped up and ready to hit the ground running.

One of the pieces that I focused on with many of my clients was creating and repurposing content for blogs and social channels; it was surprising just how many businesses create something once, send it out on social a few times, perhaps drop an e-mail to their list about it but soon, that piece of content (blog post, e-book, etc.) is left to gather dust on the digital shelf.

If you’re guilty of doing this too, I have a few solutions for you!

1. Use (and Re-use) a Repurpose Strategy

If you’ve been in business for any length of time and have been writing blog posts, Facebook status updates, recording video or audio and writing and producing information products, chances are high that you are sitting on a content goldmine.

The sad reality is that most people underuse their content immensely. They spend all of their time (and money when investing in support) on creating new, new, new but they forget that their “old” stuff is just as great and hasn’t been seen by the majority of people.

When working with my clients, I helped them leverage the content they had so that they could maximize their efforts and spend as little as possible on content creation and sharing. Below you’ll find a mind map that outlines some of the things that I did with clients when working with their content.

The truth is, this is just a small fraction of how you can re-use content but when you realize the potential that exists in the content you already have, I promise you that you won’t go back to creating an enormous amount of new content all the time.

Plus, if you’ve struggled with what to put on social media, this will help you populate your accounts there, too!

2. Create a Social Media Content Database

Speaking of social media, many of my clients began their work with me with empty social accounts. When I ask why that is, their response is often, “I just don’t have enough time to create that much content!” Most of the clients I worked with believed that every network, every content location (blog, newsletter, YouTube, etc.) needs fresh content all the time.

While creating new content is something you want to work into your weekly plan, leveraging what you’ve got can also be part of that and it can fill in the gaps when you just don’t have time to write something new.

What we did for our clients, and something you can easily do for yourself, is set up a social media content database.

Usually this is a Google Doc and we pull social media updates from all existing content and add it to the Google Doc, sorted into helpful categories. Then, when we are ready to populate the social channels, we use a tool like Hootsuite to copy/paste the content into. It works wonders to fill in the gaps when needed.

The best part about this is that social media moves really fast. If you run through your entire database and it takes three to six months to use up all the content, it’s not a big deal to start over again as people likely didn’t see it the first time and if they did, it’s been quite some time and they probably won’t remember it.

3. Leverage the “From the Archives” Strategy

Further to what we were discussing in the first two tips, leverage the “from the archives” strategy to keep your social media networks populated. Your audience doesn’t expect you to keep them on the edge of their seat all of the time with fresh, new content. They just want to see your material in whatever format you’ve got it in.

When I worked with Danielle LaPorte, one of the things we did weekly was pull a “from the archives” post to highlight an older post that was still relevant and juicy. This allowed our new audience members to see the old content, even if they missed it, and long-time audience members a chance to go over it again.

Old content often holds new lessons for people so don’t be afraid to re-use it!

The best way to freshen up old content is to create a new graphic for it using a tool like Canva. This will allow you to put a new look on it and catch your audience’s attention in a unique way.

To close out, don’t be afraid to re-use and repurpose your old content. It’s there, you’ve done the work for it already and you should leverage it to see the most reward.