It's Time for Marketers to Repurpose Content

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Repurposing content is a critical priority for connecting with customers now. The pandemic has altered how customers search for information, and new trends among platforms have altered the options for every kind of marketing imaginable. 

In an earlier post, I highlighted analytics reporting that can help you identify your evergreen content, which is content that attracts people over time.

This post is a follow-up to guide how you can best repurpose that content for social media.

Identifying a customer audience, as a starting point, is now well-worn advice. What has changed is that you must re-imagine specific activities about the audience. You can start by asking questions:

The answer to these questions can spark ideas on how evergreen posts can be reused. Look at the topics of your evergreen post and consider technology associated with the topic and if the value to the customer has evolved from when the content was first published.

You will also want to look at how other departments can support your marketing channel choices. For example, sales teams benefit from repurposed content. Sales contacts are often saddled with poor content to show their leads. Marketers can help craft and coordinate materials with sales teams content references and realistic use cases that can be mentioned during a sales call. Online content can also enhance discovery strategies for RFPs.

Related Article: How to Use Google Analytics to Renew Content Marketing

Those activities can then be applied to decisions on repurposing content that helps you juggle multiple touch points from multiple platforms. You create a content matrix. This can be done in a spreadsheet for simple planning or in other formats. You can use it to brainstorm three to five content titles, then identify how to best launch the content over 90-day content calendar.

Use your development time to focus on what's the most interesting ideas from the evergreen content. Ask yourself the following quick questions:

When choosing content for different platforms, recognize that each platform will have different character needs for highlighting the first paragraph and title for written content. That impacts how you describe that content and how it is discovered in the search algorithm for each social media platform, creating an "SEO" for each platform. The headline must be instantly recognizable to people, setting the table for the content that follows.

Use a character count alongside your title and content where possible. This can be created in Excel by entering the Len function, referencing the cell in which characters can be counted "=LEN().” You can set a condition formula as an indicator when a planned characters count has been exceeded. This screenshot shows how a cell turns red when a description exceeds the Twitter 280-character count.

The condition formula allows you to focus on wording the first opening paragraph and titles with your intended keyword phrases and clusters while using enough characters that fit a particular platform. The result lets followers of a business page read the comments and be enticed to view the content.

A content matrix can be elaborate — a second spreadsheet can list tasks, while another lists a calendar for posting. But, ultimately, it should help you audit the kinds of content that will be updated and indicate the campaign that will be used to draw people to that new content.

Related Article: What's the Best B2B Social Media Marketing Strategy for Your Brand?

A good addition for repurposing content is to create a video script. It makes clear what you want to say to specific problems and challenges that really are best conveyed through visuals.

A light script that frames a story is helpful for YouTube and TikTok videos. Many TikTok fun visuals are planned, such as the jump shot in a TikTok video. A jump shot is a video transition where someone creates alternate takes between two videos in which clothes, or another item, on the person is suddenly swapped.

It is not necessary to have perfect content at first. It is a good idea to use the TikTok search to find communities that represent interests and behaviors of your intended audience. You can search by hashtags and document your discoveries (you should do the same for Twitter and Instagram). You can then gradually roll out ideas and see how your experiments lead to gaining followers and building trust.

Many times marketers look to digital ads to expand the reach of a content message. But the variety of other digital options — from podcasts to live chats — means you may want to choose platforms that expand your potential audience. As I mentioned about social media trends, HubSpot discovered people use as many as seven kinds of social media platforms. Each offer different advantages. 

Examine how each differs to consider how to blend messaging. For example, Clubhouse allows a headline link in its rooms — perfect for a coming-soon type post or video to let people know what is coming down the pike. Furthermore, the replay option allows other Clubhouses an opportunity to discover the content. This approach can aid webinars, white papers and updated blog posts. Twitter Spaces can be a terrific augment to a strong Twitter following.

You should also consider how content can be placed as an NFT and given as exclusive access via a token. An NFT creates an authorization for content, making it an asset. That gives a person an ownership experience akin to that of a deed to a house. Tokens provide access that asset. This Web3 approach to assets turns the content into something special and personal. Brands are discovering that combining tokens and NFTs is a personalization opportunity that can make content feel exciting and raise the customer experience.

Related Article: Is Web3 a Buzzword? Or the Real Deal?

It may be hard to stitch a complete picture together from all your platforms. But you should end up with a set of metrics that covers the following:

Use these to start your measurement campaigns and adjust according to your needs.

Another option is to pick platforms that have APIs, which share metrics data. APIs allow users from one software to access data related to features of another. Often that data are metrics, which you can import into either a Google Data Studio template as a connector or import into an open-source programming language like R and then create calculations and dashboards. 

To plan, look at the API documentation to see what data is accessed. You can include a developer in your team to identify dashboard choices suitable for your capabilities so that you and your team can manage any updates easily.

Keep in mind that brands have followers just like influencers do, so they are familiar with a brand's media, even if the familiarity is vague. These followers can spot when old content appears, so marketers must ensure substantial changes appear front-and-center, and that supporting details are available to loyal customers.

Repurposing content is not easy, especially with so many choices available, but now is the right time to bring old content into a new era of live chat, NFTs and renewed information for an internet-savvy audience.