We’ve all seen it happen…
You create a handful of great blog posts and see a surge in new visits and newsletter sign ups. The traffic is rolling in and you’re feeling great about the amount of success you’re seeing from your recent content marketing efforts. You sit back, watch the traffic roll in and debate whether you should crack open the Dom Pérignon or settle for the Moët & Chandon.
Then it happens; the traffic stops, the visits slow, and the results you expected are no longer a reality.
You’ve hit a wall and have no idea what road to take to once again achieve success.
In a nutshell, your content fatigued. Your audience consumed it and they moved on to bigger and better things. That one piece of content that doubled your traffic is now outdated and you have no choice but wonder if it was more like a Baha Men single from the 90s than a Beatles classic.
So how do you get out of this slump? How do you turn your content marketing efforts around and get back to greatness?
A lot of people will simply tell you, to create more content. Vague advice like this is what keeps me up at night and makes my blood boil. To give you some advice that will actually help you in achieving success, I’ve highlighted a tried and tested approach for getting your content marketing groove back. I’ve used this tactic to take a blog post or infographic from mediocre to great. It’s the idea of repurposing your content for other channels.
Why You Should Repurpose Your Content Marketing Efforts
If you’ve heard me speak, read my book or have followed this blog long enough; you already know how much of a fan I am of the idea of blogging. I’m a true believer that any business or professional can benefit from it. It’s not just because I’ve generated thousands of dollars through my own blog. It’s because studies and research support the idea that blogging works for small and large businesses alike.
In fact, studies found that once a blogger publishes more than 50 blog posts, they are likely to generate 53% more traffic than their competition. The power of blogging cannot be denied but I’d also be the first to suggest that you don’t put all of your eggs in the blogging basket. You need to consider what other forms of content are interesting and compelling to your audience. You need to consider what other opportunities exist for you to tell your story in a meaningful and compelling way.
Instead of simply focusing on blogging, consider how you can use your blog content in other formats. Consider repurposing your blog content in other formats so it can be distributed in new ways and consumed in a more engaging manner. Basic text blog posts are great but they can only take you so far.
If you repurpose your blog content in the form of infographics, slideshares or eBooks, you will have an opportunity to generate more backlinks to your website and get creative with the content delivery system. You can distribute your slides to more people, you can use your infographics in guest posts and you can plug your ebooks at the bottom of every blog post you write.
Take for example, this blog post I wrote on back in September 2013 that consisted of nine nine content marketing tips for businesses and entrepreneurs. At the time, the blog post generated only 2-3000 views and only a handful of shares. Fast forward to November and I decided to repurpose the blog post as a Slideshare presentation and shared it with the world. Here it is:
The deck generated more than 27,000 views and drove a 24.3% increase in the number of sign ups for my recent ebook, Stand Out: The Content Marketing Guide for Entrepreneurs. The surge of sign ups and increase in awareness for my book was all related to my ability to repurpose this content into a compelling deck. If I would have simply let the blog post sit as written text on my site forever, this deck would have never been listed as top Slideshare of the Day and I would have missed out on many opportunities.
If you’re going to repurpose a blog post for a Slideshare, the best approach is to start by taking the key points and adding them to a deck. The approach I take when developing these decks is quite simple. It starts by reviewing the blog post and identifying the key points. From there, I take these points and lay them out in a power point with no design and no pretty graphics.
Here’s an example of the first few slides found in the Ultimate Guide to Instagram, a presentation that has generated over 120,000 views:
Once you’ve laid out the deck in a way that flows well and consistently pushes the reader to want more, it’s time to pass the deck over to a designer. I’ve worked with a handful of designers over the last few months and I can tell you, that the right designer can be the difference between a deck that succeeds and a deck that flops. You’ll want to work with a designer who understands the value of reading the deck and creating content that supports the story. There is a true art to putting together a compelling presentation, it’s like developing a picture book for adults (Tweet This).
As you plan your content marketing efforts for the coming months, don’t limit yourself to creating blog posts. Think about how your blog posts could live as Slideshares, Infographics and even in the form of Visual Assets or White Papers. When repurposing content from your blog, think like a DJ and remix your stories to create something better than the original (Tweet This). Joel Klettke, highlights a handful of other types of content you could create in this post where he discusses Life Beyond the Blog, I strongly suggest checking it out.
For me, it’s this creative side of our job that makes content marketing interesting.
It’s the idea of being both strategic and creative in developing content that makes our space unique yet challenging. It’s the combination of gather intelligence on what type of content will resonate and facilitating the proper craftsmanship that will allow your content marketing efforts to shine and stand out that makes every day different and every week exciting.
Now, I know repurposing content sounds like it’s a lot of work.
I know you might even think you don’t have enough time to take on something new but I’m suggesting you look in the mirror and ask how bad you really want to achieve success online. If you’re not interested in driving real results for your business, I don’t get it but I can accept it. If you do want to drive results for your business, then the tips above will help you do that. In fact, if they don’t help you, give me a shout on Clarity and I’ll tell you exactly what you can do to get your groove back. In the meantime, you should buy the Content Marketing Guide for Entrepreneurs. It’s more than 160,000 words of insights and information that will will help your content marketing efforts go from mediocre to excellent.
So there you have it… Drop me a line and please pass this along to anyone you know who wants to drive success through their content marketing efforts!
