Whenever I’m with a new client or talking on social media or content marketing at a seminar, the question I am most frequently asked is;
“How can I consistently come up with new material for my blog, my Facebook page, my LinkedIn posts, etc…”
I’m going to let you into a little secret – you don’t have to! It’s not about creating fresh content every day, it’s about creating valuable content for your clients, consumers or prospects, and then ensuring that content reaches as many people as possible; it’s about extending the reach of the content you do have.
But where does it all start? That depends, but let’s take a hypothetical situation…
The Media Release
Your company has just created a “widget” or “service” that is brand new to the market, it is going to change your customers lives, by saving them time and money. This is a great news story, you have identified a problem your market had, and you have solved it, what’s more you’re the first person to solve it. So the first place you might publish this content is as part of a media release. Through this channel you may target people who already know about your products or services, but you will undoubtedly also reach a new audience.
The Blog Post
Now that you have released this story to the media, you’ll want to tell the people who are already engaged with you. First stop…. Your blog. Now here’s the important part, when you write for your blog, you’re not tooting your horn, you may well be the first company to create said “widget” or “service”, but shift the focus, because here the only person that matters is your end consumer. You need to tell them that you’ve identified the problem they have and that you’ve solved it, you are going to make their life easier.
Your Social Channels
Share your news throughout all the channels you use. But re-purpose the content for each channel.
You Tube – You might upload a video of your new product in action, or even better a video of a happy customer telling people why it’s changed their lives.
Instagram – A picture paints a thousand words, be sure to stamp your Instagram image with your logo, brand recognition is really important and here is where you develop a unique hashtag for your story or product #mynewwidget
Twitter – This is a goody, because you can take several small (120 characters or less) quotes or sections from your blog post and tweet a link to the blog’s unique URL a number of times. I say 120 characters or less, because you want to leave enough room for other users to retweet you.
Facebook – Use this similarly to Twitter. However, remember you’re not limited to 140 characters. So you can add more information to your status updates, longer snippets of the original blog post or even statistics. You could even use an image overlaid with the quote you have chosen from your blog content. Be sure to always include that URL that links back to the blog post though.
LinkedIn – Recreate the whole post on this platform as a LinkedIn long form published post.
Pinterest – You can use an image overlaid with quotes you have chosen from your blog content, or create a more detailed infographic to cover more about the story you’re telling.
Also remember that if you received media coverage from your original press release you can reinforce your message by re-sharing the content through your social channels again, this time as links to the digitally published stories by third parties.
Your Newsletter
Once a week, or once a month, dependent on how often you’re creating content, use your email marketing software to send out a round up of all your posts to your database. Rather than publish the entire post, include links back to the original content on your website (blog). You’re trying to achieve a click through rate.
Remember that most email marketing software programmes will also let you recreate and resend newsletters to new segments. So if you have generated a number of subscribers you can send them older newsletters, as long as the content is still relevant and valuable.
A Downloadable E-Book or Webinar
Once you have built up a library of good content you can start to develop e-guides or webinars. Offering these to people in exchange for their email address is a great way to build your database.
It’s not over…
As long as content is still relevant and valuable it remains “evergreen”. You can and should re post links to those blog articles weeks or even months down the track. It’s a good idea to check your analytics and see which posts people have engaged with the most, they are often your “evergreen” posts. If some of the content is a little out of date, use the content you can, update the rest and recreate it as a new blog post.
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