Several paragraphs into a white paper, I spotted a sub-headline that stood out from the rest.
It wasn’t the title of the white paper – which had long since been prettied up and hung behind a registration page – but it should have been. That subhead was snappy and offered the potential for that content to catch a second wind as another blog post.
That is in essence what content repurposing is all about – adding a new perspective and in the process leveraging the investments already made in the content.
What repurposing is not – is a cut and paste operation. It is not a process that merely takes copy verbatim from one website and transfers it to another.
Repurposing is beneficial because it brings built-in content disruption. Every time you published – a post, study, ebook, or even news coverage – that event should trigger a sequence of sharing actions. Content that’s been effectively repurposed provides the opportunity to run through that sequence again. And again.
Most B2B marketing organizations don’t do this enough. Research shows upwards of 60-70% of B2B content goes unused. Marketing cranks out ebooks and white paper – and presentations and speeches – and then we forget about it after a single use.
The key to repurposing in content marketing is to add value along the way. Weave in new data or commentary. Polish it up again and make it better with every iteration.
It helps to get a fresh pair of eyes and have a different writer to do it. Even the best writers sometimes can’t see the forest for the trees when it comes to their own work.
That’s how we fall into the trap of burying a subhead with potential.
Note: A version of this post was originally published on Sword and the Script under the title Repurpose Does Not Mean Regurgitate in Content Marketing
Photo credit: Flickr, scott1346, Cadillac Ranch in Texas (CC BY 2.0)