It happens almost imperceptibly. One day you’re wearing short sleeves, walking the dog after dinner, enjoying fresh produce. The next, you’re huddled in wool, watching the sky get dark from the window of your 4:00 meeting. You know the cold is setting in—it’s not exactly a surprise. But somehow you’re never quite prepared for the shorter days, the heavy jackets, the longer store lines…
Content marketing sometimes follows a similar cycle. Seasonality creates lulls. Prospects seem sluggish, and your enthusiasm for creating new, exciting messages about your business starts to wane.
Consider this your fall wakeup call! Whether you write your own blogs and white papers, or you work with an outsourced marketing partner to showcase your expertise, the coming months do not have to be a slow season for content.
Here are five ways to reuse and revive the content you’ve already written, without sounding like a broken record.
1. Get strategic with social media.
Don’t be afraid to dig up links to some of your older articles and offers, then re-introduce them to your social streams. Why? For one thing, you’ve hopefully gained some new prospects since the posts were originally published and promoted. For another, promoting something once or twice hardly guarantees that it was seen. It’s estimated that only about 16-17% of Facebook fans will see your post in their news feed. And 49% of Twitter users either never or rarely check Twitter, says Search Engine Journal.
Just remember to temper your self-promotional posts with links and news from other sources. This demonstrates your genuine interest in a topic. Socially promoting your content alongside reputable sources is an essential part of link building for SEO.
2. Expand a blog post.
What was your most successful blog post to date? Which title generated the most traffic? Which posts prompted readers to dig deeper into your site—or even to complete a lead form? Building on an effective blog is one of the best ways to create an eBook, white paper, webinar, or other gated offer. You’ll save time because the framework and the interest level are already there. Remember to use any reader comments/questions to firm up the material. You could even add a poll question to the original post, and incorporate results in your expanded content piece.
3. Rethink lead nurturing emails.
Most of us are diligent about nurturing new leads. We send follow-up links and thank you emails, in an effort to keep buyers moving through the sales funnel. But after the first cluster of conversions, we tend to move on—planning the next campaign even though we know B2B buy cycles are typically pretty lengthy.
According to Jupiter Research, relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. So even if months have passed since your last contact, a simple lead nurturing campaign that starts with a relevant question like, “Are You Still Researching XYZ Service?” can recharge your old contact list and the selling points of an old offer.
4. Leverage current events.
Ideally, your B2B content is designed to answer customers’ questions or address their business priorities. But current events—in politics, technology, industry regulation, or consumer trends—can often shift those priorities. A list of guidelines you wrote five years ago may now solve a top-of-mind concern. By quickly revising the introduction and adding some updated statistics, an existing piece can become a hot seller. Or you can revisit an old topic with a fresh new take. For example, see how we used the 2014 World Cup advertising insights to reframe our best practices for achieving social media marketing goals.
5. Optimize great pages with keywords.
As the subject matter expert in your field, you don’t need traffic reports to tell you which of your site pages are the most informative, most compelling, or most uniquely valuable. Unfortunately, your target audience may not be finding these pages because the content is misaligned with their search terms. How can you ensure your best content will be seen? Check out our website optimization interview with SEO Consultant Marcia Morgan and feel free to consult this one-page SEO Guide from Google.
Don’t let your content get stuck in the cold! You can use these 5 content marketing tactics to repurpose and revitalize your older materials and give them fresh legs to stand on. And if you need more help with creating lead-generating content, check out our free white paper: Drive Sales with Content that Converts.
