The number one complaint/concern I hear from my SEO clients when it comes to content marketing is that they don’t know what to write about. The number two complaint/concern is, even if they do have a list of topics ready to go, no one on their staff has the time to commit to a heavy content marketing campaign. To both of those I say, “Oh yes you do!” Content marketing isn’t nearly as hard as most site owners think it is, even if looking at a 6 month editorial calendar can be a little intimidating.
An easy to solution to your content marketing woes is content recycling.
Content recycling (or repackaging) is when you take a piece of content, say a new product page on your website, and repurpose it to fit different platforms. Unlike article spinning, you are not taking the same piece of content and submitting it to dozens of places without changing anything other than a few keywords. Content recycling involves rewriting/reformatting the content so it is unique, but holds onto the same key points and message as the original piece of content.
Here are a few ways you can recycle your old content:
Turn “Top Ten Ways to X” posts into 10 unique posts.
Each of those bullet points can probably be expanded upon in a post of their own. A strong business blog needs to be consistently updated with fresh content to keep both the search engines and your readers interested. You could be sitting on dozens of potential blog posts when you start digging into your lists!
Turn presentations into webinars.
Remember that PowerPoint presentation you gave at an industry conference in the summer? Why not use it as the backbone of your company’s winter webinar? Provided that the information is still relevant, use it to your advantage and save yourself the trouble of preparing a new webinar on the same topic.
Embed videos into blog posts.
The search engine spiders can’t watch a video in the same way a person can. And if you are only posting your company’s videos to video sharing sites like YouTube you are missing out on a huge segment of your audience. You probably get far more visitors to your blog than you do your YouTube channel, right? Take your latest video and embed it into a blog post for your loyal readers to see. Write a brief description or full transcript so the search engines can “read” your video as well to get added SEO benefit.
Add press releases to your website
Create a company news section on your website and post tweaked versions of the online press releases you send out through paid PR distribution websites. It’s news about your company, which is great for branded keyword searches, and can help drive traffic to your site. Why let the distribution site get all the visitors?
