Content Repurposing – “Use it up, wear it out”

The survivors of the great depression have a powerful lesson to teach the marketers of today.  A prominent battle cry that came out of this era was “Use it up, wear it out, make it due, or do without”.   And never has the saying, “you have to milk a dollar out of a dime” been more true than for those in marketing.  Unfortunately, many of the lessons learned during the depression regarding thrift and frugality are often forgotten. Time and time again we see a great piece of content that performs well in its debut, only to never see it (or any component of it) again.  It’s clear that marketers are not “using their content up and wearing it out”.  Many times we become so intent on producing the next great piece of content that we move away from an existing campaign with remaining life – the “lure of catching a bigger fish takes us away from the fish on our line”. Content repurposing is a powerful strategy that enables a successful campaign to continue on in various forms for months or even years.  It allows us to get more out of our existing content and achieve the best return on our efforts.   We repeatedly see examples where repurposed content revitalizes and energizes campaigns that would have otherwise faded away. Another advantage of repurposing is certain customers prefer one type of content (eg an infographic or motiongraphic) over others and by repurposing your content into different types, you can resonate with more customers. Ideas for how to repurpose your content are endless, but here are some vehicles you should consider repurposing your original content in to once you see initial success:

• Articles
• Live Presentations
• Online Presentations (such as Slideshare)
• Videos
• Infographics
• Motiongraphics
• Interactive Graphics
• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Newsletters
• Blogs
• eBooks
• Emails
• White Papers
• Press Releases
• Interviews

The following three case studies are great examples of maximizing the life of content:  1) Social Meowdia- A few months ago we launched our “Social Meowdia” infographic; https://avalaunchmedia.com/infographics/social-meowdia-explained This infographic performed extremely well by generating thousands of social shares.  After seeing the success, we decided to repurpose the content by adding the following: Two eBooks: Motion graphic: “Social Medogia” for the dog lovers (Infographic):

Contest to benefit charity:

https://avalaunchmedia.com/paws-vs-claws

The repurposed content turned a good campaign into a great campaign.  The original infographic generated hundreds leads and opportunities, but it wasn’t until we repurposed the original content that this campaign exploded. 2) Salesforce.com Another great example is what we did with Salesforce.com after seeing success on their “How to Motivate Sales People” infographic;

http://work.com/sales_performance/how_to_motivate_sales_people

After the initial success on the infographic, we developed an eBook using the same foundation.  This has become a cool lead generator and had received thousands of downloads;

http://work.com/sales_performance/5_steps_ebook

  3) Social Proof Socialproof recently engaged us to create an infographic on the power of social proof; Upon completing the infographic, we decided to create a motion graphic with the same content:   Benjamin Franklin said, “industry and frugality are the way to wealth”.  This couldn’t be more true than for those in content marketing.  If you’ve produced a piece of content that did well initially, only to quickly move on to the next piece, we challenge you to go back to the original and creatively milk the dollars out of the dimes.