One thing that marketing needs to be effective is consistency. However, as anyone who has ever started a regular journal knows, this is easier said than done. It is much easier to have great intentions, but to find yourself struggling to follow through on a consistent basis. That being said, there are some tricks to making sure you have a consistent flow of new content, without becoming stressed and burnt out.
This blog is the third in a series. You can read about planning your content strategy in the first blog: Getting started and tips while creating content in the second: Keeping on track.
Take the time to review
Once you’ve been creating marketing content for a while, make sure you take the time to review your efforts. You want to see what worked and what didn’t. You will be able to easily tell the most popular content and which pieces provoked the most engagement. Try to work out why. Similarly, if something didn’t work as well as you think it could have, try to figure out why it didn’t land – was it the wrong topic, the wrong format, published on the wrong day? If you think your customers will want to know about it – can you tell the same story in a different way and see if that works better?
Take inspiration from, and reuse the good stuff
If something works particularly well, think about how you can reuse or adapt, or build on it. This will save you coming up with something brand new and build your authority in an area with proven success.
Here are some ways of reusing content:
Can you publish it in a different format? For example, if you have a video that’s popular, could you transcribe elements of it for a blog?
Can you break it down? If you have a very long piece of writing, can you break it up into a list, or use segments of it for social media?
Can you follow-up on the topic? If it was a time-sensitive subject, can you revisit that topic a while later and review how the situation has (or has not) changed?
Can you make it into something you do regularly? Is it something you can make a monthly or quarterly event?
Stop content decay – can you improve old content?
Sometimes new is not always better. For example, a strong older blog has built up authority over time and you might be better off expanding and putting in more detail to something old and re-promoting it, rather than coming up with something brand new.
What tips do you have to reuse existing content?