Content marketing isn’t easy, so I’m always surprised by marketers who make it even harder for themselves. There’s a mistake I see content marketers make all the time, when they’ve gone to the effort of investing in a significant piece of content, published it through their social channels and then, well, that’s it. They retire it and it lives on only through their website, discoverable when people search for it on Google.
If we think, as I encourage clients to, in terms of content as information, then each information set (piece of content) will have overarching themes, challenges or suggestions. Each one of these themes can be explored within their own right in a smaller piece of content than the original form – for example, in blog posts, podcast episodes, social posts or presentation topics. Take the example below, demonstrating how a single white paper can be used as the basis for 20 different pieces:
This kind of breakdown isn’t just an opportunity for written content, either. A long-form video can be trimmed into 30-second social media videos or screenshots for publishing alongside blog posts. Directors or subjects of videos can be interviewed for behind-the-scenes insights in video or podcast formats. The list goes on but the idea remains the same – smart brands take their content assets and show off their value in as many ways as they can.
One brand that’s particularly great at doing this is LinkedIn. LinkedIn calls this strategy ‘Big Rock’ or ‘Marquee’ content, and they’ve written pretty extensively about how they pursue it and the success they’ve experienced as a result. A great example of it is their “Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn” released annually, which is broken down into the following:
- Podcast
- SlideShare
- ebooks
- Blogs
- Infographics
- Checklists
- A webinar
- A physical book
- Emails
- LinkedIn InMails
- LinkedIn Groups
- Display Ads
- Sponsored Ads
- Conference presentations
They translate each piece of content into different languages to reach a global audience, and they recirculate content using different titles and images to test varying strategies and target different segments. What’s more, after a year of making use of the big, central piece they publish an annually updated edition to follow the same strategy all over again.
Sound like something you could be interested in for your business? The key to getting all moving parts working in harmony is creating a documented strategy that can plot all the pieces into a bigger picture. If you need help creating a content marketing strategy for your business, contact Lush. We create bespoke, documented strategies for businesses of all sizes and industries.
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