When is the last time you learned an awesome new tactic you could use to market your business? You felt excited about the opportunity and potential results from implementing this new thing. You knew it would help you save time, attract new leads, drive more traffic to your site, or convert visitors to prospects better than your current efforts.
Then what happened? Be honest.
Did you take action?
I learned quite a bit about you (my audience) from the recent survey I conducted about repurposing content. (If you missed the survey, you can still take it here.) Though it didn’t surprise me too much, I learned the number one thing that stops most people from taking action and reaping the benefits of repurposing their content.
Can you guess what it is?
Like many, many online entrepreneurs, do you feel overwhelmed by what you imagine it will take to repurpose your content and then decide you just don’t have the time to do it?
I hear you. And, I feel your anxiety since I too have experienced this on more than one occasion in the last 20 years of doing business via the Web. I’ll address this further in a bit.
There were 62 responses (to date) and while I was shooting for at least 100, the data stayed pretty consistent after receiving 50 or so. I’m confident I got a good cross-section of people to take the survey since it was promoted on all my social networks as well as sent to a select group on my email list.
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Here’s the scoop in a nutshell
- LinkedIn Publishing is by far the most popular way of repurposing blog posts with 33% of the votes.
- Nearly 50% of respondents repurpose their content occasionally when they remember or have time.
- By a wide margin, you want to know how to create a strategy for repurposed content, followed by how to leverage repurposed content.
Where it got interesting and even more informative was in the two open-ended questions about what frustrates you most and a request for what I missed (didn’t ask).
What do you think was the most common response about what frustrates you about content repurposing? (I gave you a hint above!)
Yep, you guessed it: “I don’t have time.”
“The time it takes.”
“The time involved.”
21% of those who responded cited lack of time as why they rarely or never repurpose their content. It didn’t surprise me. I’ve heard this excuse since 2005 when I started teaching people how to blog for their business.
Other top reasons included: fear of duplicate content penalties, not having a system, not understanding how, and not seeing any benefit.
If you’re not repurposing any of your content and believe it’s a waste of time or takes too much time, or there’s no benefit, please read this post now: Repurposing Your Content – 13 Ways to Reach More People.
In future articles, I will address the fear and myth of duplicate content as well as how to create a system. Now, I want to return to the issue of time.
You do have time for repurposing content
My philosophy about time is this: you make time for what is important to you.
If you don’t have time to do what it takes to get visibility for your business and create more paths to your virtual home on the web so more potential clients can find you, then it’s clearly not that important to you. That’s OK. It’s your choice. However, if your business is stagnant, you don’t have enough clients to sustain your business, and you get little traffic and few conversions, then maybe, just maybe, it’s time to choose to make more time for marketing your business.
One of the most productive use of your time is to repurpose your evergreen blog posts. Why? It takes a whole lot longer to start writing an article from nothing than it does to modify an existing article and republish it on a different platform. Guaranteed.
While there are many, many ways to reformat your content, I’m not suggesting you spend time doing them all for every blog post. Really.
You can increase your reach if you simply pick two or three places to repurpose and republish. If you have an assistant, this is a good task to delegate. In many cases, you’ll get more visibility publishing on a site like LinkedIn Publishing or Medium or Slideshare than you did on your blog post. If you don’t want that, fine. Please disregard everything you’ve just read!
My advice to clients and students is always to try just one new thing at a time. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Choose one new platform, pick a blog post and figure out what you need to do so it fits that platform. Try experimenting with a different image, a different title, or a new call to action. Then, promote the new content and see what happens.
Stay tuned for more on this topic. Repurposing your content is an efficient way to reach more of your ideal prospects without creating unique new content for every platform. I’ll show you how in the coming weeks.
I’m completely with you on repurposing content. Once you’ve done the research, you’ve written the blog, turned it into a podcast, and have taken the motivational quotes out of it and turned them into photo quotes for twitter – I’m telling you it doesn’t take so much time, it saves time from creating new content. Package it all up and turn it into a book for Amazon, ebay etc.
If you go into a blog expecting to repurpose it twelve different ways, from the get go, you’ll be keen on quality content, SEO and targeting your audience.
I hear you saying #WorkSmartNotHard. THANK YOU!
Yes! I love how you sum it up so beautifully, Angela!
This couldn’t have come at a better time for me. as my latest post is perfect for both making an infographic and a slideshare. I’ve only done one very simple infographic before and I feel quite intimidated by them, as there are such amazing infographics about.
But I’m going to do it! Wish me luck!
jane
Excellent, Jane! I haven’t made an infographic but I hear Canva makes it pretty easy. Good luck, and thanks for stopping by!