By Jorge Abrego
Advertising Director of Acres U.S.A.
Many marketers understand the value of content marketing by leveraging native advertising in various forms and want to incorporate this philosophy into their plans, but they face one daunting challenge – producing the content. Creating new content can undoubtedly present challenges (hence the benefits of outsourcing your content development), which is why getting maximum value from each piece of content matters so much.
Consider re-purposing options from the start
You may only be able to produce four to six pieces of content a year, so be smart about which topics you decide to tackle by selecting those that can be re-purposed most easily.
Re-publish
As a multi-platform publisher, our e-newsletter is populated with content from various sources including articles from Acres U.S.A. magazine. Given that our audience engages with this content in print, you may wonder if they value it enough to engage with it in an e-newsletter. But based on the audience metrics which enable us to examine click-through rates and time spent reading, we can actually verify that readers will engage with good content, which helped us appreciate the value of re-publishing content. Of course, you want to be smart in re-using content in this manner because you can risk losing your audience by constantly publishing the same story, but don’t be afraid to try this approach (and use metrics to measure!).
Update the “old stuff”
Beyond simply re-publishing a story from last year, another option is to go back through your previously posted stories and look for opportunities to update them with the latest information about your company and/or product. Stories announcing new products can be updated to incorporate testimonials from customers. Research-based stories can be made ‘new again’ with new research data.
Adapt into another format
Oftentimes, producing one piece of content means you’re 80% of the way to producing a second piece. For example, consider how easily a video script can be adapted into a story or a blog post. Or think about how easily a data-heavy research report can be adapted into an info graphic. Different people prefer different types of content, so re-purposing one piece of content into two different formats can easily help you reach more prospective customers.
Turn one story into two
Making time to write a story or blog for your website can lead to going all in on that topic and creating something long enough to let you break it into two or more shorter stories. Having more posts rather than less and posting more often are two ways to boost your search engine ranking, so be on the lookout for those longer stories that could be split up into multiple posts.
Learn more about advertising opportunities with Acres U.S.A. here.
Jorge Abrego is the Advertising Director for Acres U.S.A.and has 26 years of advertising agency and B2B media experience in the agriculture, energy and technology sectors.