We’ve talked about using the power of employee advocacy to help drive content engagement before, but did you know an employee advocacy program can also help you repurpose blog content to get more life (and ROI) out of your already-published pieces?
B2B content marketing has become a vital piece of most B2B marketing strategies: in a recent survey of B2B companies, 92% of marketers said they use content marketing to help drive new business acquisition. This puts B2B marketing departments in the new position of also being content creating machines, which can put a lot of pressure on marketers to continually come up with new content ideas and topics. If constantly coming up with new content for your marketing or advocacy needs is a struggle, this post is for you.
Author Update: These tips were perfect for 2018, but we’re in 2022! Now there are even more ways than ever to repurpose older content to support your B2B marketing efforts. We’ve added a few of our favorite re-stylings below.
The Humble Blog Post
The tried-and-true workhorse for any B2B content marketing strategy, most of the content pieces being created by B2B brands are blog posts. Don’t get us wrong, blog posts are great! Believe it or not, you’re actually reading a blog post right now! But, having a “write it and forget about it” mentality with your blog posts means you’re leaving content-marketing gold on the table.
Depending on a B2B brand’s content marketing program (and its success), the same B2B content marketers we mentioned above say that they are allocated anywhere from 14% to 40% of the total marketing budget to support their content marketing needs. This represents a significant investment in content marketing, and as we all know, where there is an investment there’s expected to be a return.
When you repurpose blog content, you’re reutilizing a piece of content that (for the most part) has probably already been paid for. Sure, there’s a bit more investment involved in repurposing it, but not near as much as if you created a new piece of content from scratch. Repurposing can help you maximize the return on your investment in content.
Combining your repurposed content pieces with an employee advocacy program is a double-shot of strategy success. In fact, our SocialToaster advocacy program was sparked from the simple need for a fun and easy way for a brand’s employees to share their blog posts and other online content to their personal social networks – and it works! Employee advocacy results in a 5x increase in web traffic and 25% more leads.
8 5 Ways To Repurpose Blog Content to Support Your Employee Advocacy Program
Crack open your content production calendar, look through your analytics, and grab those early drafts; it’s time to get down to blog repurposing business!
1) Create Graphics With Pull-Quotes & Statistics
Chances are each of your blog posts are chock full of stats and quotable quotes. Pull these quotes out of the post and give them a graphic makeover. Then use your employees to share these new graphics with their audience. As a bonus, be sure to link to the blog post that supplied the post to drive traffic.
Have several stats you want to pull out? Great, create an infographic! Infographics are 30x more likely to be read than a text article and can communicate those killer stats straight from an employee’s social profile.
2) Create An Ebook Or White Paper (And Use Your Employees to Drive Downloads)
Have a series of blog posts that focus on a specific topic? Bunch them together, slap on an introduction, add a contact page, and boom! You’ve got yourself a bona fide Ebook.
Start by exploring your analytics to determine your most popular blog posts from the past year. Identify the trends in topics that are resonating with your audience, then look for a common theme that you can use to tie the posts together.
Once your new Ebook is created, it’s time to turn to your employees! Ask them to post about the Ebook on their social media channels to help drive awareness and downloads.
3) Reformat The Blog Post To A Different Medium
Not every potential marketing lead is a lover of the written word. Each consumer has their own preference when it comes to how they like to absorb information. That’s why many brands see consumption success when they opt to reformat their old blog posts into a new form of media.
Depending on your audience, you may want to consider creating:
- Text-based videos
- Animated videos
- Marketing videos (with fancy real-life actors)
- Infographics
- Slideshows
- Presentations
Or go big and create them all! Each format you use represents another piece of content you can share through your employee advocacy program.
4) Republish An Older Blog Post To A New Platform
Just because your blog post lives on your blog doesn’t mean it can’t vacation on other platforms. When it comes to setting your blog up with a second home, the internet is full of opportunities. Medium is a popular publishing tool for brands looking to extend the life of a blog post. Likewise, LinkedIn’s publishing platform can be used to help turn a key internal employee into a thought leader. Even long-form friendly publishing platforms like Reddit and Tumblr are potential republishing options.
As a best practice, consider reworking the blog posts (as opposed to a straight copy/paste) to make the post more relevant to the new platform. Once published to the new channel, use your employee advocacy program to drive traffic to your post.
Most publication platforms keep an eye on a post’s traffic volume. Large traffic spikes right after publication can be a key part of wowing the platform’s visibility algorithm. The more popular your post, the more organic visibility it is rewarded. The more visibility, the more people find the post, the more shares it receives, etc. The cycle continues until only one possible outcome remains.
You. Get. Paid.
5) Throwback To The Classics
One of the easiest ways to repurpose blog content? Reintroduce people to it!
You created evergreen posts with the sole purpose of ensuring that the posts never go out of style. Remember, for the most part, people checking out your blog today most likely weren’t checking out your blog three years ago.
Leverage the social sharing power of your employee advocacy program to continuously drive traffic to your most popular older posts. You might be surprised how much life these posts still have in them – don’t let them give up the ghost.
6) Update Older Blog Posts
Alright, this might be considered a bit meta, but we’re in the midst of updating our own older blog posts right now!
Updating older posts not only saves your team some time, but it’s also a powerful way to continue to leverage all of the research you’ve already done.
Our recommendation, pick some of your most popular blog posts (determined by traffic volume and social/blog comments) and look for ways to enhance them. This might mean adding additional tips (like we’re doing here), more statistics, or refreshing any data that’s outdated.
7) Create Supporting Spin-off Content
Think through your favorite pieces of content. What could you create that supports either the pre- or post- reader experience.
Is there information they should be aware of before reading your post? Are there actions or implementation instructions you can provide to guide them after they read your posts?
Re-purpose your older content to set your audiences on your preferred direction, then use your employees to share your new content alongside your own as its own series.
8) Turn the Content Into a Podcast
Take the information you’re conveying in written form and take it to the airwaves! Podcasts are a powerful tool for engaging potential customers and providing your employees with consistently published content to share.
The elephant in the room question is, of course, “How do you turn a 700-word blog post into a thirty-minute blog post?”
Our recommendations:
- Group your blog posts by topic. Then build your episode around that topic using the different blog posts as support.
- Expand on your ideas. 750 words only gets you so far. Use your podcast for diving deeper into a subject.
- Bring on experts. Interview internal employees and external partners to shed some additional insight during the episode.
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Remember, when you find yourself struggling with what to write next, look back at what you’ve already written. You’ll often find that you can creatively repurpose blog content that you already have to bring new life to it – or it may just inspire your next traffic-driving original blog post!
Ready to take your employee advocacy program to the next level? Or maybe you’d like to discuss how to best launch your first program? Either way, SocialToaster is here to help. Send us an email, request a free demo, or give us a call at 855.62.TOAST today!
