How to Extend the Life of Each Piece of Content You Create

Content is king in the social media world, but sometimes it can feel like a daunting task to always be creating new content to stay relevant and provide really great value. And, if you’ve been reading my blog for some time – you know how important a content strategy is (not just a social media strategy.) This post is going to walk you through how we think about content and how we extend the life of our content.

When you  create great content over the course of time, the leads you receive are so much better! They say things like, “I’ve been reading your blog for years” or, “I feel like I know you!”

When it comes to content, I am a big believer in investing time and resources into your ‘pillar content.’ This is content that you spend time (and sometimes money) on week in and week out, month in and month out and yearly. For us, it’s our blog. Each week we create a blog post and that one blog post becomes several pieces of content.

Here’s a graphic that showcases how we think about how pillar content can then turn into multiple graphics or videos that then turn into dozens of social media posts:

What could your pillar content be?

• Blog posts: on your own site or hosted on Medium.com or LinkedIn
• Video and/or Podcast content: professional recorded or DIY
• Live video: Facebook Live, Periscope, etc.

After you’ve created your pillar content you then want to think about what nuggets you can extract to make unique graphics or images. We use Canva.com to create graphics quickly and easily as well as the mobile app WordSwag. We also use apps like Legend.Im or Ripl to create quick videos. We can create multiple graphics for each post and size them according to different social networks quickly and easily.

You can also think about repurposing your blog content into a piece of video content and/or a live video on Facebook Live. You can also repurpose your pillar content into a presentation to upload on SlideShare and then share on your LinkedIn profile. When you really start to think about it – there are dozens of ways you can slice and dice your content!

Here’s a sample schedule you can think about when extending the life of your content:

Week 1:

• Write a blog post
• Create 3-5 graphics for that blog post
• Include a lead magnet at the end of the post to provide more value and add people to your email list (a lead magnet could be a checklist, ‘how-to’ guide, cheat-sheet, etc.)
• Email that post out to your database and share on your social networks (post in the moment or use tools like HootSuite, Buffer or Edgar to schedule out over the next few days.)
• Run a Facebook ad promoting the post
• Create a Snapchat or Instagram story about the post and add a call to action at the end to read the post for more details

Week 2:

• Turn that blog post into a Power Point presentation and upload to SlideShare.net and post to LinkedIn (LinkedIn owns SlideShare)
• Embed the SlideShare into the original post and re-share the blog post on social media

Week 3:

• Create a 2-3 minute video highlighting the blog post with a call to action at the end to read the post
• Upload the video to YouTube and Facebook and then embed the video into the original post and then re-share the post on social media

Week 4:

• Create a Facebook Live highlighting the blog post with a call to action at the end to read the post
• Add the link to the recording into the original post and then re-share the post on social media
• Repost your article on Medium.com or LinkedIn (as a published post) and include a link back to your original post.

This is just a sample schedule, and you may not adhere to this for every post – but as you can see, by looking at areas of opportunity to extend the life of each post – it can make a huge difference!

I also highly recommend that when you post to multiple networks that you take the time to post to each network separately and not just ‘copy and paste.’ So, my post for Facebook may be more conversational whereas my post on Twitter may be shorter with one or two hashtags, and my post on Instagram may include 10-15 hashtags and a few emojis!

Where to begin? I’d recommend starting by downloading my content grid here! I’d also recommend brainstorming on what your pillar content could be and the frequency. So, if you decide to start blogging you will need to think about where that will be hosted, when you will set aside time to write and what day you will publish it. Then, you want to start thinking like a news room and start crafting your editorial calendar. We use a Google Spreadsheet but you can use Excel or even a Google Calendar to start mapping out your pillar content.

The key here is don’t reinvent the wheel. When you take the time to create content – you can slice and dice and repurpose it to give it a longer shelf life and really help position yourself as the go-to person in your industry and market!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this – leave me a comment below or join our Social Media Forum Facebook Group! We’d love to see you there!