Are You Being Re-purposeful with Your Content?

Puck Ferris contemplating one of his nine lives. (Thanks to Abby Ferris and her very photogenic cat.)

Puck Ferris contemplating one of his nine lives. (Thanks to Abby Ferris and her very photogenic cat.)

The best of your organization’s content should be like a cat — it should have nine lives.

Okay, maybe nine lives is stretching it. But when you work hard to write something remarkably clever/insightful/useful/etc., there’s no reason why it should be doomed for a one-and-done existence. Reincarnation should be in the cards.

I’ve heard this message preached many times before. Lately, I’ve been trying harder to live up to it.

Case in point: Last year, I wrote a blog post on how to choose a copywriter. It’s a topic that all our clients have dealt with — and one that I know something about. Better yet, it’s the kind of advice that many visitors to our site will find helpful.

The post got some decent traffic, but I forgot about it for a while. Then, a couple months ago, I was brainstorming ideas for an e-book and it came to mind.

It was pretty quick work for Anna and I to refine and expand upon the original content. After that, I laid it out in PowerPoint and converted it into a PDF. Within a few hours, we had our e-book: The Five P’s of Picking the Perfect Freelance Copywriter. Now we’re using it as a gated asset to collect contact info from prospective clients.

Remodeling Firm Drinks the Kool-Aid

A long-time client of The Hired Pens, a residential remodeling firm, has made a similar commitment. I’ve helped them create a quarterly newsletter for the past nine years. That adds up to around 35 newsletters and about 175 substantive articles — a lot of great content.

The firm has been posting its PDF newsletters on its website for a long time. A few years ago, it started cherry-picking newsletter articles and converting them into blog posts. Now we’re talking about creating e-books based on old articles for the first time. I can’t wait to see how it goes.

I realize I’m far from the first to recommend repurposing your blog posts and other content. Nonetheless, I highly encourage you to do it. With a little effort, that old blog post could become the next e-book, white paper, case study, etc., that you use to market your business.

Ah, the joys of recycling …

Share this post