How to make your content go further

How long do you spend creating a great piece of content? As Marketers, we often spend a lot of our valuable time and energy focusing on that one important piece of content that will provide real value to our audience. And that's great. But after the first initial release to the world, what happens to our content then? Does it get buried and lost over time?

It seems a shame to waste all that time and energy on a piece of content that's only single-use. So we thought we'd discuss 5 ways to make your content go further so you can get the most out of what you create.

1. Repurpose your content

Most of the assets you create have the potential to be something else. And best of all, repurposing content can be a quick and easy fix that leads to a whole new life for your hard work. The best way to start out with this is to look at your best-performing, evergreen blogs and give them a refresh in a new format such as an infographic or a video. It's important to think about the context to see whether it would best be suited to visual social content or something more detailed such as a webinar.

Another option is to look at your worst-performing content and ask yourself why it hasn't got a better response. Ask yourself if the topic lends itself better to a different format, should it more visual? Or does it need to be longer-form? This can help you create better engagement from what is essentially the same piece of content.

2. Break it down

E-books, guides and high-value content often take the most time to create. They're large documents that provide valuable information for those prospects in the consideration or decision stages of the buying process. But that shouldn't mean you can't use that content to appeal to those in different stages such as the awareness stage.

By breaking down the content into smaller, more digestible chunks, you can use the valuable insights you've created for a different audience and get the most out of your work.

For example, if you created a guide to inbound marketing strategy you could use this to publish blogs on where to find your next content idea or content audits & organisation. You could also create infographics and videos around SEO and aligning inbound sales and marketing.

3. Group them together

Alternatively to breaking down your big pieces of content, why not group together your smaller pieces of content? Look at what assets you have around a specific topic and use them to create a guide or an e-book. The main benefit of this option is that it'll save you time. It most cases, you don't need to start from scratch when it comes to creating large explainers around a topic. You'll most likely have all the parts and chapters across different types of content, you just need to pull them all together.

You can also group together your content and use it to create round-ups, best-bits and highlights. Your audience will want to be reminded of your best-performing blogs, guides and videos and whether you choose to do this on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis, it can be a great way to engage with your audience without the need to create anything new.

4. Turn it into an Instagram Story

Did you know that 83% of users say that Instagram helps them discover new products and services? With statistics like that, your business should be using Instagram. And with the popularity of Instagram Stories growing year on year meaning that 500 million people now use the feature every day, it should definitely be a focus.

The main thing to remember when it comes to turning your content into an Instagram Story is to make it fit for social media. People are scrolling and flicking through quicker than brands would like, so you need to make your story visually appealing. Limit the text and keep the length short. Another winner is interaction. Use questions, polls, CTA's and links to make people stop and engage with your content in a way they might not be able to if it were a guide or a blog. For more tips on turning your content into an Instagram Story, check out HubSpot's findings.

5. Time to retire?

All content has its day. There may come a point where a piece you once spent hours developing has become too outdated and no longer fit for purpose. It may have been repurposed and reworked so many times to the point where the original piece is no longer recognisable. This means it might be time to retire. Holding on to expired content can actually do more harm than good by confusing your audience and damaging your company's authority and credibility in your space.

Knowing when to remove content completely might be the most important skill of all when it comes to getting the most from your content.