That’s when things typically come to a fast and uncomfortable stop. Content? Who has time to write all the content? With your accelerated schedule, even a team of dedicated professional web writers may not have enough time to create all the content you need.

Here’s the good news. Not all your content needs to start from scratch. Great content comes from a variety of resources — some of which you may already own! You will need to mix and match, edit and clip, rewrite and reinvent, but it’s a huge jump ahead.

What’s more, cleverly recycling or repurposing content and planning for repurposing through content strategy can save your company money.

Here are some ideas to help you start collecting bits and pieces for your exceptional content:

Offline content

Dip into your own print materials. White papers, media kits, catalogues, books, instructional materials, notebooks, sketch pads, infographics — anything you have already created can be tweaked or reformatted into new content. Consider how you might repurpose these materials you have to make something new.

For example, your sales kit for your sales reps may have statistics and charts they use to back up claims about your offerings. Take these bits of information and imagine how you can repackage them for your online audience. Are they five surprising facts about running shoe wear? Or maybe you have seven great reasons to prepare in advance for an emergency?

You might also take a video your PR department uses and get everyone in the office to provide a “behind-the-scenes” insight on it. Good stuff.

Customer service

Have lunch with the head of your customer service team every quarter. He or she writes responses to and chats with your customers all the time. Use this material to create something useful online.

Whenever I interview customer service reps as part of a content strategy, I always learn of frequently asked questions they respond to with screen grabs and well-loved emails. This information can be

• Edited and published as an FAQ or quick tips
• Used to fix parts of your content that are confusing
• Transformed into blog articles that focus on the aggregate issue at hand. For instance, cupcake customers would be thrilled to know that “Seventy-eight percent of customers are repeatedly asking for the caramel apple cupcakes to come back,” wouldn’t they?

Customers

Who is curating those awesome letters, comments, testimonials, quotes, and chats from your own customers? Be proactive about collecting and asking for information from your audience about your product or service, and you’ll soon have a wealth of relevant, real-world, SEO-rich content.

The best way to do this? Build it into your customer experience. Imagine — or better yet, map out — the most well-worn customer paths; for example: They enter at Point A, ask questions at Point B, buy at Point C, then they get an email to confirm (you get the picture). At appropriate moments that don’t interrupt the buying process, ask for an opinion, a vote of approval, or a review.

Social software like Bazaarvoice and Get Satisfaction can certainly help if you have volume; a simple email box for feedback can work if you don’t. Just be sure there’s someone in charge of reviewing the content and transforming it into something useful for your customers.

Online archives

Evaluate your content — articles, blog posts, interviews — that was popular at one time but has now been buried in your archives. Match up a rock star editor with a data analyst to discover and create new from old on a regular basis.

For example, a data analyst might see a spike in site searches for a certain topic — let’s say optimal heart rate recovery times — during June of each year. A content manager or editor could collect heart health and exercise information you’ve already published and use it to create an article on “Eight Ways to Strengthen Your Heart,” and feature it throughout your site and across social media at just the right time.

Or, more broadly, your data analyst might see that any content involving easing neck pain is instantly popular, so your editor might be able to create a whole neck care email campaign based on content you’ve already published over time.

Market research

You do a lot of research for your own company. Take a look at the data with a different point of view: Would any of it be useful or interesting to your audience?

Take personas, for instance. Many companies create elaborate personas, based on research, to help them create their marketing campaigns or organize information on their site. Wouldn’t it be fascinating as a customer to know which personalities often go with which products or suite of services? I haven’t seen this done literally, but I keep waiting for the opportunity!

Keep in mind that repurposing content isn’t about copying and pasting. It’s about reinventing and evolving. Carol S. Valdez said it best in her article Repurposing Content Like a Fashionista, “A few skillfully chosen pieces can create perfect outfits [i.e., content] to suit your style.”

Recycling image via Shutterstock

However, you can save time on content development and reach a larger audience if you find ways to reuse or reinvent the content you have already created. Here are three ways you can get double (or even triple) duty out of your B2B content:

Use an editorial calendar

If you schedule your content marketing in advance by using an editorial calendar, you can plan content themes for different months, promotions, or trending topics. Knowing your themes ahead of time will make it easier for you to gather content.

For example, you may already have a wealth of material about a specific theme that you can easily edit and publish. Or you can use themes to identify subject matter experts within your organization. You can then interview these experts and put together quick blog posts, podcasts or videos based on their interviews. Plus, an editorial calendar lets your team members know who is responsible for what task. This helps to keep everyone on track and your content machine running smoothly.

Start big and break it down

Pieces with a large amount of content, such as webinars, take a lot of time and resources to develop. And if these pieces fail to bring you ROI, it may seem as though you’ve wasted your efforts. However, a poorly attended webinar doesn’t have to lead to a dead end and lost ROI.

Try breaking the content you’ve created for the webinar into smaller chunks that can be used on other content platforms, such as tweets, blog posts, SlideShare presentations, or short videos. As you share these bites across your marketing channels, your audience will grow, and be more engaged in the content you produce.

For example, you can host a live Twitter chat that features key points from your webinar. This open conversation can dramatically increase your mentions, retweets and followers. You can also turn your webinar content into short YouTube videos to reach a different audience. This additional exposure can even help you reach your original goal by bringing more people back to your website to listen to the replay of your webinar.

Or, start small, combine your related content, and go big

Sometimes it’s easier for marketers to develop small pieces of content — such as blog posts or short “how to” videos — than it is to create large-scale content projects. When you take a look at the body of content you’ve created, chances are several pieces will revolve around related topics and themes. Why not combine them to create content components that provide a more comprehensive view of the issues you wrote about, such as white papers, eBooks, or training materials?

Using your smaller bits of content as the building blocks of these more-detailed works can save you a lot of time and stress because you’ll already have most of the work complete. One way you can easily tie small pieces of content together is by turning a series of blog posts about the same topic into an eBook. You can also combine your product demo videos and articles into comprehensive training materials.  

Just remember to think about your audience when you repurpose your content for a new medium. For example, if you want to turn a webinar into a series of blog posts, don’t just throw the webinar transcript on your blog. That’s cheating! Plus, transcripts can be difficult to read. Your blog readers may also have different expectations than do your webinar attendees. You’ll need to adjust your content’s style, length and format to match your medium and appeal to the audiences who use these mediums.

What about you?

How do you repurpose or reinvent your content to get the most mileage out of it? Feel free to share your thoughts below.

Believe me. I know.  I run content marketing, and I have the blisters to prove it.

If you were to ask me and my counterparts in other companies what our top challenge is the answer would be easy: Producing enough content. The public’s demand for more, coupled with the ephemeral nature of social media distribution, is a brutal one-two punch for those in the trade. Monday’s torrent of attention can become little more than a trickle by Tuesday.

But as I learned in high school wrestling, for every move there’s a counter move. The antidote to content’s short half-life may  not be producing more, but rather keeping the window of consumption open longer for the content you do produce. Here are five practical tips for extending the life of your marketing content.

1. Stagger your distribution

Remember, you don’t only control production; you also own distribution. Because social media is constantly moving, it’s important to distribute and re-distribute to maximize the number of people exposed to your work.

Start by sharing a new piece of content on an exclusive basis with your customers, advocates, and prospects. You may even include a short form to capture a little extra profile information on those who access it. Let them enjoy the privilege of exclusivity for a few days.

Then go public. Here are some ideas:

• Post the resource to SlideShare, and use the embed code to display the content on your blog. Now you can track views, shares, favorites, and comments all in one place.
• Tweet links to the post a couple of times per day for a few days; then, once every other day for the next week or so. Vary the timing to make sure you are sharing during business hours worldwide.
• Post to Facebook and encourage your fans to comment on a specific aspect of the content.
• Layer use the asset to answer highly relevant questions on Q&A sites like Quora and Focus, as well as on targeted LinkedIn Groups. You can even tweet your answers pointing your audience back to the source questions.

2. Use your “re-imagination”

The term  reimagine is lifted out of  Content Rules, by Ann Handley and CC Chapman, and it basically means finding compelling new ways to package your existing content. There are any number of ways in which you can reimagine the content you create; but the concept itself is the content marketing equivalent of “write once read many.” For example:

• Have a bunch of blog posts that share a common theme? Why not roll ‘em all up into an eBook on that topic?
• Maybe you have an eBook that digs deep into a particular subject? You can break out key lines to use for tweets and key chapters to use as blog posts.

Whatever content you have on hand, chances are it can be broken down or recombined to create a way to message on an additional platform without having to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.

3. Serialize your story

In their bestseller, Switch, the brothers Heath encourage anyone seeking to drive change to identify “bright spots,” or small victories, and then replicate the successes. The same idea can be applied to your content marketing program.

Have you created a video, eBook, white paper, infographic, podcast, or webinar that worked especially well? Do it again, but with a twist  like focusing on a new vertical market or a new demographic group. Then do it once more but with a different twist. Next thing you know, you’ve created a content series. The benefit is that you don’t have to come up with a fresh idea each time; you simply have to iterate on what has already proven effective.

4. Annualize and update

Like serializing content, updating successful pieces annually is another way to get more mileage out of your production. Technology has accelerated the pace of change across most industries, so what was relevant and accurate information one year, may have lost some of its punch or even be completely outdated the next. Yearly updates provide marketers with an ideal opportunity to materially enhance content that has served their audience well in the past without having to start over from square one.

5. Use what others discard

Take a page from the “nose to tail” dining movement and use all versions — even those you might once have discarded — in your content marketing efforts. Publishing the scraps on your cutting room floor provides you with an opportunity to tell the back story behind your content successes.

For example, when my partner Jesse Thomas blogged for Forbes about the making of an infographic, he used nine rejected versions of The Content Grid v2 infographic to tell his story. Nine. It was the detritus — not the finished product — that made his story so powerful.

These are just five tips, but I am sure there are more. What am I missing? Are there additional techniques you’ve used to create more “staying power” for your content?

Include an introductory letter

Whether it’s a magazine redesign or a website launch like this one, introductory letters offer a glimpse of the strategy and aspirations behind new content offerings. In this case, the welcome note that BCG CEO Hans-Paul Bürkner posted on the blog reveals a strategy that reflects content marketing best practices and offers some content innovations in the consulting space.

Reflecting on the daily inspiration that the firm reportedly receives from its clients, Bürkner pledges that the website will be updated at least weekly, and probably more often. That frequency is essential for search engine optimization, of course. But it’s also essential for a firm like BCG with such broad topic expertise and a global consulting footprint to continually offer new, high-quality insights.

Break your website into topics

To help keep the content flowing, BCG has a range of featured topics to write about. For example, to cover the leadership transformation topic, BCG distilled the best practices from interviews with 11 CEO clients and offered the edited videos so visitors could watch what the clients had to say. Other content includes summaries of past articles by BCG authors that have appeared in key management journals like the Harvard Business Review. In addition, the inclusion of interactive graphics offers some nice eye candy and makes it possible to drill down for a deeper understanding of the relevant data.

Market insights, such as what the company provides for the red-hot tablet computer market, are even being released here before all of the survey data is compiled. That makes perfect sense in such a rapidly evolving market where the price:screen size overview reflected in the chart below shows two distinct target markets, which could quickly be outmoded by retail discounting and the next round of product releases.

Source: BCG Consulting Group.

Don’t be afraid to “go retro”

Some of the most innovative content, which does a great job of reinforcing BCG’s position as an in-it-for-the-long-haul strategy firm, are “classic” articles going back to the 1960s. These reprints — some of which are also available as mp3 recordings — feature BCG founder Bruce Henderson and other well-known BCG thought leaders. What’s striking about these articles, such as Why Change Is So Difficult, is how timely and on target they remain more than 40 years later. (Too bad every company doesn’t have decades of relevant content to dust off and repurpose.)

Include small touches

BCG also has a lot of little features that make it easy for users to consume and share content:

• Users can easily share articles via e-mail or the social media portal of their choice.
• Easy text enlargement makes sense for their target demographic.
• By registering and logging in, users can easily save key articles and be alerted when new content is posted on targeted topics.

Don’t overlook your logo

While BCG does a lot of things well, there are things that can be improved. One problem with the site is the confusing dot in the logo after “bcg,” which is highlighted in the welcome letter headline and some other references. But the dot is not in the actual URL, bcgperspectives.com, nor is it in all references to the site. Why make the name of the thought leadership outlet all lowercase without spacing if the name doesn’t reflect the actual URL? There isn’t even a redirect if someone types in the name as it actually appears in the logo.

Thought leadership best practices

Overall though, the site is an impressive repackaging of current insights, archives, and classic thought leadership. It will be interesting to watch if Boston Consulting Group can continue to execute the strategy that they’ve laid out.

In summary, here are some key points content marketers should remember:

• Match content frequency to market requirements and expectations
• Offer content in multiple formats (text, video, audio)
• Deepen your insights by presenting multiple perspectives on a common theme
• Use interactive graphics to serve up data based on reader interests
• Publish time-sensitive insights as quickly as possible
• Mine your decades-old archives for content that remains relevant
• Avoid inconsistent branding elements

Wearing the publisher’s hat

Like most things, achieving the goals in a content marketing strategy takes some effort. For a business owner or marketing director to add publisher to the number of hats they already wear requires a commitment of time and energy. Unfortunately, most businesses today don’t have the budget to add more staff in order to tackle the objectives in a content marketing program, so it becomes a matter of juggling the resources they have. So, how can businesses make it work?

Get executive buy-in

For starters, getting top-down buy-in is critical, especially for small businesses. Key executives need to recognize that a content marketing strategy is crucial to their online success, and they need to understand that they, too, will have to participate.

Get all employees involved in content creation

Once executives are on board, it’s easier to involve the rest of the staff. And there is absolutely a place for everyone to help create content. Here are just a few ideas you and your staff can start with:

• Engage your executives in a Facebook chat. Have them answer questions posed by your Facebook fans and supporters. You can also repurpose the resulting content as a post on your blog.
• Poll your staff to see which of them might be willing to write blog posts on a rotating basis.
• Create a video in which your shipping manager explains your business’s shipping process.
• Take pictures during your next team lunch and post them on your blog.
• Interview one of your employees every week or every month as a “getting to know us” feature on your blog.
• When anyone on your team attends an industry event, have them take pictures and write up a summary to post on your blog.

Keep the ideas flowing

I find it helps to keep a little notebook on hand, or use the voice recorder on your phone, so that when you get that great idea for a Top 10 list or some other piece of content, it won’t get lost in the day to day shuffle.

Keep in mind that not every idea you come up with will make the cut. Some photos or videos won’t necessarily turn out well enough to publish. Not all contest ideas will be winners. That idea you had for a blog post might have sounded good at the time, but maybe it took too long to start writing it and it got stale. When this is the case, don’t be afraid to just delete it and start again on something new.

On the other hand, even when you do create something cool, you can’t let it sit idly online expecting it to always be cutting edge or consistently relevant to users. Your job is to keep producing fresh material and finding ways to repurpose your best content so that it offers new and different online opportunities.

My turning point

I didn’t always practice these words of wisdom. My turning point happened about two or three years ago. I found that my firm was creating a lot of web content for our clients, yet we created almost none for ourselves — the classic “cobbler’s children go barefoot” scenario. But then I started to think about how I purchased things online. I realized I was buying from sites that gave me the detailed information I needed to feel comfortable with making a purchase. I am sure you all do the same.

So we raised the bar and started treating ourselves like one of our own customers. Our staff now creates content on a regular basis, and we produce a report on the results every month — just like we do for our clients. We blog routinely on third-party sites. We add three new posts to our blog every week. We gave Flip video cameras to every employee so we could shoot more videos and take more pictures. We eventually reached the point where the vast majority of our website traffic (77 percent) was coming to us as a direct result of the content we produced, instead of from our home page or other top-level pages. We do not spend a single dollar on advertising and haven’t for quite a while now. Our marketing is truly content marketing.

Securing top-down buy-in from the start means that you can look to anyone and everyone in your organization to provide inspiration and new ideas for content. Foster a fun environment where creative expression is valued. The more you encourage creativity, the more you can gain from your content marketing strategy.

While it’s obviously a benefit to be smart, skilled, and open to experimenting with available tools, techniques, and formulas, content marketing today is as much an art as it is a science. And so who better to provide some great marketing tips than some artists and entertainers who could be considered brilliant — if unexpected — content innovators.

An indie spirit, with a mind for community

Do-it-yourself content marketers searching for inspiration should look no further than the work of one of the kings of independent film, Kevin Smith.

Smith embraced the power of online fandom early on, creating a View Askewniverse, where his fans could gather and commune with each other — long before MySpace, Facebook, or even Friendster gave like-minded people a digital lounge to hang out in. For the release of Clerks II (2006), he spurred fans to support the film by putting the names of the film’s first 10,000 MySpace friends in the film’s credits. And last year, he demonstrated the power of the tweet when he turned an embarrassing personal incident on a Southwest Airlines flight into a national, branded conversation.

But for his latest film, Red State, Smith bet on the persuasive power of content marketing, and he hatched a plan to go all in: Smith set out to self-distribute his film, and to side-step Hollywood’s marketing monster by promoting it through an unconventional viral/social media campaign. (He has since announced a revised plan to release the film via video-on-demand, followed by a video release by Lionsgate.)

He began by teasing both the film and his distributor’s journey on multiple social and online platforms, and then he took his story on the road, appearing live at each screening of the film and conducting lengthy Q&A sessions afterwards to interact directly with his audience. Smith comments on his official RedStatement website:

“My only super power as a filmmaker is that I refuse to let the film end when the credits roll; that’s when I come out and continue the story.”

Content marketing lesson: Don’t be afraid to defy expectations and break new ground. If you have a strong, dedicated fan base, like Smith has cultivated over the years, reach out to them, and give them a reason to spread your message with their friends — an underdog cause to rally behind, an experimental venture they can be a part of, a unique experience that they won’t find elsewhere, or what have you. And let the ensuing experience feed your ongoing brand story, told on as many platforms as you can manage.

By the way, screenings of Red State are scheduled in Los Angeles, Calif., for the week of August 15. But if you’re headed to Content Marketing World, you’ll have an extra opportunity to experience Smith’s vision: He will be performing a special show in conjunction with the conference’s Day 1 festivities and will be giving the final keynote.

An uncompromising desire to deliver content creatively

Back in the early 1990s, who would have thought that a hard rock musician who created loud, brash, and controversial songs with nary a guitar in sight would be making waves in the circles of advertising business publications like AdAge? Then again, who would imagine said musician would someday stand among film legends, accepting an Oscar for his work?

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has accomplished both, and he’s done it in the same uncompromising, do-it-yourself way that he attacked the music scene nearly two decades ago.

After extricating his band from its contract with Universal Music Group’s Interscope label, Reznor embarked on a series of innovative content-based promotions that provided fans with the means to support and follow his work on a deeper level. Some of Reznor’s experiments have inspired other artists to undertake similar self-marketing efforts, such as these examples:

• An alternative reality game with elaborately staged fan scavenger hunts
• Strategically placed (i.e., dropped in rock club bathrooms) flash drives of new music
• A crowdsourced website that offers unprecedented access to the band’s catalogs and archives for free are just some of Reznor’s content marketing experiments that have inspired other artists to undertake similar self-marketing efforts.

In an exclusive interview on Wired’s Underwire blog a few years ago, Reznor explained why, as an artist, he took marketing matters into his own hands:

“Anyone who’s an executive at a record label does not understand what the internet is, how it works, how people use it, how fans and consumers interact — no idea.”

And though he has stated many times that he doesn’t believe music should be free, he admits that the music industry’s missteps in the digital age have created a sense of public mistrust.

“So everything we’ve tried to do has been from the point of view of, ‘What would I want if I were a fan? How would I want to be treated?’ Now let’s work back from that. Let’s find a way for that to make sense and monetize it.”

Content marketing lesson: If your fans are willing to take their time to express their love and support, reward them with special recognition, such as shout-outs on Twitter or open vaults of exclusive content. The success of Reznor’s innovative marketing efforts has proved that if you respect your consumers, and let them participate in your brand on their terms, you will benefit as well.

Feeding the public’s appetite for invention

In my final content marketing lesson, the “genius” of note is a composite of sorts. There are many artists who embrace techie lust in a way that extends what consumers know about their brands, and allows them to explore that brand in creative, playful, or personalized ways. Here are just a few examples:

• The Beastie Boys launched their latest album by releasing a 30-minute video that revisited its “Fight for Your Right to Party” roots by pitting their young, rebellious selves against their older, and maybe not much wiser, future selves in a mock battle for supreme coolness.

• The rock band Arcade Fire used Google Maps and Google StreetView to create an innovative, Cannes-winning video project called The Wilderness Downtown. When viewers plugged in the address of their childhood homes, the video would unfold in multiple windows, personalized with scenes from their own neighborhoods. As an added personal touch, viewers could also leave a message for their “younger selves” in a tree branch-inspired font that was incorporated into the video.
  
• The band OK Go has made a name for itself through its willingness to push the envelope of creative video concepts and give fans a unique experience. Their latest video, “All is Not Lost“, tops all their previous efforts with a split-screen “video dance messenger” experience that spells out viewers’ typed phrases through the body manipulations of dance troupe Pilobolus.
  

Content marketing lesson: If you are afraid to use the latest technology to enhance your marketing efforts, you’re not telling your consumers your full story. By holding out on them, you risk the possibility that your content will seem stale and behind the times — a potentially fatal error in the world of ever more fickle and fragmented audiences.

These are some of my favorite content marketing geniuses from the entertainment industry. Do you have others to add to the list?

The Content Chasm is actually comprised of several types of gaps, each needing specific strategies and actions for resolution.

The capacity chasm

At its most basic, there is a lack of enough fresh, quality content. In order to generate leads and nurture them properly, new (or repurposed or curated) content must be continuously developed to attract and retain prospects’ attention.

The customization chasm

What’s useful and relevant (and, therefore, likely to be consumed) by one person, may be irrelevant and useless to another. So content must be customized to the target consumer group (or persona).
In B2B, this means that different versions of content must be developed for consumers who have different business roles and titles. For example, a CFO and a VP of Sales each have different questions that need to be answered and objections that need to be overcome, so the content you deliver should speak to them individually.

Also, someone making or influencing a buying decision for a complex, high-ticket B2B product or service will need different information throughout the different phases of the buying cycle. At the beginning of the cycle, they may be interested in company reputation and basic product functionality. As they get ready to make their buying decision, they might be more interested in integration issues and contract terms.

It’s helpful to develop a message map to identify what information each persona needs based on what  stage of the buying cycle they’re in. This post from Barbra Gago will give you step-by-step templates to map your B2B content.

The consumption chasm

As your prospects’ content habits evolve, you need to keep pace with how they want to consume your content. It’s typically the case that as new media formats become commonplace, traditional media and formats remain. Even as we add new media such as video podcasts and high-tech devices such as tablets, people still read books and listen to the radio. New media doesn’t replace old media – it extends the available options.

So what’s a marketer to do? Obviously you can’t and shouldn’t reformat every piece of content to fit every type of media and device, but you can make informed choices by studying your message maps and considering which formats best fit a specific piece of content. For example, video works well for telling success stories, while technical specs aimed at engineers may work best via text-based media.

The major trend, however, for content delivery is toward multimedia. Fat fiber optic pipes capable of transporting torrents of digitized audio, images, video, etc., are becoming the norm. And our devices are becoming more proficient at processing and displaying sights and sounds. Delivery concerns that once surrounded multimedia are fading away.

At the same time, busy executives (personas who most likely have the authority to make a buy decision) expect to be educated about complex products and services online. They no longer have the time or patience to read a 12-page white paper, so choosing to deliver multimedia experiences can help you package your information and marketing messages for quick, convenient consumption.

I think we’re going to be hearing much more about the Content Chasm over the next several months. Meanwhile, review your marketing content development and delivery processes by answering the following questions:

• Do you have resources in place to develop a steady stream of fresh, relevant and useful content?
• Are you creating, repurposing and curating content customized for the different personas who influence your buy decision and for the different stages of your buy cycle?
• Are you researching, testing and developing multimedia capabilities so that you can deliver persuasive content in a format that your prospects prefer?

How about you? What kind of Content Chasms are you experiencing? And how are you meeting the challenges?

This triggered (pun intended) a thought: Content is marketing’s force multiplier.

Just as an individual sniper can take out an enemy’s weapons armory with one shot, a single piece of content also has a multiplying impact on an organization’s global marketing effort. The following  list highlights  six compounding benefits companies can enjoy from an active content marketing program.

1. Content drives PR

Marketing author David Meerman Scott famously wrote, “Nobody cares about your products.” With few exceptions, he’s right. Unless you  are launching Google+, the press is unlikely to have much interest in version 2.1.2 of your widget. But the media does care  about what interests your audience. After all, your buyers are their readers. Your ability to create fresh content around prospects’ needs has become more valuable to your PR efforts than a product announcement. I’ve seen it first hand: When we announce a new product,  a handful of our “insider” bloggers and trade publications may mention it;  but if we publish an infographic or e-book, the blogosphere lights up. (How times have changed in public relations.)

2. Content fuels social media

Without content, social media is a sports car with an empty gas tank:  All show, no go. If you want to “solve” social, start with the content you have and work backwards toward the channel. For example, let’s pretend your company produces, say, a fish tank that never needs cleaning and you decide to produce a video all about the hassles of tank cleaning. Obviously, the video would be shared on YouTube and Vimeo. But you can pull out quotable lines for Twitter or create a transcription for your website (SEO value), tell the “behind the scenes” story on your blog, or turn the lesson into an e-book (ideal for SlideShare and email campaigns). In other words, start with the content, and then back into the channel. Your e-books, lists, infographics, blog posts, PR hits, and videos all add up to the most precious social media resource — something worth sharing.

3. Content feeds demand generation

Your company’s demand generation team needs content to push to prospects. Feed the demand machine with white papers, articles, analyst reports, webinars, and case studies. This content will help push your prospects from one stage of the funnel through to the next by demonstrating the depth and relevance of your company’s experience with their business needs.

4. Content creates sales opportunity

Sales reps are always looking for a good “excuse” to reach out to prospects. There is no better justification for an impromptu email or phone call than to spontaneously share a cool, new infographic or resource the rep created specifically for the target’s industry.

5. Content wows your SEO

Keyword-rich content and inbound links have historically been the one-two punch of good SEO strategies.  And while they still matter, the release of Google’s Panda initiative, which awards better search rankings to higher quality content, raised the stakes for content marketing. As SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin says in this must-view video, SEO now requires “content that makes everyone who sees it want to share it and say, ‘Wow!’”

6. Content begets content

I liken content marketing to comedian Gallagher’s watermelon smashing act: It’s amazing how much excitement one massive object can produce (especially when hit with a gigantic wooden mallet). After we publish a major piece of content, like The Social Media ProBook, my partner Leslie Bradshaw and I quip, “It’s watermelon smashing time.” A single e-book can produce dozens of tweets, an entire series of blog posts, images for Flickr, chapters for SlideShare, slides for presentations, copy or design elements for landing pages, and pitches for the press. So be sure to mine your content for ways to break it down and distribute it through multiple additional channels.

So there you have it – at least six ways a single piece of content can help your organization reach more viewers, convert more leads, appeal to search engines, and even spark more content. Marketers used to call content a “virtuous cycle,” but it’s really become much more than that. Today, content is marketing’s force multiplier.

Content leverage

Content leverage is using every  piece of content  in multiple ways to get the highest return on investment from each piece of content. Obviously, content is not valuable unless buyers are aware of it and are engaged with the material.  This requires marketers to deliver the content in new, interactive ways and channels. Borrowing from Newton’s first law, content in motion will tend to stay in motion and be more effective as a result.

Let’s track the life of a single blog article to bring these practices to life and show how a marketer can leverage content to its best use.

Developing content derivatives

An executive writes a compelling blog article based on new research from a survey of customers and prospects. The blog post explains how the research findings uncover an important buyer issue, validates the market need for the vendor’s solution, and highlights that solutions exist to address the issues identified in the research.

A research-focused post helps in the early stages of the buying cycle to inform  buyers that  solutions are available  to  make improvements.  In this scenario, marketers can develop content derivatives such as:

1) Research White Paper: The marketing team develops additional content based on the original blog post to create a white paper. However, keep in mind that research indicates buyers prefer shorter white papers; the recommended length is four to six pages.

2) Infographic: Research and best practices recommend converting content into an infographic to illustrate data that can be  quickly understood and enhance a call to action.  The elements of an infographic can be weaved into the white paper and other materials to make the data “come to life.”

3) PowerPoint: The presentation is an overview of the research findings on the market opportunity, a summary of the white paper and the executive’s best practice recommendations, which can be uploaded on Slideshare.

4) Live and On-Demand Webinar: The executive leverages the PowerPoint to present a live webinar, which is also recorded for on-demand playback.

5) Video and Podcast: The executive is interviewed in Q&A form to create a series of short and compelling videos and podcasts. Creating transcripts of each interview can provide additional content leverage.

To improve the connection and engagement of today’s busy buyers, more marketers are moving beyond traditional options to leverage interactive media such as:

1) Microsites: The marketing team develops and publishes a collection of related research and advice to a best practices microsite, providing buyers with a single resource to facilitate each step through the buyer’s journey.

2) eBook: The team  converts the key white paper content and PowerPoint into a visually compelling eBook, an interactive overview of the research, and key points  that an executive can quickly read  to understand main concepts and recommendations.

3) Mobile Content / Applications: The team converts the research into content optimized for mobile devices and creates a “Solution Finder” application to help users find the right solution  based on which piece of the research matches customers’  specific priorities / pain points.

4) Multi-media White Papers: The team enhances the white paper presentation with embedded video and podcast recordings, helping buyers feel more connected to the executive.

5) Interactive White Papers: Today’s buyers demand content be more relevant and concise. To deliver a personalized white paper, the marketing team should consider assembling and customizing the content for each buyer. This content customization can be developed on pivot points, which matches content to the buyer’s industry, location, size, role in buying cycles and pain points. The content is put into an interactive software application to survey the buyer on his profile. From there, a customized white paper is delivered with content precisely matching the buyer’s profile.

6) Interactive Diagnostic Assessments: Most buyers struggle to understand whether research issues are  relevant or applicable to them and whether addressing the issues should be priority.  The marketing team may consider a diagnostic assessment to gather and benchmark the prospect’s opportunities against industry peers and leaders. This can illustrate to buyers the competitive costs of maintaining the status quo versus the competitive advantages of adopting new solutions that can address priority issues.

7) Benefit Calculator: Without a business case, today’s economic-focused buyers are hard pressed to allocate budget and pull the trigger on an investment. The marketing team can tap the research to create a customized, interactive benefits calculator that will quantify potential benefits for prospects.

Putting the content in motion

The traditional ways to connect and engage buyers with valuable decision-support content is evolving to incorporate more channels and social sharing.

Traditional channels use promotions, excerpts, and links to the content in order to increase awareness and engage buyers.

Some of the traditional channels that the marketing team leverages to promote content include:

1) Website(s): Promote and link to the content from the main company website and microsites, not forgetting to promote the content via portals in support of sales / channel enablement.

2) eNewsletters: Include excerpts and links in regular newsletters as value-added content.

3) Banner Advertising: Use banners to promote the content as a call to action for users.

4) Paid Search: Use targeted keywords and content as a call to action.

5) Traditional Advertising: Place promotions and links from traditional advertising to the online content.

The one issue with these traditional channels is that they are paid advertisements and have a low trust rating.  However, social content placement is often earned and is trusted more than traditional advertising  by today’s skeptical buyers.

Using social media-focused channels, marketers connect and engage with influencers and the buyers’ communities via:

1) Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Posts and Links – Beyond just links to promote the content, marketers post key excerpts of compelling findings and advice. These posts are liked and forwarded by other members.

2) YouTube & Slideshare Posts: Based on the type of content, the marketing team leverages specific social channels for sharing content such as YouTube for videos and Slideshare for PPTs and PDFs.

3) LinkedIn Discussion Groups and Quora: Marketers determine what key questions would be compelling to discussion groups  to attract group members’ comments on the research and findings as well as to  collaborate on additional opportunities, best practices and solutions..

4) Influencer Links: Marketers make influencers aware of the content and findings / advice, prompting several influencers to write about the content and pass along excerpts / links.

5) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Search engines prioritize links to content that are seen as  timely, relevant and valuable to the community. To optimize SEO, marketers still need to be sure that content is tagged properly and contains important keywords. Additionally, marketers must ensure that content is back-linked,  liked, promoted and linked to/from other independent and influential sites.

6) Article Syndication: Marketers convert the blog post and other content into article form, and get digital and print publishers to feature / promote the article because they feel it will help their readers.

The bottom line

When an author develops a blog article or other  piece of marketing content, it’s key that the marketing team leverage the content in multiple ways by creating derivatives to put the content in motion. This strategy should include creating multiple traditional and new interactive media derivatives that engage buyers with content through traditional and social channels.

This graphic illustration of  a single piece of content from a research oriented blog post can be used to derive multiple pieces of content to connect and engage buyers via multiple channels  and facilitate the buyer’s journey that can help drive content marketing effectiveness.

Have you tried this approach? Anything you would add to the graphic above?

Do you have other questions? Share in the comments, and we’ll point you to an answer or ask one of our contributors to write a future post on the topic.

Getting started

What is content marketing, and how is it different from traditional marketing?
Want to learn what content marketing is or explain this to your peers? This is the post for you.

How should I get started with content marketing?
Twelve CMI contributors give you essential getting started tips (check out the end of the post for a summary of ideas).

How can I change the culture in my organization to support content marketing?
One of the biggest challenges with content marketing is getting buy-in from management. Nate Riggs gives tips on how to do this.

I’m new to content marketing and don’t have a lot of time to spend. What would you suggest?
Mark Schaefer shares how any company – large or small – can use micro-content.

How to I monitor my brand online?
You know you should be monitoring your brand online, but how exactly do you do this? CB Whittemore walks you through the steps (and check out the comments for an additional video from Brody Dorland).

Developing a strategy

What is content strategy?
Here’s an essential post from Kathy Hanbury that explains content strategy in a very easy-to-understand way.

I want to create a content strategy. Where do I start?
A great post from Chris Moritz that breaks down the first steps in a content strategy, from creating a content inventory to developing personas.

How many tactics should I use? How do I decide which tactics are best for my audience?
In a follow up post, Chris Moritz shares how to develop strategic pillars for your content marketing.

How do I create an effective content mix?
Kathy Hanbury walks you through a series of exercises to help define the right content mix for your business.

What process and templates should I use to map by B2B content to the buying cycle?
If you are a B2B marketer who has a long or complex buying process, this is a must-read post from Barbra Gago complete with templates.

Understanding your buyers

How do I develop a buyer persona?
A lot of contributors have touched on buyer personas as they are at the heart of what we do. Barbra Gago touches on the highlights and provides a solid template for you to use.

What is a web persona, and how is it different from a buyer persona?
Brian Massey discusses a web persona, which is a useful tool to help you figure out how to present information on your website.

How can I learn more about my audience via analytics?
In this five-minute video, Andrew Davis shares two tools you can use to figure out what you audience is doing online.

How can I research my buyer?
Many marketers talk about knowing your buyer, but how exactly do you do this? Barbra Gago explains.

I want to create the type of content my audience wants. How do I know how they are consuming content?
Not only do you need to know what kind of info your audience wants, but you also need to know how to present it. Here, Barbra Gago poses 20 questions to help you get the answers you need.

Where can I find demographic data?
Manya Chylinski provides a really useful list of sources to get demographic data.

Managing the process

What process should I use for content marketing?
A definitive post from Joe Pulizzi on the basic steps for managing content marketing.

I often hear the mantra that content marketers should think like publishers. What does that mean?
Jeremy Victor provides easy-to-follow ideas on what marketers can take from publishers.

What is an editorial calendar, and how do I create one?
An editorial calendar is a must-have tool for content marketers. Here is a template I use to help you get you started.

I am creating content for multiple geographies. How do I manage this?
Does your content marketing span countries? Sarah Mitchell shares tested tips for making this ever-challenging process run more smoothly.

Getting help

I need help with content marketing. Is a consultant right for me?
If you are thinking about hiring a content marketing consultant, check out this post from Robert Rose where he shares some common objections – and responses.

I want to get help with my content marketing. How can I prepare?
Russell Sparkman outlines some ways that you can get more “bang for your buck” when working with a content marketing consultant.

Coordinating the right team

Who should be on my content marketing team?
A straightforward post from Angela Vanucci on the key players in any content marketing team.

Are there certain personalities that should be on my team?
Not only are the right skills needed, but you also need the right personality mix. Ahava Leibtag shares a fun list of five kinds of people every content marketing team needs.

How can I make my team better writers for content marketing?
Looking to use internal resources for content marketing? Elizabeth Sosnow’s step-by-step bootcamp will help!

My content marketing team sometimes gets “stuck.” What can we do?
Most content marketers struggle with coordination at some point. Ahava Leibtag provides some tips on how to get out of the rut.

Creating content

What are the basic things I need to keep in mind to create valuable content?
An essential checklist by Ahava Leibtag on how to create and distribute your content.

How do I repurpose content?
One of the best ways to gain efficiencies in content marketing is to repurpose content. Here Manya Chylinski provides an A – Z list of what you can repurpose.

How do I find the right keywords from my content?
This classic post from Elise Redlin-Cook shows you how to find the right keywords for your content.

How do I curate content?
Amanda Maksymiw shares her tips for curating content for an aggregated content site.

How do I ask the right questions to get the best content?
To get to the “so what” that your readers care about, you need to ask the right questions. Dianna Huffs shows you how.

My brand isn’t very exciting (Ok, it’s boring!). What can I do?
Let’s face it: some brands just aren’t that exciting. Patricia Redsicker shares some tips and examples that are sure to inspire.

How do I make my content more engaging?
In this five-part series, our CMI contributors share ideas on how to define, create and measure engaging content.

What are some examples of great content marketing?
Sometimes  the best way to get inspired is to see what others are doing. Check out these examples from our contributors.

Content marketing takes a lot of time! Any ideas on what I can do?
Here are seven things you can do to streamline your content marketing efforts.

How can I create an effective call to action?
Brian Massey tackles the call the action. Seems simple, but many marketers don’t get it right.

Localizing content

What are some best practices for translating content?
While it’s relatively easy to translate content with tools like Google Translate, this often isn’t the best approach. Christian Arno walks you through what you need to know if you have a multilingual audience.

If I am localizing my content, what should I do beyond translation?
Ann-Christin Lindstedt share the six things you need to “switch” when localizing your content.

What are the basics of localization?
Sarah Mitchell presents this handy checklist of things you need to consider when localizing your content.

Distributing content

Once I publish some new content, how can I distribute it?
In our most popular post to date, Brody Dorland shares a useful checklist on how to distribute your blog posts, but this can be used for most content. This is one to hang at your desk!

What are QR codes and how do I use them?
QR codes are an increasingly popular way to promote content. Katie McCaskey shows you how to get started.

I have so much content. How do I organize it?
Doug Kessler shares the basics of Library Marketing, which is the art of science of presenting your content so users can find it.

Using social media for content marketing

How can I use LinkedIn for content marketing?
If you haven’t searched for your company name on LinkedIn, do it. Now.  As Constance Semler explains, you may be surprised at what you find!

How can I use Facebook for content marketing?
There are definitely better ways to use Facebook for content marketing. Katie McCaskey walks you through the basics.

How do I plan what my social media conversations?
Do you want to participate in social media but aren’t sure what to say. Here’s a handy template.

Measuring success

I’m new to measurement? What are the most important things to track?
Heidi Cohen presents a handy checklist of metrics to track for content marketing.

How do I measure the impact of my social media marketing?
Tom Pisello walks you through how to calculate the ROI of your social media program.

How do I know if my audience is engaging on Facebook?
Nate Riggs walks you through a series of exercises to help you understand how you are really engaging with your Facebook fans.

What kind of tests can I use to see how my website is performing?
Yeah, you know you should be testing, but where do you start? Scott Frangos outlines useful tests for all content marketers.

How can I use my web analytics to track my content marketing progress?
Are you like a lot of marketers who know you should use your analytics but get easily overwhelmed by all of the data? Scott Frangos walks you through a process to help you pull out the key things to measure.

What other questions do you have? Let us know in the comments below!