I have to admit, the top thing I have learned about content marketing came out of my own vanity. For as many years that I have been writing, I still find it exhilarating to see my work published, whether it be a drip e-mail campaign, thought leadership piece or an in-depth case study. So when I discovered that some of my work was being shared only once, or not at all, I was very surprised.
A study conducted by LinkedIn and the Content Marketing Institute revealed that 80% of content created by marketing goes unused by sales
This unfortunate fact is the reality of our marketing lives. When you consider how much time, effort and resources that goes into creating quality content (on average, content marketing accounts for 29% of B2B marketing budgets), why is that content being wasted?
I checked my ego at the door and surveyed a few clients about unused content. It all boils down to time. Marketing teams think they lack the time it takes to post and re-post their content. Sharing quality content doesn’t have to take a lot of time. In fact, it can be broken down into 3 simple steps: analyze the content you have; optimize the channels that reach your audience; automate the posting process.
Go Green
Reusing content that you already have takes the time and guess work out of generating new content and deciding what to share.
Analyze your current collateral and establish what is evergreen – content that is relevant to your audience for a long period of time. Examples of evergreen content are case studies, white papers, eBooks and blogs that define major aspects of your business or industry. Studies that examine the state of a particular industry or niche are considered evergreen content, until the next study replaces the stats and findings of the preceding study.
Your audience evolves over time, adding new subscribers and followers daily. Content you shared 3 months ago will be new and relevant to your new subscribers and a refresher for your existing audience.
Oh, The Places You’ll Go
Where you share your content will ultimately be defined by your audience. An email campaign, whether it be a simple weekly blog post or a full-blown newsletter, is the first stop for sharing content. Email is only one piece of the puzzle. Look to publish your content on your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts to broaden your audience.
Undoubtedly, your C-Suite and sales team have very different audiences, which are also different from the audience on your corporate LinkedIn profile. Tap into those audiences. Ask your C-Suite and sales team to personally share the content on their own profiles; it gives the company further exposure and gives everyone quality content to share.
Give Your Content Legs
Use a social media content calendar to help you get started with where and when to post. My favourites are Hubspot and CoSchedule. A social media content calendar will help you schedule when you can post and re-post your current collateral along with new ideas you have yet to create. This will not only keep you on track for posting on a regular basis, it will maximize the content you are sharing. Ensure that you are creating a new meta description (short yet compelling description of your content) every time you re-post. This will give your evergreen content the traction it deserves.
Analyze your content, optimize your channels and automate your process and you will find that sharing your evergreen content takes no time at all.