Content Creators & Marketers: Repurpose Your Content for Greater Reach and Engagement

I’ve created a content creation and marketing course, or a content creation and distribution course. I actually haven’t thought of the name yet. Every time I think of one, I just think, “No, that name sounds redundant.” But in essence, it is a course to help content creators and businesses with their content creation.

I often find that many businesses will say, “Oh, we’ve got to create content. We’ve got to write a blog post. We’ve got to send an email. We have to, I don’t know, post something on Instagram. We’ve got to do something.” People often ask me, “What should we do? How should we do it?” And I’ll ask them, “Well, what are your goals? What are your intentions?”

It’s great that your niece told you to start posting pictures of your restaurant on Instagram or writing blog posts about your medical practice. But unless you have a goal or intention with your content, you’re kind of wasting your time.

I’ll use restaurants as an example because I speak to them most frequently. Restaurants often want to post pictures of their chefs and staff and tell people how amazing their front-of-house manager is. I think that’s great content, but if you’re selling a restaurant to me, nothing is going to get me through your doors faster than really delicious- no, really delicious- appetizing pictures of your food.

I’ve seen a lot of restaurants post very arbitrary pictures of their food, and I think, “That’s not going to get me into a restaurant.” You want to post pictures that really sell your business. But you can’t always be posting pictures. For example, if you’re a gynecologist, you can’t always post pictures of your patients. You’ve got to have some discretion.

Maybe post behind-the-scenes footage, showing off your state-of-the-art machinery or your décor. It amazes me when someone laughs because I say, “Show off your décor.” This particular person, a doctor, had a fantastic sense of style and décor. I said, “Wow, it’s like décor, it’s not just surgery.”

A lot of doctors I visit have these intrusive signs, like, “Do you have an STD? Could your daughter be pregnant?” Or you go to the dentist, and they ask, “Do you know what gingivitis looks like?” with a picture of someone with bleeding gums. I sort of hate going to medical professionals because they always have the worst décor.

But I told this particular doctor, “You’ve got an incredible sense of space and style. You should sell this to your patients.” Of course, they’re not going to come to you for decorating tips, but if I have a choice between going to a dentist with bleeding gums on the walls and one with sleek, minimalistic décor, I’m going to choose the latter. And I’m trying very hard not to mention names.

When I see how people create and use content, I’m always intrigued. Going back to the restaurants posting pictures of staff: I think it’s a wonderful idea. Share pictures of your food, by all means. But occasionally share pictures of your staff too, because it shows your business’s personality, puts a human face to it, and builds a relationship.

But if you’re a restaurant, it’s not your friendly waiter who’s going to get me through the door. It’s that delicious-looking picture that will bring me in. I’m trying to think of other businesses, but alas, I’m at a loss for words.

One thing I talk about in my content creation course- and I recommend this to everyone, whether you take my course or not- is to repurpose your content. Creating content, whether it’s written, visual, or audio, is time-consuming and expensive, and you need resources. If you’re a small business or content creator, you often don’t have those resources.

So, I always recommend repurposing content. You’ve already done the work, so make it work twice as hard. If you need convincing, repurposing is a great way to reach a wider audience. For example, if you’ve written a blog post, you could break it down into a series of social media posts. That’s automatically more content.

Like myself, if I’ve created a blog post, I can turn it into a radio insert. I’ve repurposed written content into sound. Then, once the radio show is done, I can repurpose it into a podcast and share it online. So, let’s say I blog about muffins.

I can post about the different muffins on social media, talk about their deliciousness on radio. But radio is transient- people don’t record radio like we used to record our favorite songs on cassette tapes. If people don’t hear my muffin segment live, they’ll miss it. But if I share the podcast, they can listen whenever it’s convenient for them.

So, there are four examples of repurposing my content: four ways to reach a wider audience. And the same content works four times harder for me. This is what my content creation and distribution marketing course is all about- not only helping creators and small businesses create content but also getting maximum value from it.

Here are five quick reasons to repurpose your content:

Reach a wider audience.

Maximize your return on investment. By making your content work harder, you free up time to focus on other revenue-generating activities.

Repurposing boosts your search engine optimization.
Google might bury your blog post because a hundred other people wrote the same thing. But if you create images or videos and share them on social media, Google indexes those separately.

Repurposing caters to different learning styles. Some people prefer reading, others prefer watching videos or listening to podcasts.

You can cater to different platforms and expand your content’s reach.

For example, break your content into smaller segments to share on social media. You can also turn it into an infographic, a downloadable PDF, or a video.

If you’re in content creation, marketing, media, or public relations, consider repurposing your content for maximum efficiency.
I’m still toying with the idea of workshops. I’m leaning toward a full-day or two-day workshop, or even retreats where we can get out of the city and discuss content creation, marketing, and repurposing. Some people prefer half-day workshops, like one a week for a month or one each month for four months. Others prefer to do it all at once and work through everything in one go.

So, if you’d like to learn more about content creation and how to repurpose it effectively, feel free to get in touch. I’ll be happy to help: edward(@)jozistyle(dot)joburg or +27 81 261 7803.