3 Of The Easiest Ways To Recycle Your Content

I opened my refrigerator the other day looking for spaghetti sauce to use for the pasta I was making. I emptied the rest of the contents in the jar into a post to heat up the sauce. At that moment, I had an empty jar and faced a conundrum as to what to do with this empty jar. Someone may see it as a one time use and immediately throw it away. Then there’s someone, like me, who feels semi-guilty for throwing a good jar away.

Let me preface by saying that I’m not some eco-nut, but in these past months I’ve been quite proud of myself for reducing the size of my carbon footprint. It’s also lead me to become more aware of my choices in recycling.

I thought about how quick it would be to just throw it away and be done with it, then I thought, “Well what else could I do with it?”

I have the some of the same thoughts when I’m developing content for TrackMaven. Sometimes I’m stuck at a crossroads to determine if the content has a one time use or if it’s something that I can recycle and build upon.

image via Sprout Content

With the latter here are the simplest, green marketing ways that I have found useful to recycle the content…

1. White Papers and E-books

Did you write a consecutive pieces about a particular topic or you have a series of ideas that you are waiting to unleash one blog post at a time? Or did you have this killer post that irks you that you can’t post about it again? Don’t fret because you can always reuse the content. Producing content isn’t just a simple push of items; each of pieces has to build upon each other. That’s what the white papers and books come in. Last year white paper usage has increased by 19%, so if you’ve set the foundation with one post or piece of content why not expand on it. The series of posts can be condensed into one white paper and gives your audience one place for them to find the series of post rather than them having to back track your blog for each one. The white paper can also be an easy way for you to generate leads. Just like many products give your potential customer the white paper once they give you their email. For that epic post you wrote months ago, expand on it with an e-book. You can dive more into your audience’s comments that they wrote, answer questions or write even more about the post that did so well. 61% of users believe white papers are effective and they love sharing the information, which with in turn drive more traffic to your page.

2. Presentations

I think it’s safe to say that it is pretty much conference season. With the large influx of conferences beginning to happen, there will inevitably be massive amounts of content produced by each of these conferences/summits and sometimes those pieces of content will only last the lifetime of the conference. However, in order to preserve some of that content you must reprocess it in a different way. Uploading the slides to Slideshare the different presentations is a good start. Then, to dive even further into some “eco-marketing,” put these slides into a blog post that can give your audience, who couldn’t attend the presentation, a glimpse or more at what they missed. Even if most of your audience was there most will be familiar with the presentation that they will be more inclined to still come back in fear that they may have missed out on something. About a month ago Allen did a presentation at Social Media Week on “No More Fluffy Marketing,” and we made it into a great blog post for those who missed out on it. It of course aligned well with the blog because we’re firm believers that Maven’s fur should be the only fluffy thing in your marketing.

Did you know that Slideshare gets over 60 million visits a month and is the largest social “content” network? Make sure you are recycling some of these presentations that people love because it will only build out more of your content marketing machine.

3. Social Channels

Oh snap, did that tweet just get 100 RT’s? Or did that Facebook post ignite an uproar of comments? Recycling isn’t always about reducing (although it is about reducing waste), but try the expansion route with your different social channels. Granted, this doesn’t work for all tweets, Facebook posts, pins or Vines (Take note of the previous statement of recycling in cutting waste); yet, growing out the posts on the different social channels can give you an even bigger opportunity. It already sparked conversation once, so why not try to heighten the discussion by beefing up the content. The fill-in the blank posts on Facebook, marketing facts, and 140-characters can easily be lengthened to something extra. For example, looking on Twitter you can see your own hashtag campaigns and write about the successful outcome. You could also try looking at your Competitors’ social media content and discuss any unanswered comments or tweets they left behind.

Although, it probably seemed like an overly dramatic debate with myself, I ended up recycling the jar into another use. Now, the empty and clean jar that once had spaghetti sauce in it now resides in my pantry filled with flax seed — a perfect Earth Day happy ending. If you’re at a crossroads with using your content once or “recycling” it, try picking the second option. Content must build upon itself in order to last and developing it out into more detail will only help your marketing and strategy.

Happy Earth Day!

 

Sabel Harris See more of Sabel's posts

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