Monday, March 28, 2022

4 Ways to Repurpose Your Marketing Content

Week after week, the struggle continues. Fresh drops of blood sprout from your forehead as you stare at a blank monitor, desperately trying to conjure up new and unique material for your marketing efforts. Of course, there's no getting around the fact that you do need to keep injecting relevant, compelling content into your blog, website, and various social media channels. But what if I told you that you already had a great deal of this content lying around, just waiting for you to put it to use in a recycled, upgraded form?

You can make your marketing work so much easier -- and get so much more mileage out of all the hard work you've already performed -- simply by repurposing pre-existing content, it's not even funny. Take a look at four smart ways you can reduce your time and effort curve while still producing a steady stream of marketing content that sells what you do, builds your brand, and keeps you front and center in the public eye.

1. Update Old Blog Articles

You might naturally assume that a blog article has a limited shelf life, with the possible exception of that evergreen anchor post that remains timelessly valid year after year. However, even if the details go rancid after a while, the underlying topic may not. Why not reopen that file and update the information to account for changes in your business, your target audience, or the world in general? Remember, your current blog audience might have missed the original post when it first came out, which should give you reason enough to revisit the subject. You can even opt to rewrite the whole thing from top to bottom, using all the core information that still applies instead of reinventing the wheel. Before you know it, what's old is new again.

2. Post Non-Blog Content to Your Blog

Don't fall into the trap of regarding your blog as some isolated chamber that can only accept content you devised specifically for it. Any point worth devoting time and effort to elsewhere in your marketing efforts can also prove its merits as a blog post. Think about that case study, white paper, press release, or other writeup you recently slaved over. Couldn't that content work equally well in blog form with a nip here and a tuck there? Blogs can offer considerable flexibility in their formats and subject matter, so you'd just be adding more diversity to your target readers' experience.

3. Create Ebooks Out of Pre-Written Content

If you've been writing various kinds of marketing content for months or years, you may have already created the guts of an ebook without even realizing it. Ebooks hold special appeal for prospective clients who want comprehensive, long-form answers to their questions and challenges. That's why they do such a good job as a conversion tool, enticing site visitors to provide their contact information in exchange for a copy of this valuable help. go back and look at your previous blog articles and other written marketing content. Chances are that many of those pieces will fit together (or can be made to fit together) into a larger, cohesive volume. It's certainly a lot easier than composing an ebook from scratch!

4. Transcribe Your Videos Into Articles (and Vice Versa)

If your social media content creation strategy includes YouTube and other video channels, you may have amassed a whole online library of videos relating to your products, services, brand, and industry. But some people naturally gravitate toward text instead of pictures and sound, which means that they may miss your mountain of videos entirely. That's why you should think about transcribing the narrative text of those videos and reworking it into blog articles. By the same token, consider recording your blog articles as voice-over narration for fresh videos. You'll get two pieces of marketing content for the price of one, even as you reach a wider audience and increase your search engine visibility.

Of course, even repurposing your marketing content requires some skill, time, and energy. If you're not sure how to proceed or would just rather leave it the pros, put a professional freelance marketing copywriter to work on the job. While you're at it, request all the fresh content you need as well!

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

Don't Make These 3 Marketing Content Errors

In my previous post, I talked about some smart things businesses can do to enliven their marketing content and make it more effective. But for every set of "dos" in the world of marketing, you'll find at least as many "don'ts." So let's take a quick look at three kinds of errors you want to avoid as you plan, create, and distribute your marketing content.

Error #1: Content Personalization Problems

Do you know your ideal customer's age range, location, and background? Do you understand that person's buying likes, dislikes, goals, and frustrations? If not, then you can't know how to direct your marketing content toward that ideal person. Before you waste too much time marketing to nobody in particular, conduct market research, gather the marketing data you already possess, and construct a buyer persona. Now you can create marketing content for that mythical individual with a reasonable chance of hitting your real-life target dead center.

How much personalization counts as too much? Yes, you should try to personalize your content so that it really speaks to your target market. But you shouldn't personalize it to the point that it sounds like you've been peeping through your audience's curtains or rummaging through their personal calendars. 

Error #2: Blog Bloopers

I've said it before, and I'll say it again here: You need to blog. Businesses that maintain a blog snag 68 percent more of those lucrative leads than those businesses that just sit on their hands. not only do you need to blog, but you need to blog consistently. Maintain a regular posting schedule so your audience gets used to expecting more of that brilliant, engaging, useful content from you. Remember, if they like your posts enough, they'll share them with friends and colleagues!

On the other hand, more blog content can hurt instead of help if you throw quality out the window for the sake of sheer quantity. First, Google's search ranking algorithm gives preference to relevant, high-quality content over mass-produced garbage. Second, poor writing and off-target topics will just make you look indifferent at best and incompetent at worse to your prospective clientele.

Error #3: Lack of Content Diversity

I've been going on about blogging, but blogging doesn't represent the sum total of successful content marketing creation and distribution. If you only blog, you're missing out on the opportunities generated by other forms of marketing content such as infographics, Tweets (and other social media mini-posts), YouTube videos, case studies, white papers, eBooks, you name it. Your blog fills one channel, but you need to look at filling up at least some of these other channels as well.

I say "at least some," not "everything out there." No target audience member maintains a presence on every social media channel on Earth, so neither should your company. Remember your buyer persona? Look into that data carefully to see which channels your ideal customer most likely frequents. Then focus your own content marketing efforts on those few channels instead of wasting time and energy trying to impress the whole world. You don't need the whole world; you just need the people who will buy from you.

I've just scratched the surface here, but you get the idea. If you need help creating the right content for the right viewers, contact me and apply my professional writing services toward your marketing success!



Tuesday, March 1, 2022

Want Livelier Marketing Content? Make These Smart Fixes

You always know when a piece of marketing really does its job on you, even if you don't know exactly how or why. The words leap off the page, grab you by the throat, and compel you to keep reading all the way to the end. By the time you reach that final call to action, you're dialing that phone number, clicking that email link, visiting that website, or placing that order. You also know when your own marketing content doesn't work -- because you don't see any of that responsiveness from your target audience. Where did you go wrong when your blog, print marketing, or web content may promise remarkable features and benefits that should get your buyers chomping at the bit? The problem may lie, not in what you say, but how you say it. If your marketing content just seems to sit there against a background of crickets chirping. take a closer look at it and see if you need to make any of the following fixes.



Replace Passive Verbs With Active Verbs

Question: What do "is," "are," "be," and "have" share in common, aside from their utter blandness as word choices? Answer: They all count as passive verbs. Passive verbs can suck the life right out of your marketing copy. Compare them to active verbs such as "make," "present," "establish," "pose," "offer," and "promise." Better yet, see how many of the passive verbs in your current content you can replace with these more robust, high-energy options -- and then see for yourself how those changes turbocharge your content.

Go Light on the Vocabulary

Of course you want to impress your audience with your intelligence, knowledge, and industry savvy. Just don't fall into the trap of fattening your text with five-dollar words. The more complex your vocabulary, the more potential obstacles you throw in front of your audience. If your ideal buyer doesn't know half the words you use, how can you hope to sell to that person using those words? A simpler range of shorter words will usually make a greater impact, not only because more readers can understand it, but also because it naturally hits harder and makes for easier, more pleasant reading (no matter how educated the reader).

Clear Away the Fluff

When you read a piece of marketing content, you probably find yourself thinking two things: "What's in it for me?" and "Get to the point." No matter how well you answer the first point, you can still lose your readers by fumbling the second. Don't spend paragraphs setting the stage for the goodness to come; start with the goodness and get better from there. My playwriting teacher used to encourage his students to start a scene in the middle and fill in the necessary background along the way. When reviewing your work, trim out all unnecessary verbiage. Fluff belongs in a vacuum cleaner bag, not in your marketing content.

Interact with Your Audience

Did you ever read a piece of marketing content that didn't seem to acknowledge your presence at all? If you can't think of any examples, you probably just don't recall the failed content in question -- and why would you? People like it when you talk to them or with them, not at them. Since your marketing content does your talking for you, you want to leave room in it for the reader's own imagination and internal responses. If you want an example, look at the beginning of this paragraph. I asked you a question, and your mind probably generated an answer. You interacted with the content, whether you realized it at the time or not. If you really want to maximize the power of this approach, ask questions that make your readers answer, "Yes." Get your target audience agreeing with you, and that final call to action will yield the response you want.

Make these changes, and your marketing content should make a much more vivid impact on your target market. Need some professional help from an experienced marketing copywriter? Contact me today!