50 (Almost) Free Ways To Repromote Content

How To Give Your Content New Life Get New Readers and Leads

What if you could get more readers and leads from each piece of quality content so that you can look good to your boss and get yourself off of the content production treadmill?

While you know in your heart this is possible, and would even improve your content since you’d have more time to focus your creative energies on higher quality content. But you feel helpless to change the process since once you finish one piece, you’ve an endless list of more content requests.

Don’t worry; you’re in good company.

75% of marketers use a piece of content ONLY one time according to Kapost research. What a waste, especially since, no matter how efficiently you use your existing resources, you always need more to meet your audience’s needs and your business’s objectives.

Fortunately, once you have great content you can get improved results with limited or no additional investment. It’s called content repromotion.

Content repromotion defined

Content repromotion is when you distribute content that you’ve already published and distributed to increase your audience and effectiveness by reaching new people or attracting attention when people are in purchase mode.

Content repromotion differs from content reuse since you don’t change the content. As a result, content redistribution is almost free. You take advantage of your internal resources. Content redistribution costs include employee time, related tools or widgets, and possibly advertising support. Check Repurposed content VS repromoted content.

Follow Social Triggers’ Derek Halpern’s 80-20 Rule:

• Spend 20% of your time creating new content.
• Spend 80% of your time promoting it to maximize results

(BTW–Here’s another point of view on the 80%-20% distribution rule. ) 

 

3 step process to maximize content reach and results

1. Optimize your content for social sharability and search before you publish the content. This encourages readers to share and works to improve search.
2. Maximize your content distribution when you initially publish it. Use these 37 places to distribute your content and 20 places to place your content for distribution.
3. Add re-promotion to your marketing plans. To minimize resources, schedule these efforts when you publish the content. It reduces the chances that these steps won’t fall through the cracks.

 

Download your content marketing checklist 

50 Free ways to re-promote your content

Here’s how to re-promote your published content to attract more readers and sales. These tips are broken out by media platform.

1. Repromote content on owned media

Many marketers, both B2B and B2C, overlook many internal republishing opportunities.

Enhance email newsletters

Include all of your newsletters and promotional communications. Highlight older content to add value to email communications.

• Resend emailings to people who didn’t open it when you first mailed. Pay attention to your email data to avoid getting recipients mad. Hat tip to Noah Kagan.
• Package older content into collections. The information should make sense together such as the “Best of”, Last week’s posts, and/or theme or holiday. 

Extend business emails

This is business correspondence the recipient actively seeks or needs. It goes to a primary account, not junk.

• Use consistent employee signature files. Centrally promote an existing piece of content with an appropriate message that you change on a regular basis.
• Place targeted content on customer service correspondence. This works best if you can select products and suppress poor credit customers.
• Augment purchase confirmation emails. Target related how to and styling information.
• Communicate with employees. Don’t assume they know about your content efforts.

Spotlight existing content on website and/or blog

• Spotlight your best content. It can be a list or just one article. WP Beginner’s Syed Balkhi recommends choosing a less popular oldie but goodie since your top articles already get the lion’s share of views.
• Link to relevant content in your FAQs. Readers and shoppers actively seek these answers. Include relevant articles, images, videos and presentations. Make references stand out with color, design and images.
• Use product pages as entry points into older content. I’m surprised more marketers don’t do this because customers research products on their own online before contacting you. (Don’t forget to redirect old product to the current season’s offerings.)
• Provide links to related articles at the end of each article. This encourages readers to look deeper into you content.
• Offer product related training and how-to content. Recipes and patterns entice people to buy. Take a tip from Kraft. Include your product logo in the instructions.
• Direct readers to your top content when a file not found page appears (404 page).
• Spotlight existing related articles. Good content metadata helps. Take your reader’s journey into consideration.
• Maximize link power. Link to published articles from new content.
• Leverage your email unsubscribe page. Offer links to useful content.
• Use existing content to support new content. Link to new articles from published content.
• Republish guest posts from other sites on your site. Make sure you have permission to republish and add a link stating where the content was first published.

Target new visitors

• Add a “New to the site” tab. Make it easy for new visitors to get understand your content and offering. Also ask them to register for email communications.
• Spotlight a key piece of content on your landing page after readers respond. Get them into your content while they’re interested.
• Include links to older, relevant content in your content give-away. This should be a no brainer.

Ask employees to re-promote your content

• Encourage employees to share your content via their personal social media accounts. Before you ask, put social media guidelines in place. Also, realize that you can’t control employee accounts.
• Facilitate employee communications. Sort and categorize relevant content by products and questions via an internal group or intranet. Don’t forget to show employees how to use the information.

Add existing content to your mobile app

• Curate internal content in mobile app updates. Adapt your commentary to target app readers.

Extend content life with PR

• Tell influencers you’ve mentioned them in your content. Don’t assume they’ll see your social media updates.
• Spotlight relevant content in your press releases. Link to related older quality content.

Distribute content in investor relations

• Spotlight content in your investor relations communications. This audience is very interested in what your firm is doing. Show your investors an inside peak.
• Put your employees in the spotlight on your investor relations page. Let employees to tell what they do and their company related stories.

Add existing content to offline activity and marketing

• Include older content in your print newsletter. Print an excerpt and link to the full piece of content.
• Reference supporting content in your flyers. Use easy-to-type URLs with relevant keywords that work within limited space constraints. Give recipients a reason to keep your handouts.
• Reference product and training information in print sales materials. Support sales with relevant evergreen content.
• Direct customers to relevant content on your product packaging. Use easy-to-remember URLs.
• Enhance content give-aways. Provide recipes, patterns and other content with your products. For example, when my family went zip-lining in Mexico, the tour company added their photographs and maps to the family photos we purchased.
• Add tips to your catalogs and other direct mail. I did this when I worked at Bertelmann selling books.
• Direct people to content using business cards. RazorSocial’s Ian Cleary creates special business cards to entice people to his presentations at conferences.

Download your content marketing checklist 

2. Repromote content on social media

Data has shown that the lifespan of a share, regardless of where it exists, is relatively short. Therefore, you must plan to continually re-share content as part of your distribution process.

• Reshare existing content on a regular schedule. An expert like Guy Kawasaki shares his content every 8 hours when it’s first published. Re-promote the content several times during the first week and later as well.
• Share existing content based on social media trends. Spotlight existing content when it’s relevant.
• Spotlight holiday content when appropriate. It helps to program this.
• Tap influencers where appropriate. Cite influencers when you’ve referenced them in your content. Also, email them to let them know.
• Add social media buttons to all existing content. Allow new readers to share older content. (Here’s an explanation of native advertising.)
• Create a pin board for your published content. Leverage the growing power of Pinterest.
• Connect with people who share similar content. Orbit Media’s Andy Crestodina spotlighted this tip at Content Marketing World.
• Get a social media buddy. Don’t do social media alone. Work with someone else at your level and promote each other’s stuff.
• Support older content on social media with advertising. Laser target ads and content to appropriate micro-segments.

Download your content marketing checklist 

3. Repromote content on  third party media to republish content

• Syndicate published content to other sites. Allow other sites to republish your articles. Make sure they note that the article originally appeared on your site with link.
• Ask other sites to publish your best stuff on their site. This is similar to syndication but it’s only one article.
• Incorporate existing content in your presentations and/or webinars. This works best for charts, images, videos and infographics. Include an easy-to-use URL for your source.
• Link to your best content in guest blog posts and articles. Make sure that you include one link to a relevant piece of content in every guest post you write. But don’t over stuff the content.
• Advertise your new content on a third party. Direct readers to specific content.
• Pay another site to advertise or sponsor your content. This can take a variety of formats such as a special emailing or sponsored content. It’s another version of native content.
• Cross-promote content. Work with another blog or website that has a similar audience. Instead of paying to promote your content, you publish their article and you publish yours. This is a poor marketer’s version of native advertising.
• Tap into forums and content communities. Become a contributing member of a community. In addition to being a resource, you can occasionally spotlight your content.

Download your content marketing checklist 

Maximize existing content reach by providing additional support for republishing.

Don’t assume your content reaches its maximum audience the first time it’s published. You need to work to keep it top of mind.

Incorporate future re-publication and distribution into your content marketing editorial plans.

What’s your favorite content republishing tip and what type of results has it yielded?

Download your content marketing checklist 

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

---

Photo Credit: Morgan Sessions via https://download.unsplash.com/photo-1421986527537-888d998adb74