Make your content work harder

It’s on your computer. It’s in your inbox. It’s on your website. It’s in your dreams.

So you’ve spent some time digging through your content. You have web pages, reviews, videos, and more photos than you could use in five years. Or, maybe you did some searching and you don’t have as much as you’d hoped. Whatever the case, we have some tips to help make each piece of your content last longer and work harder.

If a piece of content is useful for one platform, it can be useful for others in one way or another. So, when you’re planning your next company email, think about all the other ways you can repurpose that email. Five Facebook posts? Ten Instagram Stories? A new page on your website? Take 15 minutes to brainstorm all the different ways you could use that content, pick your top three to five, and implement them.

As another example, if we’re talking about a new online article, we would also encourage you to consider thinking about it as more than one piece of content. Are there photos in it? Is it a feature story that has hundreds of words? Chop those into multiple posts, stories, and even pages on your website. Stretch it as far as you can!

One of the most important aspects of maximizing content is realizing that you can repurpose and recycle it. Especially in the realm of social media, content doesn’t see traffic forever. So, if you find that certain social posts did really well, reshare them later down the road. Post a follow-up to the original, share it to your story, add it to an email or post the same thing again. The point is, content is rarely ever a one-and-done, so think of creative ways you can reuse each piece of content, especially the successful ones.

When people tell a story on social media or most other outlets, they tend to focus on the big picture. Whatever they’re trying to share, they tell the whole story in one piece, or maybe a few social media posts. To make your content work harder, you should dig deeper. If, for example, you’re discussing a company’s story, every person involved has a story. How’d they get there and what’s their story? Each photo, each milestone, each new hire, each update—they’re all stories. Dive into them, tell them, and you’ll find that your content goes a lot further.

Refresh your existing content by updating your content that still sees traffic. A web page is a great example of this. You don’t have to rethink the wheel, all you need to do is make a few tweaks. Content is rarely dead. It’s rarely too old—most of the time it just needs to be updated or reframed. You’ve worked so hard and spent so much time developing it in the first place, it would be a shame for it to collect dust in a dark corner of your website. By maximizing your content’s utility, you’ll discover new ways to reach your audience, which will ultimately lead to brand loyalty.

There are endless ways you can make content work harder and smarter over longer periods of time. Develop a content strategy and set up an editorial calendar so you can keep all the pieces in full view. But keep in mind that your calendar should be fluid and very flexible, with room for off-the-cuff and timely content that can happen at a given moment.