It’s not always easy to create a piece of content that reflects well on your brand and resonates with your target audience. So when you’re able to create content like this, you want to make sure you get the most out of it. That’s why leading brands spend so much time focusing on ways to maximize value.
The cost of creating content
Good quality content is expensive – and we’re not even talking about the actual dollar amount associated with paying a writer to formulate sentences. That alone can cost you thousands of dollars a month. We’re talking about the hidden cost of creating content.
- Time. The amount of time it takes to create content is worth noting. If you’re personally writing the content, this is time you’re taking away from doing other important marketing tasks. If you’re outsourcing the content writing, you still have to take into account the time it takes to find writers, communicate with them, revise, edit, and publish.
- Creative energy. There are arguments to be made on the contrary, but creative energy is a finite resource. If you’re pouring all of your energy into creating content, there’s no guarantee that you’ll have enough creativity to give to other areas of the business.
- Budget allocation. When you spend $100 on a blog post, that’s $100 less that you’re able to spend on AdWords, landing page design, email marketing, etc. This isn’t to say spending on content marketing is bad (it’s actually very cost-effective), but just remember that every dollar spent here is a dollar less that you’re able to spend in another area.
- Risk. Finally, there’s risk associated with creating content. There’s always the chance that you’ll say something wrong, offend a reader, or inadvertently devalue your product. The reward is much higher than the risk, but there’s risk, nonetheless.
As you can see, there’s more to creating content than just cutting a writer a check. There are all sorts of opportunity costs involved and you have to recognize just how much is being poured into content marketing.
This isn’t meant to scare you away from creating content – it’s a valuable investment – but rather, it’s meant to open your eyes to what’s really going on. If you’re going to put so much into your content, you need to make sure you’re getting a lot more out of it.
4 ways to maximize value
Value maximization is a concept that should permeate every area of your business – especially when it comes to marketing. If you aren’t constantly thinking about ways to increase your ROI, something’s wrong. And when it comes to content, there are a few specific ways you can enhance the value of your investment without putting in a ton of additional work.
1. Align your content with current events
It takes a lot of time and energy to brainstorm new ideas for your content. And sometimes, even the best theoretical idea doesn’t perform very well after publishing. So, when you see low-hanging fruit, you’ve got to snatch it up.
In the world of social media, anything that has to do with a current event or pop culture is highly magnetic. To get the most out of your content, find ways to align your brand with these trends. Online jeweler, CaratLane, is the perfect example. Just browsing through their blog, you can see how they directly and indirectly align their brand with relevant stories. From articles about red carpet jewelry trends to paparazzi images of celebs wearing their earrings, CaratLane does a fantastic job of capturing value in as many ways as possible. Can you do something similar?
2. Repurpose existing content
One powerful technique savvy marketers like to rely on is repurposing existing content. There are lots of ways to do this, but one of the most popular is to take something like a listicle with lots of general points and then create multiple blog posts based on it.
Take this article from Business Insider as an example. It’s a pretty popular article and stands on its own merit, but even more value could be extracted by creating an 11-part follow-up series that dedicates one full article to each breed included on the list. This would be an example of strategically repurposing content that’s already been proven successful.
Another effective way to repurpose content is to cross over mediums. Using the previous example, this article could be turned into a YouTube video in which the different dogs are featured. Or, the article could be turned into a visually pleasing infographic. There are many different options.
3. Reference past work
The internet is fast-paced. Something you published last week may have slipped through the cracks and gone unnoticed. This doesn’t necessarily mean the content was bad or off-target; the lack of traction may have simply been the timing.
Occasionally, it’s a good idea to look back over previously published content and consider tweaking and republishing it. If nothing else, you can go back through your archives and re-share content on social media that you feel is still relevant or compelling.
4. Syndicate content
If you aren’t currently syndicating your content, then you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to increase exposure and drive traffic back to your blogs and domains. Content syndication is extremely simple and something you shouldn’t overlook.
Here’s a pretty good resource on the topic. It explains how syndication works and highlights a few of the top networks you may be able to access.
Quality reigns supreme
At the end of the day, you have to think about quality. You should never attempt to stretch your content if it comes at the expense of quality. In other words, don’t water down your existing content just so you can get another brand mention out of it.
Quality reigns supreme and it’s much better to have one valuable piece of content than three low-quality pieces of content. But if there are ways to maximize the existing value, by all means, go for it!
If you want to get 30 effective techniques to master content marketing along with valuable insights from 10+ influencers like Mark Schaefer, Rebecca Lieb, Lee Odden, Jason Miller or Ian Cleary, download our free eBook now!
Image by Norbert Levajsics
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