You’ve spent an hour or three writing a blog post (or spent a pretty penny getting them written for you), then a little more time choosing an image and posting it to your IT business site… now what?
You’ve put in all that effort into creating great content that will boost your SEO and give your visitors a reason to stay on your site for a while, but if you’re stopping there, you could be missing some great opportunities.
There are several ways you can turn that rich blog content into more bang for your buck and piggyback additional marketing content off that single topic. Think of a blog as your tree from which many fruits can spring.
And the more effectively you use that blog to grow more content, the more visitors and customers you’ll see.
Content marketing generates more than 3 times the leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less.
By maximizing your blog content, you get an even better return on your investment of time and money and can generate leads from new sources you may not have tapped yet.
Things You Can Do to Repurpose Your IT Blogs
If you’re just letting your blog hang out on your website and nothing more, you’re missing some prime opportunities to generate more business for your tech website. Using the smart repurposing strategies below can help you get quite a few more miles out of your awesome blog content.
1. Make Social Media Posts
Reach your clients over social media by making a social post about your blog and linking out to it. Just write about 2 to 3 sentences that sum up the content of the post, and use a question to prompt engagement.
Such as: “How many phishing emails do you get a week? Learn the best ways to stop phishing in its tracks” (link to your blog post).
Using a social posting solution like Hootsuite or Spout Social can make scheduling and posting on multiple social channels more time efficient because they allow you to post to all your networks at once.
Two other elements you want to be sure to include:
- An eye-catching image (This could be the same image you used when posting the blog to your website)
- Appropriate #Hashtags (Get noticed by using hashtags such as #ITTips #Cybersecurity, etc.)
2. Share Your Blog as an Article on LinkedIn
While you may be posting on your LinkedIn tech business or personal profile about your blog (using tip #1), there is another way to get even more traction on LinkedIn with your blog, which is especially helpful if you work with business clients.
Post it as an article post, aka: LinkedIn Publisher Post, which will help spread the word across the LinkedIn community, plus has a few other benefits like:
- Positions you as an authority in your industry
- LinkedIn Publisher Posts get indexed by Google
- Anyone on LinkedIn can follow your posts (even if they’re not connected to you)
- Gain insight from LinkedIn analytics about who’s reading your posts
3. Create a Video from Your Blog Topic
Video marketing gets amazing stats, here are just a few courtesy of RenderForest:
- 78% of users get more traffic to their website after using videos
- 69% of users generate more leads with the help of video content
- 54% of users see a sales increase with use of videos
Trying to keep great, fresh video content uploaded regularly can take much less time if you use your blog as a jumping off point to create your videos. For larger blog topics you could do a video series with several parts.
Posting these on YouTube can help your Google search rankings and also help new followers learn about you. Be sure to use the appropriate keyword tags when you upload to get found in searches.
4. Make an Infographic
Infographics are a popular way to share information visually, and you can often get more complicated points across more easily in a graphical format.
Some ideas of IT business topics that might lend themselves to creating infographics are:
- Steps for speeding up a slow computer
- Top cybersecurity threats to watch out for
- How does a virtual desktop work?
Save tons of time by using an infographic template. You an find them at places like Canva.com and Venngage.com
5. Offer a Webinar
Webinars give you a way to engage directly with clients and potential clients to educate and promote your services at the same time. If you have an instructional blog, for example about the best Windows 10 tips and tricks, why not make that into a 20 to 30-minute free webinar for lead generation?
Here’s a “double-piggy back” for you, use your blog for your webinar topic, then record your webinar when giving it, then use that recorded webinar video to post on YouTube.
Blog > Webinar > Video (Content creation triple play!)
6. Create an eBook/Lead Magnet
Lead magnets that offer an eBook or guide in exchange for someone giving you their name and email address are a great way to build up your newsletter list and customer base.
You can easily turn a blog into an eBook or guide by adding several images and graphs along with an introduction and conclusion. Then save it as a PDF and put it behind a form asking for name/email to download. This is also great to do as an exit popup.
7. Add into Your Email Newsletter
You can get additional mileage out of your blogs by writing a synopsis of the article and including it in your email newsletter. You can include a different point in each newsletter, stretching the blog out over several of them, depending upon the topic.
For example, if you wrote a blog about the “5 best cloud-based applications for business productivity,” you could include that blog content over five different newsletters, adding one application suggestion into each one.
8. Turn Your Blog Post into a Podcast
Podcasts are an excellent way to connect with people while they’re walking, commuting, or hanging out at home. 50% of homes in the US listen to podcasts regularly.
Invite a client or colleague as a guest and use your blogs as your podcast topics. One of our favorites that’s all about IT business topics and that can give you some ideas on how to format a podcast is Computer Business Marketing.
Places you can publish your podcast include
- Apple iTunes
- Google Play
- Spotify
- Stitcher
- TuneIn
9. Create a Presentation for SlideShare
SlideShare is a LinkedIn service for hosting and sharing presentations, infographics, and other types of content. By taking the time to repurpose your blog into a PowerPoint presentation, you can generate even more traffic to your site from a platform that your competitors may not know about.
Benefits of uploading on SlideShare include:
- Branding opportunity
- You’re seen as an expert
- Seen by a global audience
- Add a call to action at the end to generate leads
- Target to your audience by utilizing their directory structure
10. Link Your Post to Google My Business
Posting your blogs on your Google My Business page gets your content out there in front of more people and makes your listing stand out from other IT businesses out there.
Additionally, Google makes it easy to turn those posts into leads and sales by giving you a number of post options:
- What’s New Post
- Event Post
- Offer Post
- Product Post
Call to action buttons that you can add include are:
- Book
- Order online
- Buy
- Learn more
- Sign up
- Call now
11. Expand on Points to Create More Blogs
One blog can give birth to multiple others helping you keep that content cycle going. Take certain points from your blog, for instance that might be in a bulleted list, and expand upon them in their own blog.
For example: If you’ve written a blog about ways to use technology to promote your business, you might have included “guest Wi-Fi” in a bulleted list. You could then take that bullet point and write another blog about the benefits of using guest Wi-Fi, including some usage statistics you find online.
Which Content Types Give You the Best Results?
It’s natural to want to drill down first into the content channels that can drive the most leads so we’ve pulled a few statistics from OptinMonster to give you some idea as to where you might want to focus your efforts first.
It’s important to note that your audience type is going to be an important factor in deciding which methods will be more successful for you. For example, if you work with residential clients only, then you may want to spend less effort on LinkedIn and more on Facebook or Instagram.
On the flipside, if you work mainly with business clients, then LinkedIn is going to be something you want to fully leverage to reach more clients.
When it comes to shares by content type, infographics win out. Here’s a listing, in order of popularity, that shows content types that users love sharing with others:
- Infographics
- Lists
- “Why” Post
- “What” Post
- How to Article
- Video
If you want more shares for your article on Facebook (as well as any social platform), be sure to add an image. Statistics show that Facebook users share posts 216% more when they have a thumbnail image attached.
Do webinars really help? Nearly half of those surveyed said that between 20%-40% of webinar registrants end up turning into qualified leads.
When it comes to ROI, email marketing still wins out, which makes building and sending an email marketing newsletter a valuable tool for any tech business owner.
ROI per $1 spent for some popular marketing methods are:
- Email: $40
- SEO: $22.24
- Internet Display: $19.72
- Mobile: $10.51
- Catalogs: $7.30
- Banner Ads: $2
Lastly, if you’re looking into promoting more of your blog content through video, here are the most popular topics people are watching on YouTube:
- Help me fix something: 65%
- To be entertained: 57%
- To learn something new: 56%
- Satisfy my curiosity: 54%
- Help solve a problem: 54%
- See something unique: 50%
So, educating people about technology issues is just what many users will be looking for.
Do you know of some other ways to repurpose a blog post into more content? Comment below and share your thoughts and ideas, we’d love to hear them!
