Website Content Basics: Recycle Your Content

Companies interested in improving the performance of their online marketing efforts always seem to struggle with the generation of content for their website or blog. This is totally unnecessary, since most firms are already sitting on a goldmine of valuable content. In my continuing series on website content basics, I’ll discuss how a little creative thinking can go a long way when producing website content.

Website Content Is Everywhere

Whether businesses realize it or not, they have plenty of existing content that can easily be recycled for a variety of uses. While I’m discussing recycled content for use on the web, that same content can be used for offline purposes as well, such as marketing materials, article submissions to industry journals, tradeshows and other applications.

Tips to Re-purpose Content

Our experience in developing content for a variety of businesses has given us some insight that businesses may find useful when recycling content for use on the web. Here are a few tips that we’ve learned over the years:

Think Broadly – Before assessing anything, it’s important to think broadly about content. Articles, brochures, interviews, conversations, FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), presentations, videos, audio recordings and photographs are just a few examples of content. Remember every customer contact, vendor contact, sale, or event can be mined for content.

Not All Content is Good – After wrapping your head around the types of content, it’s important to understand that not all content is good. Maybe that kid in marketing is a lousy writer or the subject of an article is a bit off-topic, so an understanding of what materials may best meet your goals is valuable. As I mentioned previously, quality website content is relative and subjective; furthermore only your customers and prospects can define “Good.”

Share the Challenge – Regardless of the size of company, sharing the challenge of content creation with employees can be a big win for everyone. Some indirect benefits include:

• It creates a challenge
• It gives employees the ability to contribute in other ways
• It acknowledges employees’ experience, knowledge and expertise

But best of all, it reduces the level of work required to recycle content.

Get Ready to Herd Cats – Most companies can be disorganized at times, so patience should be used when assembling all content for assessment. Involving employees will help in speeding up the process, but that’s not going to cover all of the bases. Vendors, industry publications and anyone else that has created company-focused material should be contacted in an effort to get every bit of valuable content.

Change the Channel – Thinking broadly about they type of content has already been mentioned, but considering the delivery channel is just as important. Content originally created as a written article, such as PowerPoint presentations, Sales Brochures or Owner’s Manuals can be recycled many times using a variety of mediums. A good example is to take a lengthy item already published in an industry journal and repurposing it as several posts for the company blog.

Add Value – Just because you’re recycling content, you shouldn’t be lazy about it. While it’s possible to use existing content without making alterations, it’s probably not a good idea. How would you feel if you were watching a video about a cutting edge technology that originally came out a year ago? Use your existing content as a base and add some value too.

Recycled Website Content: Examples

After offering some helpful tips on content recycling, I thought that I’d offer a few examples. These are just a handful of ways in which businesses can get more mileage out of materials they have already created:

PowerPoint Presentation – Business presentations are a great source of web content. Post the presentation on SlideShare, use the presentation as the focus of a blog post or create an embeddable video using an application like Camtasia to make it more dynamic.

Deconstruct an Article – Take a previously published article and break it into smaller pieces for a set of blog posts; if the original is not posted on your website, then post it.
Press Releases – Press releases can be used in an original or adapted form. Since most traditional press releases are pretty dry, don’t hesitate to make changes that make a press release more interesting and enjoyable to read.

Republish Old Posts with a New Spin – Maybe you’d like to forget that mid-90s prediction about the internet going nowhere, but you can refresh the subject and get some use out of it by writing about why you were wrong. Furthermore, you could build on it by creating a series on the biggest developments that proved you wrong.

Photos – Treat your photos of company events, products, industry trade shows and everything else as potentially valuable content. Sure, you can use them on your site, but you can also use them to build links via Flickr. Note: Remember to tag them correctly and use the proper Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/  license that requires a link back to your preferred page.

E-Newsletters – Non date-sensitive (aka Evergreen) content can always be used on a website or blog, but what about a company’s email newsletter? Alternatively, all that hard work in creating content for the newsletter should not go to waste when it can be used in another form, like on a blog, in a brochure or on the company website.

Go Mine for Gold

Most companies that struggle to create website content do so unnecessarily. With the application a little creative thinking and some elbow grease, content recycling can be an effective technique to minimize work and maximize online marketing performance.

So what are you waiting for? Get your helmet on and start digging for gold.

Do you need some help creating a Content Development Strategy for your business or website? Contact Dinkum Interactive and we’ll be happy to give you a hand.

Bill Rowland

For anyone interested, the prior posts in the series include:

Website Content Basics: Going Old School
Website Content Basics: What Is Good Content?
Website Content Basics: Planning Is Important