One Piece of Content, 13 Ways

There’s a common saying among marketers that your content strategy should be 20% content creation, 80% content promotion.

Hold the phone.

80% of your time should be dedicated to promoting your content rather than creating it?! You heard right, and I can tell you from experience that this is, in fact, the most effective time allocation for growing your site’s traffic.

But the vast majority of brands are doing exactly the opposite—spending the majority of their time creating new content and almost no time promoting their existing content.

It’s totally counterintuitive. After all, how are new customers supposed to find your content if you don’t promote the heck out of it? And yet, most of us just aren’t doing it.

As one of my favorite former bosses used to say, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, spinning out endless blog posts on similar topics. We do need to get the maximum mileage from every piece of content we create.

I’ve created this surefire roadmap for taking a single piece of content and repurposing it 13 different ways, making it visible on the maximum number of platforms. Follow this strategy for every piece of content you publish and watch your traffic take a sharp turn upward.

1. Write a blog post

This is where it all begins, the cornerstone for where you’ll send all of your traffic.

Your blog is critical because unlike social media or advertising channels, it’s owned by you. You control what happens to the traffic there, and you can use it to collect leads which you can later convert into customers.

Rather than creating more content, focus on creating higher quality content, whether that means posting just once a week or even once a month.

2. Create a Pinterest image

Pinterest has a reported 100 million active users and it’s an excellent (free) way to drive traffic to your website.

But you can’t pin any old thing—you need to create a Pinterest-worthy image.

If you look at the Pinterest feed, you’ll notice the most popular images are vertically oriented—taller than they are wide. They’re also easy to read and self-contained, meaning a user can look at the pin and learn something immediately.

Here’s an example of my most popular pin, which I created specially to promote this post.

I created this image in less than an hour using Canva, a free graphic design tool. It’s since been re-pinned hundreds of times and continuously drives traffic to my website.

Create a pin that sums up the information in your blog post, then pin it to Pinterest with a link back to the post itself. Be sure to use relevant keywords in your pin’s description.

3. Post to Facebook

When you write a blog post, share it immediately where the majority of your friends hang out: on Facebook!

Even though my family and friends aren’t necessarily into marketing, I typically get a great response in the form of likes and shares when I share my blog posts on my personal Facebook account. I’m assuming this is simply because the people there know me personally and are being supportive.

But this moral support works in my favor; Facebook likes to see likes and shares on posts, and as a result will show the post to other users outside of my friends list. This means new eyeballs on my website.

I also share all of my blog posts on my professional Facebook page.

4. Post within Facebook groups

Facebook groups are a great place to not only attract new readers, but to build your online tribe.

Begin by running a Facebook search pertaining to your niche. For example, if you sell craft coffee, you’d search for groups of coffee lovers and foodies.

When Facebook returns your search results, filter them by clicking on the Groups tab.

What you’ll see next is a listing of the Facebook groups in your niche, which you should proceed to join.

Each Facebook group has its own set of rules for what can be shared within the group. For example, some groups only allow you to promote your business on Fridays. Be sure to read and abide by these rules, or you’ll quickly get banned.

In addition to sharing your own links in groups, it’s important to engage with others. A good rule of thumb is to comment on 3-4 other posts for every post you make of your own.

5. Create a series of Tweets

Every time I write a new blog post, I immediately write 3 Tweets about it and send them into my Twitter queue, including relevant hashtags.

This lets my followers know immediately when there’s something fresh on my blog, and the hashtags help new followers discover my post.

I write extensively about scheduling Tweets for your content in this post.

6. Tweet influencers

You can sometimes score additional shares of your post by Tweeting it directly to influencers in your niche.

Sticking with the coffee example from above… let’s say you wrote a blog post about how to find the perfect coffee bean variety for you.

You’d then run a Twitter search for some popular accounts in the coffee space. Do this by searching terms like #coffee, then filtering the search results by Accounts.

Ok, so I have a list of the top accounts pertaining to coffee. Now it’s time to Tweet them. It might look something like this.

Nine times out of ten, nothing will happen. Influencers are busy, and there are always lots of people clamoring for their attention.

But one time out of ten, guess what? They’ll share your post, and you’ll see a spike in traffic. Not too shabby for a few minutes’ worth of Tweeting.

7. Re-publish to LinkedIn

Reach a fresh new set of eyes by republishing your blog post directly to your LinkedIn account. You can literally copy and paste it—it’s that simple.

To get to the publishing form, select Write an Article from your LinkedIn dashboard.

Before hitting ‘Publish’, be sure to add three relevant tags at the bottom of your post to help others find it.

8. Create a condensed version of your post on Reddit

I love Reddit.

It’s such a treasure trove of crazy stories, cat memes, and oh yeah—great articles from businesses like yours.

Once you’ve registered for a Reddit account, begin by joining Subreddits within your niche. You can find them by running a Google search, i.e. ‘coffee subreddit.’

Reddit runs on a point system (called karma), which rewards you for sharing good content and interacting with others. Spend a few days building up karma points by leaving thoughtful comments on existing posts.

When you’ve got a solid base of karma points, it’s time to share your own content on your Subreddits. But here’s the key—you cannot simply share a link to your blog. Well, you can, but Reddit users are very quick to call out others for spam.

Instead, you’ll want to submit the full text of your blog post directly into the Subreddit thread (or a condensed version, if the post super long).

At the very bottom, include a link back to your original blog post.

What I like to do to convince users to click on my link is offer some additional material not contained in the Reddit thread. For example, I might say “here’s a link to my original blog post, where you can find a photo gallery of each coffee bean I mentioned. [LINK].”

Here’s an example of one of my Reddit posts so you can see exactly what it should look like.

I talk a lot more about marketing your business on Reddit in this post.

9. Shoot a Periscope video

Periscope is a free app that allows you to live-stream from anywhere using your smartphone. Generate traffic to your post by talking about it in a short video.

Periscope can be daunting at first, especially if you’re not used to being on camera, but once you’ve gotten the hang of it, it can actually be pretty fun!

Ali Rittenhouse has a great starter guide for using Periscope here.

10. Share your post on forums

Forums can be hit or miss, but when they hit, they hit big.

Inbound.org is a marketing forum where I share my best blog posts after publishing them. It’s currently the number one source of traffic to my website, outranking even search and social media traffic.

That’s pretty crazy!

To use forums, you’ll need to find the ones where your audience members hang out. How to do this? You guessed it—Google.

From here, you’ll want to go through and see what each platform is all about. If you find one with a good amount of activity—join it, interact with others and share your posts!

11. Create an Instagram post

Instagram has been around for years now, but it’s still so under-used by most businesses! I can’t advocate enough for using Instagram to drive traffic to your website and promote your blog posts.

I have a comprehensive guide to using Instagram to promote your posts here.

12. Snapchat about it

Snapchatting is fun, addictive and so easy—but there’s an initial learning curve that keeps many from utilizing the platform.

Here’s what I want you to do: download Snapchat from the App store or Google Play, and commit to using it once per day for an entire week.

You can Snapchat anything: your morning routine, a behind-the-scenes at your office, a rant while you’re sitting in traffic, whatever. Anything to help you get used to using the platform.

If you’re still not feeling it after a week, fine. You can delete the app and never use it again.

But, if you get the hang of it and like it (which I think you will), you can start using it to share your latest blog posts.

I like to shoot a few quick snaps in a row hitting the main points of by blog post. I use a text overlay to show my blog’s URL where viewers can go to read the post.

13. Make a YouTube video

This one works especially well if your post translates to something visual, for example a post about your latest merchandise, your trip to a conference, or a how-to.

Shoot a 2-3 minute video to complement your blog post, then upload it to YouTube.

Here’s an example where I used a video not just to accompany my post, but as the meat of the post itself. This way, I’m drawing in traffic from people searching marketing topics on YouTube.

I should also note that this strategy can work with any piece of content–it doesn’t have to be a blog post. For example, maybe you made a funny new video or cool infographic. All of these strategies to promote it will work just the same.

Whew! That was kind of exhausting. But you can see how one piece of content goes a loooong way if you repurpose it for a variety of different channels.