As a freelance writer, I produce lots of different kinds of content for my clients in the financial services and business-to-business sectors. Every week I write blogs, articles, newsletters, white papers, case studies — you name it and I’ve probably written it.
I usually don’t get much feedback, good or bad, to the content I write for my clients. I’m not complaining — everybody’s busy and I don’t need an “atta-boy” reply to everything I send to a client. But I got an email last week from one of my clients that really made my day.
Heck, you could say it made my week, month or even my year!
This Guy Gets It
Steven Schipper is the founder of LendTrade, a firm that helps banks and other financial institutions trade loan portfolios. I’ve been writing blogs for Steven since early this year, which he posts on his website in order to provide value-added content for site visitors, help boost his search engine optimization (SEO) results, and position himself as a expert in his industry.
Steven is one of those entrepreneurs who “gets it” when it comes to content marketing. He realizes that creating a blog is just the first step in a broader content marketing program. As I’ve discussed before, once you have created a piece of content — whether it’s a blog, white paper, case study or whatever — you have multiple opportunities to reuse the content in many different formats across a variety of different channels.
Steven asked me what I thought about creating a series of four blogs each month around a broad topic and then combining these into a comprehensive white paper. “Great idea!” I practically screamed into the phone.
So I merged the four blogs I wrote for him in September into a comprehensive overview of the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosures rule (or TRID), a hot topic in the mortgage finance industry. Then I worked with my designer to create a really nice-looking white paper he could post on his website as a PDF.
In October we did the same thing with the four blogs I wrote that month on the CFPB’s efforts to limit the ability of auto dealerships to mark up interest rates on car loans they secure for their customers. That gave Steven two timely white papers he could post on his website in addition to his weekly blogs.
In November, Steven decided that two white papers were enough for the time being so he asked me what I thought about repurposing that month’s blogs as an e-newsletter. “Even better idea!” I screamed again. At this point, Steven might have been thinking that maybe he’d just email me with his next idea.
The Good Stuff
Last week, Steven forwarded me an email reply he’d just gotten from his newsletter. A reader complimented him on the content and said he’d forwarded the newsletter to others in the bank, who in turn forwarded it up the line to their CFO and to their Washington, D.C., lobbyist.
But wait — it gets even better. Steven also said in his email to me that he just spoke with a hot prospect at a very large bank. He sent the prospect one of his white papers and “he really liked it and forwarded it to his ALCO committee.”
Folks, THAT’S what I’m talking about when I say that there’s some serious marketing power behind strategic content reuse. Think about it: Steven hires me to write weekly blogs, but he doesn’t stop there. After posting the blogs to his website, he repurposes them as white papers and newsletters. It’s the same content — it’s just used in different formats and shared across different channels to maximize its impact.
I do the same thing with the content you’re reading right now. In addition to posting it as a blog on my website, I also send it out as an e-newsletter (you can sign up for it here). This enables me to archive all of my content in one central place and provides an opportunity for you to comment on my articles below so we can start a dialog.
From White Paper to Blogs … and More
My friend Gordon Graham, aka That White Paper Guy, wrote a series of articles this year discussing how to repurpose a white paper. He explained how to repackage a white paper’s content into a press release, set of blog posts, slide deck, landing page, and set of tweets.
“By recycling your white paper into different formats, you’ll reach a much broader audience and deliver more value to your clients,” Gordon told me. “If you’re a B2B marketer, you’ll get more bang for your marketing buck.”