In today’s digital ecosystem, the quality of a brand’s content often directly influences its relevance. This can be especially true for rapidly growing startups. The pandemic has only increased the need for engaging startup content marketing as nearly all communications between consumers and brands and business-to-business went digital. 

Social media is a powerful tool to elevate the visibility of a product, mission, and brand, and marketers in B2B, B2C, and of course, today’s D2C organizations understand the impact effective content marketing can have on growth and profitability. But to be genuinely effective, startup content marketing strategies rely on quality and consistency. 

High-quality content is thoughtful, compelling, and solves a problem for the reader. But from a brand perspective, the purpose of content is to build an audience by showcasing brand values, displaying transparency, and maintaining control over brand messaging. Pair quality content with consistency, and audiences and various platform algorithms take notice, resulting in increased engagement and impression levels. 

Quality vs. Consistency: Which reigns supreme? 

When building out a startup content marketing strategy, it can be challenging for startup teams to devote adequate resources toward producing a steady stream of quality content. When time and resources are limited, which strategic effort should be prioritized — creating high-quality content less frequently or creating less quality content more frequently?  Generally, the answer is a balance of both, here’s why. 

Posting consistently across social media channels tells the algorithm that your account is active and will prioritize it on newsfeeds resulting in higher impressions. Therefore, posting regularly is essential for building an audience. But this is just the first step. Once people see your content, it’s the quality that keeps them engaged and regularly returning to see what else your brand is creating. So while consistency draws viewers in, quality keeps them returning to your content channels – and ideally, your products. 

For startup teams with the limited time that need to prioritize quality and consistency, creating a repurposing strategy is KEY to growing and retaining an engaged audience online that generates qualified leads. 

Why repurposing content is beneficial. 

The ultimate goal of startup content marketing is to increase traffic via engaging and influential stories. With 3.6 billion people using social media every day, showing up consistently on social channels – in a relevant way too – is one way to divert social traffic your brand’s way. According to Instagram, nearly all U.S. business profiles post at least once daily. Now, consider that many businesses have a presence on multiple social media platforms, occasionally post more than once a day, and also have to keep up with additional marketing channels like blogs, podcasts, byline pieces, newsletters, and more. Putting it all together, there is a lot of content to create. 

For startups with a small marketing team, a single marketer, or do-it-all CEO, quickly turning out a consistent stream of impactful content can be overwhelming. That’s why each piece of content must be produced with maximum repurposing value in mind. Repurposing will not only give your marketing team a reprieve from content overload, but it will also open up the necessary time it takes to create insightful, compelling long-form content that should be the base of your company’s entire content library. Repurposing content also amplifies the original content piece, increasing interest and increasing your audience with each ‘share.’

Aside from greater visibility and more time for content creation, an added benefit is the ability to understand better what kind of content your target audience is most likely to engage with. For instance, if you repurpose your blog content on LinkedIn using various graphics, videos, direct links, and quotes, you will eventually see a pattern with the content attributes that are most likely to receive the most significant engagement. Relevant engagement statistics such as likes, comments, shares, saves, and follows should be tracked to inform future strategies to grow an engaged audience likely to turn into qualified leads. 

How to effectively use one piece of video content to boost your marketing engine

Step 1: Create a thoughtful piece of flagship video content. 

The base of a successful repurposing strategy is dependent on creating pieces of exceptional flagship content. Flagship content pieces are in-depth, engaging, long-form pieces that provide so much value that readers will want to bookmark them for themselves and share their learnings with their entire network. 

Flagship content can take the form of a long blog post, ebook, podcast episode, or webinar and should provide something of value to your audience, whether that is actionable advice, trends within your industry, inspiration, or entertainment.  These pieces generally take time and should greatly align with your brand’s overall strategy. The purpose of these pieces is to generate qualified leads, so keep that in mind when deciding the theme and format of your flagship piece. 

A video-first approach is often the best strategy for ease, efficiency, and results. This is because producing a video will give you all different types of video assets across owned video-focused platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. But beyond the video, these assets can also be used for many other content types. For instance, videos can quickly transform into audio-only for podcast-type content that can be posted across all platforms, from LinkedIn to Twitter and Facebook. And the script that is developed for the long-form video can also be shortened into micro pieces of content that already have approval for use across social, blogs, and newsletters. Using video content to guide your social media strategy is a great way to maximize the time and use of each new piece. 

Step 2: Repurpose the piece of flagship content on as many channels as possible.

Once a piece of flagship content is created, it’s time to build a strategy to share it across social media and additional channels in different formats. This is where the ‘repurposing’ comes into play. Generally, the period a piece should be repurposed should extend anywhere from one to two months and occasionally even longer to maximize the piece’s life. 

The best way to build a successful repurposing strategy is to write down all potential channels that would benefit from the content as is or in a modified format. These startup content marketing channels should include owned, earned, and paid outlets. This could look like posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram, or paid advertisements on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, creating a YouTube video, writing bylines, hosting a webinar or podcast episode, pitching the original content for outlets to repost, send to your email list, and more. The methods you choose should align with your brand’s overall goals and objectives for the quarter.

Take, for example, BMV’s recent work with Preddio Technologies, an application-specific IoT solution provider. Preddio recently published a white paper on IoT — think of this as their piece of flagship content. Once the white paper was published, it was used across many channels to capture new leads. Graphics and quotes from the paper were utilized on social media for over a month, the link to download the white paper was sent to their email list as a newsletter blast, and a subsection of the white paper was utilized to create a byline for Enterprise IoT Insights, and entire white paper was republished on industry media sites like IoT Business News and RFiD Journal. Repurposing the white paper produced enough owned content for over a month, giving the marketing team time to create and plan for content down the road. Using it as inspiration for a byline also grew the company’s audience base and maximized the white paper’s viewership.

As you build out your overall strategy, it’s essential to occasionally buffer repurposed content on social media channels with additional posts like curated industry news, highlights of older evergreen content, company news, upcoming events, employee or client highlights, or whatever else will best engage your audience. Strong engagement will also help you understand your content’s impact and analytics to improve future content strategy.

8 ways to repurpose one blog post to boost your B2B content engine. 

1. Break out all of the graphics, major statistics, and general findings to create social media posts for your active channels. 

2. Use a subsection of the blog post to create a thread on Twitter or a long-form post on LinkedIn or Medium. 

3. Turn the blog into a downloadable ebook to capture new leads.

4. Use the blog’s theme as the foundation for a webinar panel or podcast episode. 

5. Record sound bites, place over video clips, and post the new video on social media channels. 

6. Use a subsection of the blog to write a byline for an industry news site. 

7. Use the blog as the foundation for an email newsletter. 

8. Down the line, update older blog posts with new statistics and examples, share relevant updates to social media channels.