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How to Recycle Digital Marketing Content & Why It’s Important

assorted plastic bottles

The most effective digital marketers are recyclers. 

No, I’m not talking about the environment or plastic bottles—although that’s important, too. I’m referring to reusing content across multiple channels to get the best use from it.

Sharing one piece of content once on a single marketing channel is wasteful. It’s also a good way to suck up all of your time and not always reach your audience with the right message.

Instead, continuing to upcycle your ideas and assets again and again in fresh new ways helps you to be consistent and to reinforce the messages your audience needs to hear from you.

Ready to start recycling? Here are a few tips to getting started with this effective practice.

Know What Content to Create

Recycling the wrong message over and over damages your brand. Sharing something inaccurate or out of character for your business will drive away potential customers or possibly even attract the wrong kind of customers. So first you need to know what to share.

Look at your competitors—and yes, you do have competitors even if you don’t realize it. What kind of content are they promoting on their channels? The goal isn’t to copy them, but to learn from your marketplace on what target to aim for.

Ask your ideal audience what kind of content they’re interested in. Don’t make assumptions and waste your time creating resources they don’t care about. Asking those valuable questions is a type of sustainable marketing content in and of itself.

Document Your Content

You can’t reuse content that you can’t find. You wouldn’t be able to recycle without a blue recycle bin. In the same way, you need a place to save all of your recyclable ideas for future use. It’s a waste of time and energy if you have to spend forever digging for the right piece of content to use. That defeats the entire purpose.

Solve this challenge but properly documenting your content as you create and share it. One of the easiest ways to do this is by keeping a content calendar. Not only does this aid you as you plan out content for your digital platforms, but it also makes it easy to search and find later.

Even if you don’t rely on a content calendar, there are plenty of ways to organize your files and assets so you can easily find them later. This takes time to create upfront, but it saves you significantly more effort in the long run.

Create Evergreen Content

Just like with plastic bottles, there is some digital content that just can’t be recycled. Blog posts, videos, or graphics that are time-specific are harder (or unwise) to reuse later.

There will always be the need to create this timely content for your business. However, you can maximize how much you can recycle by creating evergreen content. These are resources that can be used at any time of year and (hopefully) well into the future.

Ideally, this blog post is evergreen. Digital marketing trends and platforms will change. But the concept of recycling the content shared there likely won’t. You can still use this concept well into the future. Meaning that this blog post can be shared on social media—regardless of which platform is currently trendy.

Where To Recycle The Content

Once you’ve created a process to make recycling easy, it’s time to put it into practice. Recycling is essentially resuing the words or images you created for one platform on another. Or reporting that same (or modified content) at a later time to get it back in front of your audience.

Here are some examples of how that could look:

  • Sharing a snippet from a blog post to Facebook, along with a link back to your website.
  • Embedding audio from a podcast into a relevant blog post on the same topic.
  • Turning a customer review or testimonial into a quote graphic for your website.
  • Posting a short video from your YouTube channel or website to Twitter or Facebook.
  • Adding an infographic originally shared on social media into a blog post.
  • Capture client testimonials as videos using a tool like AnswerBite.
  • Grabbing a quote from a blog post and turning it into a quote graphic for social media.
  • Combine multiple blog posts on a topic into a free downloadable resource.
  • Craft the same series of blog posts into an automated email series.
  • Share the ideas behind a blog post or email in a free online webinar.
  • Turning a podcast episode into a video using a tool like Headliner.
  • Editing a blog post into a shortened version for posting to LinkedIn.
  • Pulling the transcript from a podcast or video into a modified blog post.

The goal is to think of new ways to use the same message and reformat for another platform. Think about how the people on that channel best consume media and how you can speak directly to them. You might catch the same people in a new way, or reach a new audience.

Don’t Have the Time To Recycle Content Yourself?

Recycling digital marketing content saves you time (and money) in the long run. However, it still takes time. Constantly producing new content for your business marketing channels can be exhausting and overwhelming.

Luckily for you, that’s what GreenMellen excels at. We find ways to maximize your online presence to grow your business—whether that’s through your website, email marketing, social media, or visual branding

Get in touch with us today to learn how we can help you to make the of your online content.

The Only Content Calendar Tool You’ll Ever Need

A content calendar is a valuable tool for keeping your marketing content on track. But what should your content calendar contain? Not to worry—this template has everything you need to get started.

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Robert Carnes

Marketing Manager

Robert Carnes is a freelance writer, published author, and professional marketer. His book, The Story Cycle, is your business's guide to becoming a better marketer. Robert lives in Atlanta and you can follow him on social media @jamrobcar.

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