Listen to Blog:

Good morning, internet fans! Ryan Perry with A Simple Biz Support. Today is Thursday, therefore it’s internet marketing Thursday. Virginie Dorn is on vacation spending some much needed time with her family and therefore I have the beautiful and talented Annette Penney with Inspire and Acquire. Good morning or good afternoon to you, you’re on the east coast in Canada.
I’m in Canada! It’s afternoon here, it’s sunny and hot.

RP: It is. We’re supposed to hit 85 Fahrenheit today, but it’s a little overcast this morning. So it’s a little cold, but we’ll get up there.

AP: Yeah, yeah, it’s a warm day here.

RP: Alright, very good. Annette, you’ve filled in before and I appreciate you filling in again today. We’re going to talk about a really cool concept that I don’t think a lot of small business owners think about and it really dives into being smarter, not working harder type of a deal and it’s around content. How can we re-purpose content so that we’re not always having to struggle to find new content ’cause as small business owners, we wear multiple hats and sometimes it’s hard just to come up with new content.

AP: Yeah, well, as a small business owner myself, it’s an issue for me, too, because when you’re… You probably have the same experience. You’re working in your business, you’re trying to work on your business. So there’s only so many hours in the day, I mean I started getting up two hours earlier a couple of months ago so I could fit more in in a day. And as your business starts to grow, you have more of a need to be creating content ’cause you need it for your website and you need it for SEO purposes, but then your business is growing so what are you doing? You’re dealing more with your clients and your customers and you run out of time. So there is a real need to re-purpose or reuse content.

RP: Definitely because what you talked about is the typical sales cycle for small independent business owners where you have no sales, so you go out and you do all the things that you know you’re supposed to do. You do the chamber mixers, you get involved, you spend some time on Twitter and Facebook, you’re creating content, you’re engaging with people, and you start building leads and as your leads start progressing, maturing, you get new customers, which creates more work and now I’m so busy I don’t have time to Tweet and do all the other things and social media. And therefore, it kinda tapers off and then you’re back here going, “Hold it, I had money yesterday, but I don’t have money today, what happened?”

AP: Yeah, then you’ve got to start working in your business again and minding your business and, oh, it’s just a big cycle. Like you say, it’s a sales cycle, right? And also, as small business owners, we sometimes get to the point where our business is growing and we’re almost financially able to hire somebody part-time or full-time to help us with these things like blog post writing and the social media aspect and all that, but we’re not quite there yet. So we’re still doing it ourselves and we run out of time, we run out of ideas, we don’t know what are we going to blog about, tweet about, write about next, like, what are we doing, right? So I think that this is a really good idea for small business owners to know how to use the content that they’ve already created. Lets just get a little bit creative about it and put a twist on it and use the content in different ways.

RP: Alright, okay. Well, let’s actually… Let’s get in to that, then. So what is the first recommendation that you have for re-purposing content.

AP: The one thing that I do the most for my own clients, I would have to say, is that I take their current content, so maybe a blog post they’ve written like six months ago, even a year ago, I’ll give you an example in a minute, and I just update it. So for instance, I got a real estate client last year at Christmas, they wrote about how, if you’re listing your house during the holiday season, do you decorate it or do you not decorate it? If you do, what do you do? Do you put decorations outside on the door, but you don’t put a Christmas tree up inside? Well, okay, you know what? That subject doesn’t really change a lot.

AP: I can take that blog post and maybe just edit it and add a couple of different pictures. And I can change even just a few sentences, “Wow, I’ve spent 10 minutes on it and I’ve got something that initially took me two hours to create,” right? And so, I can post that again at Christmas time, give it a different title and, you know… And another thing that I do with clients is, let’s say that they’ve written a blog post or myself and my team have created a blog post for them, and it has done really well. It’s gotten a lot of shares online and it’s been tweeted out and re-tweeted and all this.

AP: Although I will take that because it performed well and then do the same sort of thing. Maybe change the graphic, the main graphic that you have with your blog post, change that, give it a new title and spruce it up a little bit. And with some of your blog posts… In your business, you’ve probably come across this. In social media, it happens a lot, but I can see where it can even happen in health care, you’re talking about a drug that treats some thyroid issue. Well, I’d say two years later and there’s a new drug that treats the same thyroid issue, well, the drug that you talked about two years ago is still on the market and people are using it, however now we have another drug that can be used in the same population for more specific people. So you can take that blog post and you can talk about, “Two years ago, we recommended this drug, however now,” and you can just maybe write a paragraph or two. It’s taken you half an hour and, again, brand new blog post. Right?

RP: Right.

AP: So this instructional, like, how-to, all that kind of thing, new information… If you have new information in your industry, take one of your current blog posts and just add to it.

RP: Right. Yeah, and there’s two things I want to bring up. One, I could see people going, “Oh, this is… You’re going back to the days of spinning content,” and spinning content was essentially writing a blog post and then swapping out words, such as ‘car’ and making it a ‘truck’ or a ‘vehicle’ and instead of being a blue widget, you’d call it a red widget. Essentially it read the same, but you just switched out specific words to make it uniquely different. What you’re talking about is not doing that. We’re actually talking about updating it or bringing it to, you know, like you said, “refreshing it,” which means you need to put a little bit of effort into it and not just change out ‘cat’ to ‘dog’ and ‘her’ to ‘him,’ those types of things. You actually got to put a little bit of thought into it. The second thing is, people may go, “Gee, you know what, I really don’t want to re-purpose content. I think it’s cheesy. It’s not professional. It’s not me. I can do better than that.” Hey, go for it if you have the time.

RP: But one thing I will say is, if you look at any of the magazines when you check out at the grocery store, especially Cosmopolitan, which has been around since the 1800s, the late 1800s. If you look at cover month after month after month, they do not have unique content every single month. The reality is they essentially spin the same content, but instead of the top five sex tricks you can do to your boyfriend this month, it might be the top seven. You know? And then it’s like, “Oh, well, this is the cute dress for this month,” and you know? But the reality is it’s all the same stuff, you know? The five best exercises to tighten your abs and tummy.

AP: Totally. Totally. Like a high protein diet is a high protein diet. Right?

RP: And Cosmopolitan is very popular.

AP: I mean, okay, so a high protein diet a few years ago, we called it the Atkins, and now it’s called something else. But you’re exactly bang on with that, it doesn’t change… The topics don’t change and even the content of the topics doesn’t change, they’re just calling it something different. And I’m glad that your brought those points up, it’s not something that I even considered, I have to tell you. But one thing that is a big deal for me is that, as any size business owner, you have to provide your audience, and your readers, your viewers, with quality content.

AP: So I’m not talking about swapping out one word for another word. No, I’m talking about updating it with quality content from your industry. But instead of having to write a whole blog post that took you two, two-and-a-half hours, it’s going to take you 15 minutes to 30 minutes. And what you’re doing is, you’re still providing people with the links to all of the quality information that you had there before, but now… I mean, look, if you Google, “How do I do blah, blah, blah?” Are you going to read an article from two years ago or are you going to read one that was posted 30 days ago? So there’s a lot of value in updating your current con… Using that current content and updating it because people are going to go for the most relevant and also the most recent.

RP: Yeah, and I think that’s a really good point that you talked about ’cause a lot of times if I’m doing a search, I’ll actually go into Google and say, “Look, I want it within the last, you know, couple of months. I want relevant new information.” Just so you know it’s 9:55, so we’ve got five minutes left. And I know there’s…

AP: I can’t get over how we run out of time.

RP: We’ve already run out of time. That’s it everybody.

AP: Okay. So another tip. Let’s get…

RP: Yeah. Let’s see if we can get through maybe one or two more tips here.

AP: Sure, okay. That was my best one because that’s an easy one and anybody can do it, right? Another thing that I like to do a lot for myself and also for my clients is go back through some of your not too old blog posts, maybe say three months ago, and publish it on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn has a feature now where you used to be able to just share your blog post. Now you can actually publish a post. And copy it, just copy and past it and use the same graphic and whatever, but your audience on LinkedIn is quite a bit different than the one you have on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram. You know, it’s just a different audience, right? And changes are they haven’t seen your content. And so why not just share it that way?

RP: Right. The other reason why you want to do that is, typically… I just had a conversation with Sarah Giometti yesterday about LinkedIn and the fact that, typically, if you’re a business professional, so you’re doing business-to-business is your game, not business-to-consumer, if people hear about you, either word of mouth, you came… You ran into ’em at a mixer, they did a Google search, they ran across your business and see that you’re the CEO, a lot of times, they’re going to do a Google search on your name and typically LinkedIn is going to come up at the top of that search.

AP: Right.

RP: With that being said, they’re now going to judge you on the quality of your LinkedIn profile. So not only does your profile have to be up-to-date, current, professional, but every time you do a blog post on LinkedIn, it shows that information in your profile. So it just adds to the credibility, and, ultimately, your goal online regardless if it’s website, social media, you know, video, is building credibility.

AP: Yeah…

RP: Yeah. And this… How much time does it take to copy and paste?

AP: I know. I do it for my clients all the time, and I don’t recommend taking a blog post that you’ve just published and doing it that way, take one that is two or three months old kind of thing ’cause there is going to be some cross-contamination kind of thing. There will be a few people, but it’s still… It’s a different audience, right? Another thing that I do on LinkedIn is I will join groups for my industry, I will join groups for the industry that my client is in on their behalf, and I suggest that they participate in these LinkedIn groups. And in the LinkedIn groups, there’s people asking questions, “How do you do this?” “Have you tried this marketing on Facebook, did it work?” “What kind of ads did you run on Facebook?” Whatever, right? And if you’ve written a blog post about it, you can answer their question shortly, and then just say in a gentle kind of way where you’re not being too aggressive and demonstrate you’re just there to share your content, but just be helpful.

AP: In these LinkedIn groups, be helpful and say, “I did write an article about that.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone in and found information in LinkedIn groups and somebody was like, “Well, I wrote a how-to,” and I’m like, “Oh, awesome. You just saved me so much time,” right? Having to search and find, and how do I do this or that.

RP: Right.

AP: Yeah, and then you’re setting yourself up as an expert in your field, too, which is a really important component of LinkedIn.

RP: Yeah, totally. Alright, we got one minute left, can we squeeze one more in?

AP: Okay. This is what I would quickly say. Something that I do a lot is I will look for opportunities just like you do when you’re networking in business, so Google… Let’s just say you wrote a blog post on how to blah, blah, blah, fix something, so Google how to fix blah, blah, blah, and you’ll find that people are talking about this subject in forums, and you can go in there and say and answer their question. It’s kind of like the same LinkedIn groups idea, but just be helpful online and go and answer people’s questions by directing them to your blog post about it or, in your case, to your video.

RP: Yeah. Perfect. Okay, with that let’s do a quick wrap up, so one of the first things you recommended was re-purposing old contents and just kind of a quick recap on what that is.

AP: Oh, refresh your content. So take a blog post and update it with relevant up-to-date information, give it a new title, a new graphic, bang.

RP: Perfect. And then number two was LinkedIn and actually taking some content that’s not… It’s a couple months old, so it’s not too old, but it’s not totally fresh and re-purposing it there and what I love about that, copy and paste.

AP: Yeah. They have a feature on there, you can do an update or post a picture, or publish a post. It’s easy. It’s copy and paste.

RP: Yeah. And that’s something that I do with video. So I put my video in there and then I put the text underneath with a nice image, it takes a couple minutes so that’s a no brainer for me, and then the third one that I love is do a Google search and find a forum where people are having the issues that you have solutions to.

AP: Exactly, and then you know what you’re doing? You’re helping people, and when somebody helps you, how do you feel about that person? Well, it kind of opens you up, you want to talk to them again, and, “They helped me before. I have another problem, maybe I’ll go to them and ask them for a solution to this one,” so…

RP: Perfect. And you’re creating an additional back links to your blog post, you’re getting more visits to your websites so there’s a lot of SEO benefits there, too. Alright, with that being said, that is the end of this episode. Annette, thank you very, very much for your time. We’re looking… I’m actually… Annette and I have been talking about doing our own show on a regular basis, maybe on Tuesday in a couple of months. So I’m just going to throw that out there to the universe, it’s not done done yet, but it is something that we’re working on and definitely looking forward to spending more time with you, getting to know you and your business better and sharing that information with the audience.

AP: Thanks, Ryan. I really appreciate the opportunity.

RP: Yeah, definitely. Alright everybody, I hope you enjoyed the show, and take some of those… Just take one, if you haven’t been using LinkedIn, that’s the real easy one. It’s a real easy way to get out there and start building some visibility in a network that you’re currently not involved in. Super simple. Alright, take care everybody, we’ll see you next week.