If your organization has a successful SEO strategy, you are most likely creating great content that your customers find of value. Have you stopped to think that the same great content you’re creating for SEO could be used for other purposes as well, such as social media, email marketing, whitepapers, and even e-books?
If your organization has a successful SEO strategy, you are most likely creating great content that your customers find of value. Have you stopped to think that the same great content you’re creating for SEO could be used for other purposes as well, such as social media, email marketing, whitepapers, and even e-books? Well, it can, and before we proceed an important point should be made: SEO is content marketing.
In addition to increasing search engine visibility, SEO content should be relevant and valuable to your target audience, and provide solutions to their problems. The cumulative effect of this is driving more traffic to your website, better user engagement, increased conversions, and ultimately more customers. These are all goals of content marketing as well, but SEO and content marketing are often discussed in silos.
To emphasize this disconnect, according to Sunil Rajaraman, the founder and chief executive (CEO) of Scripted.com, marketers are willing to pay $1.95 more per word for “thought leadership” content than they are willing to pay for “SEO” content. One can assume this lack of perceived value for SEO content is because of all the garbage that has perpetuated as SEO over the years.
Nevertheless, SEO is content marketing with the added benefit of increased search visibility. Let’s look at the various ways your SEO content can be repurposed.
Since your organization is already publishing content that is relevant and valuable to customers, share this same content on the social media platforms where your customers are active. Because your SEO content should be relevant and valuable to your target audience, posting to social media should result in sharing of that content.
Your organization may already share curated content on social media, but that’s only assisting other organizations in their content marketing efforts. Scale down on sharing content that promotes other brands, and work on sharing content you’ve created that drives visitors back to your organization’s website.
With this strategy, the same content not only increases your website’s search visibility, but also increases its social visibility, resulting in increased traffic to your organization’s website.
In addition to social media, promote your SEO content through email marketing, but don’t include the whole article. Use a teaser to entice your readers to click through to your organization’s website where they can read the entire article, and where they are also presented with additional content that may interest and engage them.
Many organizations send out monthly or quarterly emails with too much information about all the accomplishments they’ve made during that period, such as awards won, projects completed, new hires made, and so on. The problem with this strategy is that it provides a lot of information that’s useless to customers. It’s good to let customers know how well your organization is doing every once in a while, but the bulk of your email marketing should provide customers with information they can actually learn from and use.
Keep in mind that content marketing is not only intended to drive new customers, but is intended to encourage repeat customers as well, an area where email marketing is very effective.
Finally, downloadable whitepapers and e-books are great for generating leads from your organization’s website. So, take the SEO content you’ve written over the last six months or more, and repurpose it into downloadable whitepapers or compile it into an e-book. Providing website visitors with free whitepapers and e-books not only allows you to generate leads, but also assists in positioning your organization as a thought leader in its respective industry.
You can also promote whitepapers and e-books through social media and email marketing. Give readers just enough information to whet their appetites, followed by a call to action to visit your organization’s website where they can download the complete whitepaper or e-book.
While content written for SEO purposes is intended to increase a website’s search visibility, you can promote that same great content through other channels, such as social media and email, as well as repurpose it into downloadable whitepapers and e-books. The end result is less work and a better overall content marketing strategy.