This article is by Hernan Vazquez. Hernan is an Entrepreneur and Digital Marketing expert. He works on providing value on his YouTube channel about the latest marketing approaches and strategies, as well as connecting with fellow entrepreneurs and business owners on his Facebook Group.
Gosh I wish the day had 48 hours. Don’t you too? At this point of my career as an entrepreneur I’ve found that time is much more valuable than money. In fact, I have no issues whatsoever generating the money I need to live comfortably. But generating time, that’s another story.
One of my main goals for 2017 is to build a team of A-players and start focusing on the high value tasks (as I mention on this post I made for this blog). Another good way of “multiplying” my hours is by using automation and trying to be strategic when it comes to generating high quality content.
This means that I want to start re-using the content I produce for my audience. And yeah, I know you might be wondering about the legitimacy of this practice, or if it goes against creativity and churning out rehashed material over and over. But let me digress with you for a second.
Content Shock
As author Mark Schaefer explains on his amazing book “Content Shock,” there’s simply a lot more content being produced than can be consumed by your clients. This means that, more often than not, the clever quote you just tweeted, the amazing video you uploaded last week or your great Instagram history will never actually be “seen” by your audience. Let alone consumed.
This problem is even bigger when you think about the way social networks algorithms work. Basically, the way Facebook’s Edgerank works is that you will see things on your timeline you’re already familiar with, either because you have liked them, shared them, commented before, etc.
It will also add, from time to time, an element of surprise: a picture uploaded by someone in your contacts whose profile you haven’t visited in awhile, etc. Twitter and Instagram work basically the same.
What this means is that people are seeing less and less diversity of content on their timelines, while focusing on content that has good “engagement” (or that they have seen before). This is yet another good reason to reuse your content as much as possible.
With that said, it’s not about spamming your customers’ or friends’ timelines with the same article over and over again. This is not a good thing to do. But the techniques I’m going to show you today will allow you to reuse your content without appearing spammy or that you’re lacking ideas. Let’s see how this works.
Why I Love Video Marketing
Video marketing is one of the most powerful tools a business can use to reach its audience. As I explain on this short series, there’s a huge opportunity for those that leverage on video to convey a message. Whether you’re trying to sell a product, gather leads, increase your brand awareness, etc., you need to be making videos.
I understand videos are sometimes hard to make (you need to have the correct lightning, you have to be confident on camera, you need to spend a small fortune on equipment etc.). But I’m not saying you need to make a small Hollywood production every time you record something. In fact, I strongly advice against it.
You Don’t Have to be a Video Pro
Unless you’re trying to come up as a professional filmmaker, you only need a couple of things in mind to record amazing videos to your audience. In fact, most of these things can be achieved with your smartphone. If you have one, you literally own a small film studio in your pocket.
My videos are far from professional, but I honestly want to help my viewers make more money online. And I get a lot of love and support from the YouTube community. As long as you’re being honest, engaging and entertaining, your video will drive your message home.
Another reason why I love video marketing is because you can get more mileage out of your effort. A video can be reused in many different ways. So every hour you dedicate into video production can be multiplied by tens or even hundreds if you follow the steps below.
Different Networks, Different Formats
Now that you understand the power of video marketing, it’s time to see even further: how to reuse this content over and over again.
Each social network has its own characteristics and caveats, but basically you can use your videos and make specific pieces of content for each social network your brand is in.
For example:
- You can rip the audio out of your video file and create a podcast to upload to SoundCloud or iTunes.
- You can transcribe the video using a service like Rev.com and populate your entire blog with it (meaning that you don’t need to write another blog post in your life!).
- The best phrases of your videos can become Tweets.
- You can take screenshots of your videos and use them on Instagram or Snapchat. This also works amazingly well for Pinterest.
- You can even cut the video in little “pieces” and upload to your Facebook stories or Instagram.
- And, you can use the transcription and turn it into a PDF, and upload it to sites like Scribd.com or Docs.com
There’s literally no limit of uses to your video material, once you have it produced. And as you can see, there are A TON of different places where you can be present at the same time, just by re-utilizing the content you already recorded.
To Each Its Own
It’s important to point out that each social network is different. A message that’s working amazingly well on Facebook might not work as well on Twitter, etc. You (or your team), need to understand how to frame each post to get as much impact as possible.
Another thing to notice is that each piece of content you put out needs to link back to your website or wherever your video is hosted. I recommend using YouTube to upload your videos and then embedding your videos on your website.
So the process would be something like this:
- You record, edit and upload the video to YouTube.
- Next, you send the video to be transcribed by Rev.com (or similar).
- You make a post on your website with your video embedded and the transcription below it.
- You rip the audio from the video and upload to SoundCloud with a link back to the post of your website.
- Next, you take screenshots of your video, edit them on Photoshop (or similar) and upload them to Instagram, linking back to the original post.
- You can also upload the video to Facebook and link back to the original post.
- You tweet the video, the post and some phrases, always leaving a link to your site.
- Etc.
As you can see, there are many benefits associated with this strategy. You only need to create (and be creative) once. The rest is taken care of with the material that’s already public.
Myself, being a SEO nerd, I use and love this strategy, because it helps your SEO on so many levels. You’re getting links from social media platforms, you’re embedding rich content in your posts, you’re interlinking your social profiles, etc.
NOTE: This doesn’t mean that you can’t post original content to your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest profiles. If whatever you’re doing is working, please keep on doing it! This is just another way of populating with content these social media profiles without spending more time or money than the necessary.
To Wrap It Up
So there you have it! By using this strategy not only you’ll be giving your audience an opportunity to get out of the “content shock,” meaning they’ll actually get to see and consume your content, but you won’t need to work your face off to populate all of your social media profiles.
If you combine this with a tool such as Meet Edgar, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a better, more efficient entrepreneur.