Struggling to Create Content? Here’s How You Can Repurpose Your White Papers To Save Time And Money

The story of the crock pot is famous in American culinary history. 

Invented by Irving Naxon, it was called the Naxon Beanery before Rival Manufacturing bought it and renamed it the crock pot.

Inspired by stories of the old country (Lithuania) from his mother, Irving wanted to create a heating element that would surround a standard pot in the same way an oven would have. He also wanted to find a low-cost, low-electricity solution that would save people time and money.

It’s safe to say he succeeded. Today, the crock pot is central to American cooking, helping people to cook efficiently and cost effectively. To Irving, having a low cost solution that saved people time and money when cooking was important. And saving time and money is no less important with your marketing content, including white papers.

This is where content repurposing comes in handy

Getting more mileage from your marketing simply means taking something like a white paper (which you’ve already created), and then repurposing it into other forms of content.

This gives each piece of marketing you create more mileage. A useful way to think of it is one-to-ten marketing. Or taking one form of content (like a white paper) and turning it into 10 separate pieces.

Creating fresh content that engages your readers is critical.

It’s the machine that keeps your sales cycle full of prospects, leads, and customers. But let’s face it, it takes a lot of effort and it’s often hard to find the time and resources to do it regularly. This is where you can use repurposing.

Instead of creating a brand new piece of marketing content, you can take something you or your team has already created, and repurpose it. This takes much less time and effort than coming up with new material.

So take this quick example:

You’ve got a list of white papers your team has written up in the last 2-3 years. Why not take one of those white papers and create a series of blog posts. The content has already been written, you just have to format the material for your blog. Can you see why this is a smart thing to do?

A problem-solution white paper could be turned into four blog posts. Each of these posts would cover a different section of the white paper: the introduction, the problem, what’s been done before to solve that problem (and failed), and the new and better solution.

You should repurpose your marketing content as often as you can

As much as possible. It makes sense doesn’t it? Because you’re getting a lot more mileage out of your marketing. You’re not creating a white paper or article or webinar, promoting it once, and then throwing it up on your website to be forgotten about.

No, you’re taking that same white paper, turning it into a slide deck, and uploading the slides to SlideShare. Or getting it transcribed and then using the transcription to create a blog post or email newsletter series.

So repurpose all the time

And the best time to start is now. You need the practice anyway :). Here’s what you need to do: take a piece of educational content (it doesn’t have to be a white paper), and brainstorm 10 ways you can promote and repurpose it to give it more mileage.

Do it right now. You might be able to get 3-4 blog posts out of it, promote it in your company newsletter, take quotes from the paper and post them on social media throughout the week, or turn the paper into a basic infographic. Arrgh, so many choices.

This practice will save you time and money

Think of it this way: creating a brand new blog post series might involve hiring an outside copywriter to write the content. That’s going to cost you money. It’ll also cost you time since you’ve got to spend hours trying to find the right person for the job. Getting an article placed in a magazine or advertising on Facebook? Same deal.

Even if you do everything internally, it’ll still cost you time. And don’t forget about opportunity cost. The effort it takes to create a fresh piece of content will use up time and resources. These resources could be used elsewhere.

But when you repurpose your content, you stand to get more output (more leads and sales) for the same input, because you’re basically reusing the same material.

Hold on… won’t my audience get sick of seeing the same content over and over again?

Yeah I get it. This is a concern for a lot of marketers. They wonder if their audience will tire of seeing the same material all over the place.

The answer? Probably not. Most people can’t remember what they read yesterday, let alone a piece of content from a white paper you created in the past.

And don’t forget about repetition. When your market sees your content over and over again, it helps them get a deeper understanding of the material and how it can help them. So you’re actually doing them a favour by repurposing. And it helps keep you top of mind. So don’t worry. Your audience isn’t going to start complaining when they see the same material multiple times.

To summarise, you need to make repurposing a habit

Slicing and dicing your white paper (and other marketing) into various different forms will save you time and money. And make your life a LOT easier in the long run. So you may as well get started on it ASAP. Take a white paper you’ve created recently, and brainstorm 10 ways to repurpose it. Then you’ll be able to claim your content is the “crock pot” of marketing :). Irving Naxon would be proud!

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