Strategic Planning Process and Models

Just like planning to go for a trip on an unfamiliar journey, strategic planning is used in business organizations as a map to help establish ways to achieve the set goals. The process of strategic planning involves examining the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the organizations.Advertising We will write a custom assessment sample on Strategic Planning Process and Models specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More After examining, a strategic plan for future operations is developed. For an organization to get to its desired destination in growth there has to be a strategic plan to help carve a path to follow. Strategic planning helps an organization to know where it intends to go over a specific period. This also maps-out how the organization intends to get there and helps to establish whether the organization achieves its goal in the end. Strategic planning is very different from a business planning. A strategic plan fo cuses on the whole business unlike a business plan that focuses on a precise agenda (Bradford and Duncan). A strategic plan is a living and dynamic process (Bradford and Duncan). Strategic planning models include the Michael Porter’s Five Forces, the Adrian Slywotzky’s Value Migration, and the W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy. Michael E. Porter from Harvard business school formed the porter’s five forces analysis in the late 1970s (Bradford and Duncan). Based on industrial organization economics, the five forces analysis focuses on the competitiveness and attractiveness of a market (Tracy). An attractive market therefore is one, which has high-level profitability while the opposite is true for an unattractive market. Of the five forces analysis, the first three are influenced by external competition while the remaining two are influenced by internal threats (Porter). Porter referred to his theory as the Porter’s Five Forces, â €˜micro environment’ (Porter).Advertising Looking for assessment on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More These include factors that closely influence an organization’s ability to make profit and effectively serve its customers (Porter). Nonetheless, industry attractiveness does not really mean that all organizations in that market niche make an equal profit margin. Companies apply individual business models to enable them compete with the rest in the industry. Core competencies allow companies to achieve greater profit margins than the normal industrial average. The airline industry is a low profitability industry but individual organizations apply unique business strategies that enable them go above the industry average (Porter). The porter’s five forces entail three forces that are influenced by the horizontal competition (Porter). They include the threat of substitute products, the th reat from already established rivals, and the threat of new entrants (Porter). The remaining two forces on the hand are vertical completion. These are the bargaining power of the suppliers and the bargaining power of the customers (Porter). Below is a graphical representation of the porter’s five forces (Porter). Adrian Slywotzky’s Value Migration is shifting of value-creating forces (Slywotzky). The organization shifts to designs that satisfy the clients better. Concisely, it entails creating as much value as possible for the customer. This is achieved only by providing products and services that effectively satisfy the needs of the consumers. Value migration as described by Slywotzky is in three categories. They are, value flows between companies, value flows between companies, and value flows between business models within a company (Slywotzky).Advertising We will write a custom assessment sample on Strategic Planning Process and Models specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Value flows between industries may be shown by flows from hospitality to transport industry. Between companies, a good example is from Corel word perfect for Microsoft (Slywotzky). A good example of value flows between business designs would be from IBM mainframe computers to IBM PC’S with system integration (Slywotzky). With value migration, there are three stages involved and they are, value inflow stage, value stability stage, and value outflow stage. Value inflow is the value borrowed from other organizations or different industries. Value stability on the other hand is a situation where there is a competitive equilibrium. This means that the market share and the profit margins are at equilibrium. Lastly, the value outflow shows that the organization has lost its value in the industry through factors such as the outflow of talent and other vital resources (Slywotzky). The value chain is represented by all actions that add utility to the consumer and may be internal or external (Slywotzky). Monitoring the linkage between the value chain activities assures the organization of a harmonious chain. However, calculating or determining value is quite difficult considering that the consumers can only determine the value. This makes a value subjective (Slywotzky). To work around it, the relative market value of a firm is considered as the level of success of an organization in value creation. Blue Ocean Strategy is yet another widely used strategic planning model. A blue ocean is created when an organization comes up with value innovation that enhances the values of both the consumers and the company at the same time (Kim).Advertising Looking for assessment on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More In blue ocean strategy, competition is less imperative since it involves innovation of unexploited markets. Here the demand is created as opposed to the earlier described strategies where demand is sought after. This provides for unlimited opportunities for rapid growth and profitability (Kim). In view of the blue ocean strategic planning, competition based strategies are not sufficient for high performance sustenance (Kim). W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne acknowledge that while competition based strategies are imperative, they are not sufficient (Kim). They argue that organizations have to go beyond competing to create their own market. This will help enhance growth and enable firms to realize new profits and opportunities for rapid growth. Their model is based in contrast with the environmental determinism view/ structural view. The determinism view assumes that industrial conditions are inevitable and that firms must find ways to compete with these conditions (Kim). They argue th at with such strategies, one organization’s gain is the other loss since in competition each firm tries to outdo the other. The blue ocean strategy is opposed to the normal capture and distribution of wealth. Rather, it supports the creation of wealth. This strategy focuses on restructuring the industrial structures and market boundaries to enhance value. This view is popularly referred to as the Reconstructionist view (Kim). Organizations in W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne’s view must think outside the box and surpass the limitations of the industrial structures. This strategy assumes that out there is a large untapped demand. The only challenge is how to create the demand focusing on value innovation rather than competing (Kim). In this model therefore, competition is irrelevant (Kim). Through the expansion of the demand, there is a great deal of wealth creation, which creates a possibility for increased profits. The later model of strategic planning is of an innovat ive nature while the earlier discussed models are competitive in nature. That is the greatest difference between the blue ocean strategy and the other two. Works Cited Bradford and Duncan. Simplified Strategic Planning. Washington, DC: Chandler House, 2000. Print. Kim, Chan. Blue Ocean Strategy. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2005. Print. Porter, Michael. The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy. Boston, MA: Harvard business, 2008. Print. Slywotzky, Adrian. Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition Hardcover. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1996. Print. Tracy, Brian. The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success. San Franscisco, CA: Berrett, Koehler Publishers, 2000. Print. This assessment on Strategic Planning Process and Models was written and submitted by user Madripoor to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

How to Repurpose Content and Make the Most of Your Marketing

How to Repurpose Content and Make the Most of Your Marketing As content marketers, we all have too much to do, and not enough time to get it done. We’re also under pressure to deliver high-quality content our audiences want. That content also needs to be distributed across an ever-growing array of channels. If you’re working on a small team, that pressure is further magnified.  When resources are limited, you have to stretch everything you have to succeed. So, how can you produce awesome 10X content when your time is limited? Try turning one piece of content into five (or more). Why Should Marketers Repurpose Content? Repurposing content simply means taking one asset and reusing it somewhere else. That sounds simple enough in theory, but it can get tricky in execution. To really make it work, it helps to produce content with repurposing in mind, so you can easily slice and dice it into different formats. The benefits to repurposing content are considerable, too. When you focus your energy on producing one awesome asset (say, an in-depth blog post or video), you’re likely to produce a better piece of work than you would by dividing your attention across every platform you’re responsible for. By creating said content with repurposing in mind from the beginning, you can reuse pieces of it elsewhere without your audience feeling like you’re cutting corners. That frees you up to focus on doing one thing really well, while still getting tons more work done with way less effort. In this post, well show you how to repurpose your way to content marketing nirvana. How to Repurpose Content And Make the Most of Your MarketingGrab Your Free Content Repurposing Guide + Infographic This post goes deep into the content repurposing process. However, there are tons of different ways you can repurpose content. In fact, there are far too many to cover in this post alone (and once you get started, youll probably come up with even more of your own). So, we thought youd enjoy this bonus guide packed with 50 content repurposing tips. That way, youll have the process and the inspiration you need to create more awesome content in less time than ever. Plus, weve included a detailed infographic on all things repurposing for you to keep on hand as a reference.Start By Building Your Content Repurposing Toolbox In this post, we’ll show you some tools you can use to help with your content repurposing process: Google (free): Self-explanatory. Google Analytics (freemium): It’s free. It’s powerful. We’re 99% sure you’re already using it. PrintFriendly (free): This is a great tool for turning blog posts into PDFs. Paste in any URL, click a button, and you're done. SlideShare (free): Turning existing content into a slide deck is a great way to maximize the mileage of your efforts. BuzzSumo (paid, optional): This is one of the best content research tools out there. It’s awesome for finding top-performing content for a given keyword. (paid, optional): We have a few features in our own platform that can help with this process, too. We'll talk about those at the end. Step 1: Create a Piece of Large-Scale 10X Content If you’re unfamiliar with the term â€Å"10X content,† it refers to the idea of creating content that’s ten times better than anything that already exists. In order to create that kind of content, you’ll need to buckle down and focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional. Focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional.Start With Keyword Research If you’re working with limited time, money, and resources, you’ll want to make the most of every minute you’ve got. Starting with strong keyword research gives you hard data to ensure people are going to care about the content you’re creating before you get too far into your process. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Content Marketer's Guide to Keyword Research How to Improve Your Keyword Research With Latent Semantic Indexing This is the Marketing Research Process That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level Apply the Skyscraper Technique One of the fastest ways to create a piece of 10X content is to apply the Skyscraper Technique. Coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko, it’s an easy and repeatable process for creating the best stuff possible on a given topic. Here’s how it works in simple terms: Review the top ten search results for your chosen keyword. Make a spreadsheet (or just make mental notes) of what information each post contains. Pay attention to missing information, lack of important details, or types of content that are missing from each post (videos, infographics, etc.). Write your own post that includes all the information a person searching for that topic would need. Add resources that are missing from existing content. In short, create something that is objectively better-researched and more resourceful than anything else that currently exists. There are a couple different ways you can find top-performing content (so you can scope out your competition): Do a simple Google search. It's free and easy. Use BuzzSumo. Sometimes, what gets shared on social media can differ from what ranks highest in organic search. So, use BuzzSumo to find all the top-shared content on social media for a given keyword. This can help you find even more inspiration than using a search engine alone. The team at Duct Tape Marketing put together this video to demonstrate how it works and help you get started: While success isn’t guaranteed, if you follow this process correctly, you should start to see results. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Content With the Skyscraper Technique Craft a Solid Outline Here at , we never write a blog post without an outline. They’re essential for saving time by figuring out what you’ll cover, before getting started and realizing your ideas are a disorganized mess. Plus, outlines also make it easier to break your post down into sections so you can think more clearly about how each piece might be reused somewhere else. Recommended Reading: The 10-Minute, 10-Step Solution for the Best Blog Outline Then, Write the Crap Out of Your Blog Post Remember, our goal here is to start off with one awesome 10X piece of content. An ordinary, run-of-the-mill blog post isn’t going to cut it here. You’ll need to dig deep and produce something truly great. Furthermore, you’ll need to write while keeping repurposing in mind. Your post should: Be substantial. That’s probably going to mean it’s at least 1,500 to 3,000 words in length. That’s not because longer posts are inherently better, but because you’re probably going to need that kind of length to include all the information your post will need. Be relevant. Make sure you’ve selected keywords and a topic your audience cares about. One idea here is to look through your Google Analytics account, see which content has received the most traffic or conversions and try coming up with something similar. Be better than anything else that currently exists. This is a tall order, but it might be more achievable than you think. We’ll get into this in our next section. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Blog Writing Process to Create Killer Posts How to Write a Blog Post: Your 5-Point Checklist to Rock a Perfect Post Design Visual Content You Can Use Elsewhere Whether you’re creating your own images or working with a designer, include graphics you can share elsewhere in your post. Those could include: Quote graphics Infographics Instructional images and how-to illustrations Blog title header graphics Stat graphics The key is to create graphics that both: Can be embedded inline in your post. Makes sense in context on your social channels. Here's an example of a tweet from our Twitter profile that uses an instructional graphic from this blog post: Heres how to build new marketing habits https://t.co/F08Y2Vq3sG pic.twitter.com/2IfOluQdrz (@) February 19, 2017 Here's another one for a landing page, where we took the page's header graphic and made a Twitter-friendly version: We put together over 100 free templates just for you with our new marketing resource library! 📚 https://t.co/hWVVfr8Cww pic.twitter.com/nVWEzRUBw0 (@) February 21, 2017 We’ll cover this further in a bit, but for now, take a look through this post (or most others on our blog) for more examples of what we’re talking about. Recommended Reading: How to Make the Best Social Media Images the Easy Way How to Attract an Audience With the Best Blog Photography Tips (+128 Images) How to Make the Best Blog Graphics (For Non-Designers) Step 2: Optimize Your Post for Repurposing Now that you’ve got a draft of your post complete, let’s see how we can use pieces of it on other channels and platforms. Use Your Email Introduction in Your Email Newsletters Consider crafting your intro with an email-friendly conversational tone. That way, you can easily copy and paste it into your email software, tweaking it slightly as necessary. This will likely only work if your emails are text-heavy rather than image-based. If you send a lot of plain text emails though, this can be an immense time-saver. Recommended Reading: How to Write Irresistible Blog Post Introductions That'll Keep Your Readers Reading Turn Your Blog Post Into Inspiration for a YouTube Video You’ve heard the cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words. That means video has to be worth like, what, half a library? Well, something like that. Anyway, what we’re getting at here is if someone wants to read about a topic, someone probably wants to watch a video about it, too. So, shoot a video based on your blog post. That’s something we’ve done in the past with our video series, and it makes time spent on ideation go a lot quicker: You can even use your blog post as the basis for your script (if you’ll be scripting out your post). If you’re wondering exactly how you could turn a blog post into a video, try this: Break down the main points of your blog post. Ask yourself, â€Å"What are the main takeaways I want someone to learn from reading this?† List them out. Write a condensed script or outline that you could read through in under ten minutes (give or take). Shoot your video. If you don’t have access to a videographer or professional gear, use your phone. Get something together that will show your audience what you’re trying to tell them with your blog post. Recommended Reading:  How to Make a Video Content Marketing Strategy to Boost Your New Series Reuse Your YouTube Video on Facebook and Twitter Alternately, you might want to shoot your video natively for Facebook or Twitter. For our purposes here, let’s say you’ve shot a five-minute video for YouTube. If you wanted to get further mileage out of it, consider sharing that video directly on Facebook too, or break it down into smaller chunks and create a mini-video series for Twitter. Recommended Reading: How to Get Started With Twitter Video Marketing How to Do Facebook Video Marketing the Right Way Use Your Blog Post Intro For Your YouTube Description If you created a video to include in your blog post, use your introduction for your YouTube description. Substantive YouTube descriptions are important for a few reasons, including: Improving your YouTube SEO. Clearly communicating to viewers what your video is about. Giving your YouTube videos a clean, complete, and professional appearance. Like reusing blog post content for email, feel free to adjust your wording as necessary to work within the context of a YouTube description. At the very least, your blog post can give you a solid foundation to dramatically cut down on writing time for YouTube. For example, the description we used for this video ... ... came straight from the introduction to the blog post we created for it: Reuse Graphics on Social Media When you’re creating graphics for your blog post, create a few different versions sized appropriately for your social networks. If you need a primer on the best sizes for every network, we’ve got you covered. Also, consider which types of graphics you could both embed in your blog, and share on social media. Long infographics are great for Pinterest, while quote graphics and images with quick stats are a good fit for Twitter. Here's an example of a blog post graphic we repurposed on Twitter: #Content tip: get more ideas by leveraging expertise outside your marketing department. https://t.co/TeMRAAyz4r pic.twitter.com/n5igyugwQJ - (@) July 14, 2017 How to Repurpose Content and Make the Most of Your Marketing As content marketers, we all have too much to do, and not enough time to get it done. We’re also under pressure to deliver high-quality content our audiences want. That content also needs to be distributed across an ever-growing array of channels. If you’re working on a small team, that pressure is further magnified.  When resources are limited, you have to stretch everything you have to succeed. So, how can you produce awesome 10X content when your time is limited? Try turning one piece of content into five (or more). Why Should Marketers Repurpose Content? Repurposing content simply means taking one asset and reusing it somewhere else. That sounds simple enough in theory, but it can get tricky in execution. To really make it work, it helps to produce content with repurposing in mind, so you can easily slice and dice it into different formats. The benefits to repurposing content are considerable, too. When you focus your energy on producing one awesome asset (say, an in-depth blog post or video), you’re likely to produce a better piece of work than you would by dividing your attention across every platform you’re responsible for. By creating said content with repurposing in mind from the beginning, you can reuse pieces of it elsewhere without your audience feeling like you’re cutting corners. That frees you up to focus on doing one thing really well, while still getting tons more work done with way less effort. In this post, well show you how to repurpose your way to content marketing nirvana. How to Repurpose Content And Make the Most of Your MarketingGrab Your Free Content Repurposing Guide + Infographic This post goes deep into the content repurposing process. However, there are tons of different ways you can repurpose content. In fact, there are far too many to cover in this post alone (and once you get started, youll probably come up with even more of your own). So, we thought youd enjoy this bonus guide packed with 50 content repurposing tips. That way, youll have the process and the inspiration you need to create more awesome content in less time than ever. Plus, weve included a detailed infographic on all things repurposing for you to keep on hand as a reference.Start By Building Your Content Repurposing Toolbox In this post, we’ll show you some tools you can use to help with your content repurposing process: Google (free): Self-explanatory. Google Analytics (freemium): It’s free. It’s powerful. We’re 99% sure you’re already using it. PrintFriendly (free): This is a great tool for turning blog posts into PDFs. Paste in any URL, click a button, and you're done. SlideShare (free): Turning existing content into a slide deck is a great way to maximize the mileage of your efforts. BuzzSumo (paid, optional): This is one of the best content research tools out there. It’s awesome for finding top-performing content for a given keyword. (paid, optional): We have a few features in our own platform that can help with this process, too. We'll talk about those at the end. Step 1: Create a Piece of Large-Scale 10X Content If you’re unfamiliar with the term â€Å"10X content,† it refers to the idea of creating content that’s ten times better than anything that already exists. In order to create that kind of content, you’ll need to buckle down and focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional. Focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional.Start With Keyword Research If you’re working with limited time, money, and resources, you’ll want to make the most of every minute you’ve got. Starting with strong keyword research gives you hard data to ensure people are going to care about the content you’re creating before you get too far into your process. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Content Marketer's Guide to Keyword Research How to Improve Your Keyword Research With Latent Semantic Indexing This is the Marketing Research Process That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level Apply the Skyscraper Technique One of the fastest ways to create a piece of 10X content is to apply the Skyscraper Technique. Coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko, it’s an easy and repeatable process for creating the best stuff possible on a given topic. Here’s how it works in simple terms: Review the top ten search results for your chosen keyword. Make a spreadsheet (or just make mental notes) of what information each post contains. Pay attention to missing information, lack of important details, or types of content that are missing from each post (videos, infographics, etc.). Write your own post that includes all the information a person searching for that topic would need. Add resources that are missing from existing content. In short, create something that is objectively better-researched and more resourceful than anything else that currently exists. There are a couple different ways you can find top-performing content (so you can scope out your competition): Do a simple Google search. It's free and easy. Use BuzzSumo. Sometimes, what gets shared on social media can differ from what ranks highest in organic search. So, use BuzzSumo to find all the top-shared content on social media for a given keyword. This can help you find even more inspiration than using a search engine alone. The team at Duct Tape Marketing put together this video to demonstrate how it works and help you get started: While success isn’t guaranteed, if you follow this process correctly, you should start to see results. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Content With the Skyscraper Technique Craft a Solid Outline Here at , we never write a blog post without an outline. They’re essential for saving time by figuring out what you’ll cover, before getting started and realizing your ideas are a disorganized mess. Plus, outlines also make it easier to break your post down into sections so you can think more clearly about how each piece might be reused somewhere else. Recommended Reading: The 10-Minute, 10-Step Solution for the Best Blog Outline Then, Write the Crap Out of Your Blog Post Remember, our goal here is to start off with one awesome 10X piece of content. An ordinary, run-of-the-mill blog post isn’t going to cut it here. You’ll need to dig deep and produce something truly great. Furthermore, you’ll need to write while keeping repurposing in mind. Your post should: Be substantial. That’s probably going to mean it’s at least 1,500 to 3,000 words in length. That’s not because longer posts are inherently better, but because you’re probably going to need that kind of length to include all the information your post will need. Be relevant. Make sure you’ve selected keywords and a topic your audience cares about. One idea here is to look through your Google Analytics account, see which content has received the most traffic or conversions and try coming up with something similar. Be better than anything else that currently exists. This is a tall order, but it might be more achievable than you think. We’ll get into this in our next section. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Blog Writing Process to Create Killer Posts How to Write a Blog Post: Your 5-Point Checklist to Rock a Perfect Post Design Visual Content You Can Use Elsewhere Whether you’re creating your own images or working with a designer, include graphics you can share elsewhere in your post. Those could include: Quote graphics Infographics Instructional images and how-to illustrations Blog title header graphics Stat graphics The key is to create graphics that both: Can be embedded inline in your post. Makes sense in context on your social channels. Here's an example of a tweet from our Twitter profile that uses an instructional graphic from this blog post: Heres how to build new marketing habits https://t.co/F08Y2Vq3sG pic.twitter.com/2IfOluQdrz (@) February 19, 2017 Here's another one for a landing page, where we took the page's header graphic and made a Twitter-friendly version: We put together over 100 free templates just for you with our new marketing resource library! 📚 https://t.co/hWVVfr8Cww pic.twitter.com/nVWEzRUBw0 (@) February 21, 2017 We’ll cover this further in a bit, but for now, take a look through this post (or most others on our blog) for more examples of what we’re talking about. Recommended Reading: How to Make the Best Social Media Images the Easy Way How to Attract an Audience With the Best Blog Photography Tips (+128 Images) How to Make the Best Blog Graphics (For Non-Designers) Step 2: Optimize Your Post for Repurposing Now that you’ve got a draft of your post complete, let’s see how we can use pieces of it on other channels and platforms. Use Your Email Introduction in Your Email Newsletters Consider crafting your intro with an email-friendly conversational tone. That way, you can easily copy and paste it into your email software, tweaking it slightly as necessary. This will likely only work if your emails are text-heavy rather than image-based. If you send a lot of plain text emails though, this can be an immense time-saver. Recommended Reading: How to Write Irresistible Blog Post Introductions That'll Keep Your Readers Reading Turn Your Blog Post Into Inspiration for a YouTube Video You’ve heard the cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words. That means video has to be worth like, what, half a library? Well, something like that. Anyway, what we’re getting at here is if someone wants to read about a topic, someone probably wants to watch a video about it, too. So, shoot a video based on your blog post. That’s something we’ve done in the past with our video series, and it makes time spent on ideation go a lot quicker: You can even use your blog post as the basis for your script (if you’ll be scripting out your post). If you’re wondering exactly how you could turn a blog post into a video, try this: Break down the main points of your blog post. Ask yourself, â€Å"What are the main takeaways I want someone to learn from reading this?† List them out. Write a condensed script or outline that you could read through in under ten minutes (give or take). Shoot your video. If you don’t have access to a videographer or professional gear, use your phone. Get something together that will show your audience what you’re trying to tell them with your blog post. Recommended Reading:  How to Make a Video Content Marketing Strategy to Boost Your New Series Reuse Your YouTube Video on Facebook and Twitter Alternately, you might want to shoot your video natively for Facebook or Twitter. For our purposes here, let’s say you’ve shot a five-minute video for YouTube. If you wanted to get further mileage out of it, consider sharing that video directly on Facebook too, or break it down into smaller chunks and create a mini-video series for Twitter. Recommended Reading: How to Get Started With Twitter Video Marketing How to Do Facebook Video Marketing the Right Way Use Your Blog Post Intro For Your YouTube Description If you created a video to include in your blog post, use your introduction for your YouTube description. Substantive YouTube descriptions are important for a few reasons, including: Improving your YouTube SEO. Clearly communicating to viewers what your video is about. Giving your YouTube videos a clean, complete, and professional appearance. Like reusing blog post content for email, feel free to adjust your wording as necessary to work within the context of a YouTube description. At the very least, your blog post can give you a solid foundation to dramatically cut down on writing time for YouTube. For example, the description we used for this video ... ... came straight from the introduction to the blog post we created for it: Reuse Graphics on Social Media When you’re creating graphics for your blog post, create a few different versions sized appropriately for your social networks. If you need a primer on the best sizes for every network, we’ve got you covered. Also, consider which types of graphics you could both embed in your blog, and share on social media. Long infographics are great for Pinterest, while quote graphics and images with quick stats are a good fit for Twitter. Here's an example of a blog post graphic we repurposed on Twitter: #Content tip: get more ideas by leveraging expertise outside your marketing department. https://t.co/TeMRAAyz4r pic.twitter.com/n5igyugwQJ - (@) July 14, 2017 How to Repurpose Content and Make the Most of Your Marketing As content marketers, we all have too much to do, and not enough time to get it done. We’re also under pressure to deliver high-quality content our audiences want. That content also needs to be distributed across an ever-growing array of channels. If you’re working on a small team, that pressure is further magnified.  When resources are limited, you have to stretch everything you have to succeed. So, how can you produce awesome 10X content when your time is limited? Try turning one piece of content into five (or more). Why Should Marketers Repurpose Content? Repurposing content simply means taking one asset and reusing it somewhere else. That sounds simple enough in theory, but it can get tricky in execution. To really make it work, it helps to produce content with repurposing in mind, so you can easily slice and dice it into different formats. The benefits to repurposing content are considerable, too. When you focus your energy on producing one awesome asset (say, an in-depth blog post or video), you’re likely to produce a better piece of work than you would by dividing your attention across every platform you’re responsible for. By creating said content with repurposing in mind from the beginning, you can reuse pieces of it elsewhere without your audience feeling like you’re cutting corners. That frees you up to focus on doing one thing really well, while still getting tons more work done with way less effort. In this post, well show you how to repurpose your way to content marketing nirvana. How to Repurpose Content And Make the Most of Your MarketingGrab Your Free Content Repurposing Guide + Infographic This post goes deep into the content repurposing process. However, there are tons of different ways you can repurpose content. In fact, there are far too many to cover in this post alone (and once you get started, youll probably come up with even more of your own). So, we thought youd enjoy this bonus guide packed with 50 content repurposing tips. That way, youll have the process and the inspiration you need to create more awesome content in less time than ever. Plus, weve included a detailed infographic on all things repurposing for you to keep on hand as a reference.Start By Building Your Content Repurposing Toolbox In this post, we’ll show you some tools you can use to help with your content repurposing process: Google (free): Self-explanatory. Google Analytics (freemium): It’s free. It’s powerful. We’re 99% sure you’re already using it. PrintFriendly (free): This is a great tool for turning blog posts into PDFs. Paste in any URL, click a button, and you're done. SlideShare (free): Turning existing content into a slide deck is a great way to maximize the mileage of your efforts. BuzzSumo (paid, optional): This is one of the best content research tools out there. It’s awesome for finding top-performing content for a given keyword. (paid, optional): We have a few features in our own platform that can help with this process, too. We'll talk about those at the end. Step 1: Create a Piece of Large-Scale 10X Content If you’re unfamiliar with the term â€Å"10X content,† it refers to the idea of creating content that’s ten times better than anything that already exists. In order to create that kind of content, you’ll need to buckle down and focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional. Focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional.Start With Keyword Research If you’re working with limited time, money, and resources, you’ll want to make the most of every minute you’ve got. Starting with strong keyword research gives you hard data to ensure people are going to care about the content you’re creating before you get too far into your process. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Content Marketer's Guide to Keyword Research How to Improve Your Keyword Research With Latent Semantic Indexing This is the Marketing Research Process That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level Apply the Skyscraper Technique One of the fastest ways to create a piece of 10X content is to apply the Skyscraper Technique. Coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko, it’s an easy and repeatable process for creating the best stuff possible on a given topic. Here’s how it works in simple terms: Review the top ten search results for your chosen keyword. Make a spreadsheet (or just make mental notes) of what information each post contains. Pay attention to missing information, lack of important details, or types of content that are missing from each post (videos, infographics, etc.). Write your own post that includes all the information a person searching for that topic would need. Add resources that are missing from existing content. In short, create something that is objectively better-researched and more resourceful than anything else that currently exists. There are a couple different ways you can find top-performing content (so you can scope out your competition): Do a simple Google search. It's free and easy. Use BuzzSumo. Sometimes, what gets shared on social media can differ from what ranks highest in organic search. So, use BuzzSumo to find all the top-shared content on social media for a given keyword. This can help you find even more inspiration than using a search engine alone. The team at Duct Tape Marketing put together this video to demonstrate how it works and help you get started: While success isn’t guaranteed, if you follow this process correctly, you should start to see results. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Content With the Skyscraper Technique Craft a Solid Outline Here at , we never write a blog post without an outline. They’re essential for saving time by figuring out what you’ll cover, before getting started and realizing your ideas are a disorganized mess. Plus, outlines also make it easier to break your post down into sections so you can think more clearly about how each piece might be reused somewhere else. Recommended Reading: The 10-Minute, 10-Step Solution for the Best Blog Outline Then, Write the Crap Out of Your Blog Post Remember, our goal here is to start off with one awesome 10X piece of content. An ordinary, run-of-the-mill blog post isn’t going to cut it here. You’ll need to dig deep and produce something truly great. Furthermore, you’ll need to write while keeping repurposing in mind. Your post should: Be substantial. That’s probably going to mean it’s at least 1,500 to 3,000 words in length. That’s not because longer posts are inherently better, but because you’re probably going to need that kind of length to include all the information your post will need. Be relevant. Make sure you’ve selected keywords and a topic your audience cares about. One idea here is to look through your Google Analytics account, see which content has received the most traffic or conversions and try coming up with something similar. Be better than anything else that currently exists. This is a tall order, but it might be more achievable than you think. We’ll get into this in our next section. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Blog Writing Process to Create Killer Posts How to Write a Blog Post: Your 5-Point Checklist to Rock a Perfect Post Design Visual Content You Can Use Elsewhere Whether you’re creating your own images or working with a designer, include graphics you can share elsewhere in your post. Those could include: Quote graphics Infographics Instructional images and how-to illustrations Blog title header graphics Stat graphics The key is to create graphics that both: Can be embedded inline in your post. Makes sense in context on your social channels. Here's an example of a tweet from our Twitter profile that uses an instructional graphic from this blog post: Heres how to build new marketing habits https://t.co/F08Y2Vq3sG pic.twitter.com/2IfOluQdrz (@) February 19, 2017 Here's another one for a landing page, where we took the page's header graphic and made a Twitter-friendly version: We put together over 100 free templates just for you with our new marketing resource library! 📚 https://t.co/hWVVfr8Cww pic.twitter.com/nVWEzRUBw0 (@) February 21, 2017 We’ll cover this further in a bit, but for now, take a look through this post (or most others on our blog) for more examples of what we’re talking about. Recommended Reading: How to Make the Best Social Media Images the Easy Way How to Attract an Audience With the Best Blog Photography Tips (+128 Images) How to Make the Best Blog Graphics (For Non-Designers) Step 2: Optimize Your Post for Repurposing Now that you’ve got a draft of your post complete, let’s see how we can use pieces of it on other channels and platforms. Use Your Email Introduction in Your Email Newsletters Consider crafting your intro with an email-friendly conversational tone. That way, you can easily copy and paste it into your email software, tweaking it slightly as necessary. This will likely only work if your emails are text-heavy rather than image-based. If you send a lot of plain text emails though, this can be an immense time-saver. Recommended Reading: How to Write Irresistible Blog Post Introductions That'll Keep Your Readers Reading Turn Your Blog Post Into Inspiration for a YouTube Video You’ve heard the cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words. That means video has to be worth like, what, half a library? Well, something like that. Anyway, what we’re getting at here is if someone wants to read about a topic, someone probably wants to watch a video about it, too. So, shoot a video based on your blog post. That’s something we’ve done in the past with our video series, and it makes time spent on ideation go a lot quicker: You can even use your blog post as the basis for your script (if you’ll be scripting out your post). If you’re wondering exactly how you could turn a blog post into a video, try this: Break down the main points of your blog post. Ask yourself, â€Å"What are the main takeaways I want someone to learn from reading this?† List them out. Write a condensed script or outline that you could read through in under ten minutes (give or take). Shoot your video. If you don’t have access to a videographer or professional gear, use your phone. Get something together that will show your audience what you’re trying to tell them with your blog post. Recommended Reading:  How to Make a Video Content Marketing Strategy to Boost Your New Series Reuse Your YouTube Video on Facebook and Twitter Alternately, you might want to shoot your video natively for Facebook or Twitter. For our purposes here, let’s say you’ve shot a five-minute video for YouTube. If you wanted to get further mileage out of it, consider sharing that video directly on Facebook too, or break it down into smaller chunks and create a mini-video series for Twitter. Recommended Reading: How to Get Started With Twitter Video Marketing How to Do Facebook Video Marketing the Right Way Use Your Blog Post Intro For Your YouTube Description If you created a video to include in your blog post, use your introduction for your YouTube description. Substantive YouTube descriptions are important for a few reasons, including: Improving your YouTube SEO. Clearly communicating to viewers what your video is about. Giving your YouTube videos a clean, complete, and professional appearance. Like reusing blog post content for email, feel free to adjust your wording as necessary to work within the context of a YouTube description. At the very least, your blog post can give you a solid foundation to dramatically cut down on writing time for YouTube. For example, the description we used for this video ... ... came straight from the introduction to the blog post we created for it: Reuse Graphics on Social Media When you’re creating graphics for your blog post, create a few different versions sized appropriately for your social networks. If you need a primer on the best sizes for every network, we’ve got you covered. Also, consider which types of graphics you could both embed in your blog, and share on social media. Long infographics are great for Pinterest, while quote graphics and images with quick stats are a good fit for Twitter. Here's an example of a blog post graphic we repurposed on Twitter: #Content tip: get more ideas by leveraging expertise outside your marketing department. https://t.co/TeMRAAyz4r pic.twitter.com/n5igyugwQJ - (@) July 14, 2017 How to Repurpose Content and Make the Most of Your Marketing As content marketers, we all have too much to do, and not enough time to get it done. We’re also under pressure to deliver high-quality content our audiences want. That content also needs to be distributed across an ever-growing array of channels. If you’re working on a small team, that pressure is further magnified.  When resources are limited, you have to stretch everything you have to succeed. So, how can you produce awesome 10X content when your time is limited? Try turning one piece of content into five (or more). Why Should Marketers Repurpose Content? Repurposing content simply means taking one asset and reusing it somewhere else. That sounds simple enough in theory, but it can get tricky in execution. To really make it work, it helps to produce content with repurposing in mind, so you can easily slice and dice it into different formats. The benefits to repurposing content are considerable, too. When you focus your energy on producing one awesome asset (say, an in-depth blog post or video), you’re likely to produce a better piece of work than you would by dividing your attention across every platform you’re responsible for. By creating said content with repurposing in mind from the beginning, you can reuse pieces of it elsewhere without your audience feeling like you’re cutting corners. That frees you up to focus on doing one thing really well, while still getting tons more work done with way less effort. In this post, well show you how to repurpose your way to content marketing nirvana. How to Repurpose Content And Make the Most of Your MarketingGrab Your Free Content Repurposing Guide + Infographic This post goes deep into the content repurposing process. However, there are tons of different ways you can repurpose content. In fact, there are far too many to cover in this post alone (and once you get started, youll probably come up with even more of your own). So, we thought youd enjoy this bonus guide packed with 50 content repurposing tips. That way, youll have the process and the inspiration you need to create more awesome content in less time than ever. Plus, weve included a detailed infographic on all things repurposing for you to keep on hand as a reference.Start By Building Your Content Repurposing Toolbox In this post, we’ll show you some tools you can use to help with your content repurposing process: Google (free): Self-explanatory. Google Analytics (freemium): It’s free. It’s powerful. We’re 99% sure you’re already using it. PrintFriendly (free): This is a great tool for turning blog posts into PDFs. Paste in any URL, click a button, and you're done. SlideShare (free): Turning existing content into a slide deck is a great way to maximize the mileage of your efforts. BuzzSumo (paid, optional): This is one of the best content research tools out there. It’s awesome for finding top-performing content for a given keyword. (paid, optional): We have a few features in our own platform that can help with this process, too. We'll talk about those at the end. Step 1: Create a Piece of Large-Scale 10X Content If you’re unfamiliar with the term â€Å"10X content,† it refers to the idea of creating content that’s ten times better than anything that already exists. In order to create that kind of content, you’ll need to buckle down and focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional. Focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional.Start With Keyword Research If you’re working with limited time, money, and resources, you’ll want to make the most of every minute you’ve got. Starting with strong keyword research gives you hard data to ensure people are going to care about the content you’re creating before you get too far into your process. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Content Marketer's Guide to Keyword Research How to Improve Your Keyword Research With Latent Semantic Indexing This is the Marketing Research Process That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level Apply the Skyscraper Technique One of the fastest ways to create a piece of 10X content is to apply the Skyscraper Technique. Coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko, it’s an easy and repeatable process for creating the best stuff possible on a given topic. Here’s how it works in simple terms: Review the top ten search results for your chosen keyword. Make a spreadsheet (or just make mental notes) of what information each post contains. Pay attention to missing information, lack of important details, or types of content that are missing from each post (videos, infographics, etc.). Write your own post that includes all the information a person searching for that topic would need. Add resources that are missing from existing content. In short, create something that is objectively better-researched and more resourceful than anything else that currently exists. There are a couple different ways you can find top-performing content (so you can scope out your competition): Do a simple Google search. It's free and easy. Use BuzzSumo. Sometimes, what gets shared on social media can differ from what ranks highest in organic search. So, use BuzzSumo to find all the top-shared content on social media for a given keyword. This can help you find even more inspiration than using a search engine alone. The team at Duct Tape Marketing put together this video to demonstrate how it works and help you get started: While success isn’t guaranteed, if you follow this process correctly, you should start to see results. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Content With the Skyscraper Technique Craft a Solid Outline Here at , we never write a blog post without an outline. They’re essential for saving time by figuring out what you’ll cover, before getting started and realizing your ideas are a disorganized mess. Plus, outlines also make it easier to break your post down into sections so you can think more clearly about how each piece might be reused somewhere else. Recommended Reading: The 10-Minute, 10-Step Solution for the Best Blog Outline Then, Write the Crap Out of Your Blog Post Remember, our goal here is to start off with one awesome 10X piece of content. An ordinary, run-of-the-mill blog post isn’t going to cut it here. You’ll need to dig deep and produce something truly great. Furthermore, you’ll need to write while keeping repurposing in mind. Your post should: Be substantial. That’s probably going to mean it’s at least 1,500 to 3,000 words in length. That’s not because longer posts are inherently better, but because you’re probably going to need that kind of length to include all the information your post will need. Be relevant. Make sure you’ve selected keywords and a topic your audience cares about. One idea here is to look through your Google Analytics account, see which content has received the most traffic or conversions and try coming up with something similar. Be better than anything else that currently exists. This is a tall order, but it might be more achievable than you think. We’ll get into this in our next section. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Blog Writing Process to Create Killer Posts How to Write a Blog Post: Your 5-Point Checklist to Rock a Perfect Post Design Visual Content You Can Use Elsewhere Whether you’re creating your own images or working with a designer, include graphics you can share elsewhere in your post. Those could include: Quote graphics Infographics Instructional images and how-to illustrations Blog title header graphics Stat graphics The key is to create graphics that both: Can be embedded inline in your post. Makes sense in context on your social channels. Here's an example of a tweet from our Twitter profile that uses an instructional graphic from this blog post: Heres how to build new marketing habits https://t.co/F08Y2Vq3sG pic.twitter.com/2IfOluQdrz (@) February 19, 2017 Here's another one for a landing page, where we took the page's header graphic and made a Twitter-friendly version: We put together over 100 free templates just for you with our new marketing resource library! 📚 https://t.co/hWVVfr8Cww pic.twitter.com/nVWEzRUBw0 (@) February 21, 2017 We’ll cover this further in a bit, but for now, take a look through this post (or most others on our blog) for more examples of what we’re talking about. Recommended Reading: How to Make the Best Social Media Images the Easy Way How to Attract an Audience With the Best Blog Photography Tips (+128 Images) How to Make the Best Blog Graphics (For Non-Designers) Step 2: Optimize Your Post for Repurposing Now that you’ve got a draft of your post complete, let’s see how we can use pieces of it on other channels and platforms. Use Your Email Introduction in Your Email Newsletters Consider crafting your intro with an email-friendly conversational tone. That way, you can easily copy and paste it into your email software, tweaking it slightly as necessary. This will likely only work if your emails are text-heavy rather than image-based. If you send a lot of plain text emails though, this can be an immense time-saver. Recommended Reading: How to Write Irresistible Blog Post Introductions That'll Keep Your Readers Reading Turn Your Blog Post Into Inspiration for a YouTube Video You’ve heard the cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words. That means video has to be worth like, what, half a library? Well, something like that. Anyway, what we’re getting at here is if someone wants to read about a topic, someone probably wants to watch a video about it, too. So, shoot a video based on your blog post. That’s something we’ve done in the past with our video series, and it makes time spent on ideation go a lot quicker: You can even use your blog post as the basis for your script (if you’ll be scripting out your post). If you’re wondering exactly how you could turn a blog post into a video, try this: Break down the main points of your blog post. Ask yourself, â€Å"What are the main takeaways I want someone to learn from reading this?† List them out. Write a condensed script or outline that you could read through in under ten minutes (give or take). Shoot your video. If you don’t have access to a videographer or professional gear, use your phone. Get something together that will show your audience what you’re trying to tell them with your blog post. Recommended Reading:  How to Make a Video Content Marketing Strategy to Boost Your New Series Reuse Your YouTube Video on Facebook and Twitter Alternately, you might want to shoot your video natively for Facebook or Twitter. For our purposes here, let’s say you’ve shot a five-minute video for YouTube. If you wanted to get further mileage out of it, consider sharing that video directly on Facebook too, or break it down into smaller chunks and create a mini-video series for Twitter. Recommended Reading: How to Get Started With Twitter Video Marketing How to Do Facebook Video Marketing the Right Way Use Your Blog Post Intro For Your YouTube Description If you created a video to include in your blog post, use your introduction for your YouTube description. Substantive YouTube descriptions are important for a few reasons, including: Improving your YouTube SEO. Clearly communicating to viewers what your video is about. Giving your YouTube videos a clean, complete, and professional appearance. Like reusing blog post content for email, feel free to adjust your wording as necessary to work within the context of a YouTube description. At the very least, your blog post can give you a solid foundation to dramatically cut down on writing time for YouTube. For example, the description we used for this video ... ... came straight from the introduction to the blog post we created for it: Reuse Graphics on Social Media When you’re creating graphics for your blog post, create a few different versions sized appropriately for your social networks. If you need a primer on the best sizes for every network, we’ve got you covered. Also, consider which types of graphics you could both embed in your blog, and share on social media. Long infographics are great for Pinterest, while quote graphics and images with quick stats are a good fit for Twitter. Here's an example of a blog post graphic we repurposed on Twitter: #Content tip: get more ideas by leveraging expertise outside your marketing department. https://t.co/TeMRAAyz4r pic.twitter.com/n5igyugwQJ - (@) July 14, 2017