The problem with social media I encounter is not ‘creating the content’, the problem is ‘finding the time to promote the content’.

I try and address this by:

• re-purposing content
• syndicating content

Re-Purposing content

re-purposing content helps me:

• create new content based on old content

But offers me the opportunity to promote the content each time it is re-purposed.

What I used to do was all of it at the same time:

• write blog
• create images
• create video
• create slideshare
• release blog with video and slideshare embedded
• promote blog using images on twitter and instagram

Now, I’ll spread that over the course of a week or so:

• day 1 - write blog
• day 1 - record video
• day 1 - release video
• day 1 - promote video
• day 2 - release blog with video
• day 2 - promote blog with video
• day 3 - create slide share
• etc.

This provides a more steady stream of promotional value and is more sustainable as it allows me to fit in ‘work’ around my ‘marketing’ activities.

I also build on content, so I might release a blog post, and then next week zoom in to a specific aspect of that blog post in more detail. This way I can ‘spread’ the actual content out over a few weeks which can also make content creation more sustainable with a series of posts.

Syndication

Having my blog syndicated through other sites also provides a useful marketing touch point.

Everytime the blog post is syndicated on another site, I can tweet a link to the syndicated site.

This is similar to re-tweeting people who re-tweet your content, but added a comment in their tweet.

This has the advantage that it creates a more varied posting schedule because I don’t know when other sites will syndicate or promote my content so it provides some variation in my twitter feed.

Often people miss an item when it is initially promoted and I can pick up a few more likes and re-tweets with these promotions.

This also feels less spammy than creating scheduled posts to re-promote my content in one week, two weeks, one month etc. (an approach I’m starting to like less than I once did).