Do More with Less Using These 3 Content Marketing Hacks
As a local publisher, creating great local content is a must but creating something that generates interest within your readership community and builds your audience can be a time-consuming process. So, we've put together a few useful hacks to help you with your content planning.
1. In With The Old
Repurposing old content is a powerful strategy when it comes to content marketing. It's also, usually, much less time consuming than creating your own original content.
Start by checking your website traffic for those articles that played particularly well in the past and create a list of potential articles to re-share. If you have a lot of articles around a similar topic you could even create a recap article around a spcific theme such as top recipes, top news stories from the last month, most popular stories of the quarter, etc.
Next, incorporate your re-posts into your editorial calendar so you can plan ahead.
Utilizing old content and sharing on Facebook or Instagram for #TBT (Throw Back Thursday) is an easy way to resurface old content and stay active on social media.
2. Make It Your Own
Original content gives you a voice and creates a specific brand for your publication, but, as we mentioned above, it can be incredibly time-consuming. One way to save time is to create curated content. Curating content leverages other people's content to reduce the time it takes to create an article but when done correctly can be incredibly beneficial.
One example is creating a monthly "Editor's Picks Events" article listing and linking to the top 5-10 upcoming events from your community calendar. Another would be to create a guide around certain theme, a pumpkin patch guide for example, that is a combination of events and listings from your calendar and directory. Our Community Content Engine makes the process of creating these types of articles really simple!
Alternatively, you could do a pick-up style article where you find an article on another website, write a few sentences about the article sharing your own opinion or viewpoint and then linking to the original article. This is a particularly useful strategy when sharing local news.
Overall, there are plenty of resources to help you identify topics to curate. Follow local government websites, sign up for local business' newsletters, follow them on Facebook, get in touch with the local community venues and organization and get in the habit of checking these sources on a regular basis for new ideas.
Always remember, your goal is to continue providing useful and interesting content to your readership.
3. Get The Community Involved
Reaching out to your followers and getting them involved is a great way to not only put out more content, but it also lets your readers know that they are being heard. User-generated content is also quick and easy to post because it's already been created for you. This helps you keep a steady stream of content flowing on your website and also shows that people care enough about your publication to contribute which is never a bad thing.
Start by directly reaching out to your readers by postings a call-to-action to Facebook. For example, a call for people to share their favorite summer camps. Over the holiday season, we did this with one of our publishers asking for people's favorite holiday activities and the response was overwhelming and positive and has helped generate a slew of content to share on Facebook.
As you develop relationships with these contributors, invite the superstars to become regular contributors on your website. Many will be thrilled for the opportunity to simply share their views with a bigger audience.
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