It’s no secret: I love digital marketing. I love social media, video, photography, and how we use all these mediums to be creative. I enjoy experimenting with the latest and greatest in digital marketing, but I do have some favorite tools I come back to time and time again. But the greatest tool isn’t a social media management platform or an integrated marketing stack.
The best digital marketing tool is your library!
Think you don’t have a library? Unless you’re brand-spanking new and your established date is this year, you probably do have a library. It’s all the digital content you’ve already lovingly created.
This library is the heart and soul of your marketing program. Best of all, you can “check it out”more than once. Make the reach of what you’ve got on your shelf longer and more impactful by reaching across digital platforms.
Joseph Buechel,digital marketing manager for Global Corporate Services at Newmark Knight Frank(NKF), said in an interview on Real Estate Weekly Online, “What we want to do is create expansive libraries of content that can be leveraged via multiple digital platforms and digital media. Whether it’s programmatic advertising, social media, a blog, video, or podcasts, we really want to broaden the reach of our content.”
What can you do to take advantage of the awesome resources you’ve already created?
#1- Put a content management system in place
Without a filing system that makes it easy to see what you have, what pieces are missing, and what’s been recently used, your library is useless. Have a CMS that will help you access all your content quickly and easily. Some systems use easily searchable tags. Others use spreadsheets to catalog created materials, filename, their location, and use date.
#2- Create content packages
Make it super easy on yourself to pull what you need for different platforms. Store the content and its associated materials together: the images, teasers, blurb copy. Optimize it for different platforms when you create it. Then you can grab and go when you need it.
Look. Not everything is “evergreen” and can be used multiple times over the months: market reports,for example. But you can get a lot of runaway from those reports if you think of them as a “package.” Create an infographic, a few teaser images, 3-5 easily shareable lines for social, and run with it. Generate traffic from that report all month long.
#3- Have a distribution plan
The library is all about leveraging evergreen content, but you’ll need a plan to do it right.Evergreen content is sprinkled among your latest and greatest new stuff. Know which channels you’ll use to distribute the content.
Put a plan in place to regularly review your library, so you can update the information to be as accurate as possible. At ATYPICAL, we help our clients figure out how to use their best digital stuff to reach more people.
So take a hard look at what you’ve got. Chances are, you’ve got some diamonds ready to be dusted off and shared with your community.