Did you know there’s a way you can make your content work harder for you without compromising on quality?

You read that right.

Scaling your content can help generate more leads, build brand awareness, establish a voice within your industry, and grow your company.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing sees conversion rates that are 6x higher than traditional marketing efforts. This means that creating content that aligns with your goals – whatever they may be – and getting that content in front of the right people will help generate success.

It goes without saying that to grow, you have to first establish credibility within your industry. We’re not saying that you need to speak at all the major conferences next year or publish a New York Times Best-Seller (of course, if you want to do those things, more power to you).

Instead, we’re talking about creating niche content.

In most cases, appealing to the masses won’t enable you to establish a leading voice among the people in your industry you are trying to reach. To provide actionable, value-packed content to the right people, you need to understand what piques their interest.

When hearing the words niche content, it’s easy to think: “Won’t I be limited if I limit my content’s reach?” Quite the opposite. Creating niche content allows you to speak directly to the people who are likely interested in what you have to say and what you are selling.

So, how do you improve your existing content without sacrificing quality? Better yet, how do you do this as quickly and efficiently as possible?

To successfully scale your content and reach the right audience, you must have a solid plan in place. Let’s dive into how marketers can scale up their content without compromising on quality.

Revisit your content marketing strategy

According to the LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community, 72% of marketers have a content strategy established, 30% have a documented plan, and 42% have a non-documented plan.

If you don’t have a content marketing strategy in place yet, it’s time to create one. Having this serves as your guide as you begin to refresh, tweak, and create new content will help you trace each piece back to your primary goals. A content marketing strategy will also help your team verify that each piece of content has a purpose.

If you do have a content marketing strategy in place, it’s time to assess its performance. An easy way to do this is to identify what is working, what is not working, what can be improved on, and what should be taken out. This goes for content pieces as well as overall strategy components. If it’s broke, fix it.

A good rule of thumb when creating or refreshing content is to ask the question, “What is the reader getting out of this?” Asking yourself and your team this question before something is marked “complete” will ensure each piece aligns with its intended goal.

Revisiting your content marketing strategy can seem overwhelming, but if it’s the difference between setting your content up for success – and more conversions and leads for your company down the line – it is far worth the time and effort.

Establishing a strategy that works for your team and your goals might take a few trial and error runs. What matters is that you learn from each missed mark so you can continue to improve.

Recycle your content

Overhauling your existing content can be intimidating and time-consuming, especially if you’re starting from scratch. However, there’s a way to leverage your existing content and give it a new life.

Depending on the nature of your content, you may need to make updates more frequently than others. Regardless of how often, be sure to make it a priority. Having tons of outdated or irrelevant content on your blog or in your campaigns is a surefire way to chip away your credibility.

As we mentioned above, auditing your existing content is a great way to take stock in what content can and should be recycled.

Recycling existing content ensures that your original concepts and ideas are in place, but have a second chance to spark more conversations and grow your authority. Not only is recycling your content a way to save time, but it is excellent for SEO purposes. Updating each piece to include SEO-friendly components like relevant search terms, proper headings, and meta tags will help your content perform to its fullest.

For example, let’s say you have a blog post about the top 50 marketing and advertising stats for 2018. With new research and data coming out regularly, it’s a smart idea to make sure this post is always up-to-date. But instead of writing a new post altogether, you would update where necessary.

However, some content that isn’t as evergreen might need a total makeover. Take things a step further by figuring out ways to morph your existing content into entirely new material.

Maybe you have a series of successful blog posts that could be repurposed into a live video broadcast or a how-to video. Maybe there are a few videos in your arsenal that would fit perfectly in your new email sequence. Whatever your approach, this allows your readers and customers to engage with you on a different level and expands the conversation around that particular topic.

This is also the perfect opportunity to A/B test content placement. There’s only one way to find out if that blog post can hang in your next email campaign — test it!

Figure out how to use each piece to its fullest potential, and you will see firsthand how dynamic one type of content can be.

In addition to creating great content that your readers can benefit from, make sure you know how your content is performing. According to the LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community, just 8% of marketers consider themselves “very successful” or “extremely successful” when it comes to tracking content marketing ROI.

So what does this mean?

To get the full picture of what your readers are interested in as well as what content they’d like to see in the future, it’s essential to have a pulse on the ROI of your content marketing strategy. Without the proper tools and KPI monitoring, it can be challenging to keep track of this.

Test out different analytics software that not only makes tracking your ROI easy, but that seamlessly integrates with your other marketing efforts. There are tons of great tools out there – some more expensive than others – but the important thing is to figure out what’s right for you.

Be consistent

When it comes to creating content, make sure each piece not only aligns with your goals and with your audience’s interests but that it also adheres to your brand voice. Content that is cohesive, on-brand, and consistent builds credibility among your peers in your industry.

You can easily fix inconsistencies by doing a complete audit of your existing content. As you did with your content strategy, identify any holes in your content and figure out a way to make each piece better than before.

But how do you ensure your content is consistent?

This is where style guides come in handy. Although the process of auditing your content can be tedious and time-consuming, it will set you up for future success.

Having your company style guide on hand when creating content will help safeguard against any incorrect branding terms, words, logos, etc. from slipping through the cracks.

It’s a good idea to have an editor or a team member with editing experience give everything a thorough proof to confirm consistency, grammar, and punctuation. Cohesive content improves consistency, keeps the reader on track, and builds authority.

Once your content has been refreshed – or in some cases, overhauled completely – the next step is to establish a publishing schedule.

Have a distribution plan

What good is your value-packed content if the right people don’t see it?

Before you roll out your content, make sure you have a solid distribution plan in place – meaning you know how, where and when each piece of content is being dispersed.

In addition to establishing a distribution schedule, make sure you identify the KPIs that will help you measure how your content is performing. As you begin to deploy your content, you will get a pulse on how things are performing.

This way, you can ensure the content you worked so hard on creating and revamping is being leveraged to its full potential.

Not sure where to start? It can seem daunting to figure out where everything should go and how it should be broken up, but after all, trial and error are tools of the content marketing trade.

As we discussed above, repackage content where it makes sense.

For example, take a large piece of content, like a whitepaper or a video, and pull new content from that.

Maybe part of that whitepaper can be divided into several shorter blog posts that you feature in your next email campaign. From there, you can see how those blog posts performed and take the most-engaged topic and turn it into a webinar, live broadcast or social media chat.

Having a distribution schedule will help you see what content is being used and when. Once you understand how things are performing, you can make data-backed decisions on your strategy as a whole based on past campaigns.

Wrap up

Investing time to create quality content that your readers find helpful and valuable is at the core of any strong content marketing strategy.

A one-size-fits-all strategy won’t work then trying to scale your content effectively. Understanding how each piece works together is crucial and will help you grow.