If you’re looking to get more bang for your buck with your marketing strategy in 2012, content is a great place to start. Even if you’re strapped for time, writing a single article can generate a lot of exposure for your brand through multiple channels. Here’s how.

1. Start With a Blog Post

When you write a blog post, it’s important to write about something your audience cares about. What sorts of problems do they have? What are they looking to learn about? Keep it simple and clearly written.

Post this to your blog. Ideally, you’ll have 2-3 posts a week. Start with one if that’s overwhelming.

Tip: Within your blog, use a widget that allows readers to easily share your post on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, StumbleUpon and more. This will help it spread to more places online. (See the bottom of this post for an example).

Step 2: Share Socially

Don’t wait around for your readers to share your post on social networking sites! Make sure each of your posts appears on your Facebook Wall (both for your personal profile and your business page), your Twitter stream, and your Google+ profile (if you’re there yet).

The great news is that there are tools that automate this process. Twitterfeed is one such tool. Using it, you can automatically publish any of your blog content to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a few other places. It doesn’t appear that Google + yet has a similar option, so you’ll have to post your blog updates manually.

Tip: Make sure the text that the RSS feeder posts is enticing. “NEW POST” probably isn’t the best wording to get people to click the link. Use the title of the post (and keep your titles somewhat short so they don’t get cut off) so that they appear in Twitter or other place and are clear what they are about.

Step 3. Get to Bookmarking

You want the most readers possible for your content, don’t you? Introduce it to an even wider audience by bookmarking it. Some great sites with large readership include:

Set up an account and add your blog post each time you have a new one (sorry, this has to be done manually). The way these sites work is that people can click your headline and vote up (or down) the articles they like. The articles with more votes are moved up the list. By providing useful and engaging content, you’ll move up that list and attract more eyeballs.

Step 4. Regurgitate the Post

A great way to get more use out of your post is to rework it as a guest post for another blog. Since Google came out with its Panda algorithm, the search engine has gotten a lot stricter about articles being identical (or even nearly identical) on two or more sites, so it’s important that you really revamp your article into something new.

Take a different slant for the new article, or move sections around, then rewrite them. It should have the same basic information, just in a new package.

Once you have this new article, pitch it as a guest post on other blogs in your industry. It’s best if you build relationships with other bloggers before you want to guest post. Make sure your post isn’t too self promotional, and that it provides value to the reader.

Step 5: Put it in Your Newsletter

If you send out a monthly email newsletter, use your article as content for the newsletter. You can even build up a theme around the article. Say for example your article is about the importance of blogging. You could include 10 Top Tips on Blogging in your sidebar, and pump your blogging service in your intro letter.

As you can see, a single article or blog post can pack quite a punch when it comes to marketing. Set up a system to promote each post using these ideas so that you maximize the number of people who know about your blog and your brand!