Ideas for Repurposing Your Thought Leadership Content -

It seems like everybody extols the virtues of being spontaneous.

“Seize the moment!” they say. “Carpe diem!”

And yes, sometimes being spontaneous leads to good times and even amazing adventures. For example…

Last minute road trip with your friends: A random Tuesday turns into an epic adventure, with you starring as lead singer, belting out 90s power ballads with the windows down and the wind whipping your hair back like you’re in one of those hair product commercials.
Letting your kids set the agenda for your Saturday: How do you beat catching tadpoles in a jar, knee-deep in a frog pond, laughing your fool head off? Right, you can’t. 10/10, would do again!
Ditching the plan to follow your gut: Who knew that skipping the conference workshop you planned to attend to chat with a new acquaintance over coffee would lead to your next consulting gig?

There are so many moments in life where going “off script” ends up creating a lasting memory or an unlooked-for opportunity.

But spontaneity isn’t all sunshine and unicorns…

We’ve all experienced those times when we “went with our gut” and ended up with a punch in the gut instead. Any of these sound familiar?

Getting a radically new hair-do on a whim: You saw your favorite celebrity’s new cut and thought it would be just the thing to launch the “new you.” Turns out new you < old you (and worse, it’ll take months to grow back).
Going live without pants (because “no one will see”): Until your dog knocked over the webcam, that is (Oops! Classic pandemic-era mistake).
Booking a “mystery Airbnb” for a fun surprise getaway: Plot-twist–it smelled like mildew, stale beer, and regret.
Hitting “Publish” on that spicy LinkedIn post: Then immediately regretting every hot take in it.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that spontaneity is a double-edged sword. Whenever you act on a whim, the results could swing wildly in either direction.

Ideas for Repurposing Your Thought Leader Content

The same goes for your content creation efforts in your consulting business.

Sure, there are times when you have a brilliant, timely, off the cuff thought that you just have to share with your followers. And sometimes such spontaneously posted ideas can take off and go viral.

But as a general rule, spontaneity is rarely your friend when it comes to content marketing.

In recent posts, I’ve written about content creation to help grow your authority in your field. Specifically, I’ve talked about:

Not making the mistake of going into your “Batcave” to write your book or create your online course
Content repurposing so that you get more value from your content creation efforts
The importance of publishing frequently and consistently
Focusing your content efforts on a single platform until you master it and build an engaged audience on it

In this post, I want to highlight one other crucial aspect of effective content marketing: making sure that you use a logical linking strategy for all of your content.

What do I mean by that?

Well, for example, a few weeks back, I wrote a post about the importance of repurposing content, right?

I’ve talked about how you can get much more exposure to your audience by creating a “midi” piece of content like a blog post or podcast episode, then pulling “nuggets” out of that content to create multiple social media posts (“mini-content”).

I’ve also talked about how–if you’re intentional about planning and sequencing your midi-content–you’ll quickly build up enough content on a single topic to create a piece of “maxi-content” on that topic, like an ebook, book, or online course.

That’s my “mini-midi-maxi” approach to content creation.

And that’s all great, but there’s a way to take all of this to the next level…by making sure you connect all that content together into a massive web of thought-leadership awesomeness.

Here’s how it works:

Let’s say your preferred midi-content mode is blogging. You write an excellent blog post and post it on your website.
Next, you cull the best 3-5 ideas or quotes from the blog post and turn them into social media posts. So far, so good.
Now, in those social posts, you refer back to the original blog post with something along the lines of, “To learn more, check out my blog post at…” and link to the blog post. Now you’re driving traffic back to your website where people can learn more about you.
But don’t leave your in-house email list out of the loop. How are they going to know that you have a new blog post if they don’t monitor your site and their social feeds 24/7? They won’t…unless you send them an email telling them about it, with a link.

And what about once you pull all that midi-content together into a piece of maxi-content? That’s when the whole process really kicks into high gear!

Prior to the publication of the maxi-piece, you tell people on your in-house list that it’s coming through your regular emails.
You blog about the coming maxi-piece and talk about the impact you hope it makes on your industry–and you include a link to an order form when it’s ready.
You post on social, with links to the blog and the maxi-piece.
Etc., etc., etc.

The point is, virtually any piece of content you put out there should be linked logically to some other piece of content, and the goal of all of this linking is to lead your social followers, opt-ins, and website visitors by the hand so they can see all the various ways you’ve demonstrated your thought-leadership on the topic.

And when they’re in need of a speaker to do PD in their district on this topic, or a speaker to provide a keynote on the topic at their conference, who do you think is going to be top of mind?

Why, YOU, that’s who!

So, to circle back to my original topic, yes, spontaneity can be good (or bad) in life in general, but when it comes to creating content to grow your positioning as an authority on a topic in your field, it pays to be intentional and systematic.

To Your Success,

Willy

P.S.–If you have questions or comments about the topic of intentional content creation, I’d love to hear them.

Just Reply in the Comments. Let’s talk about it!

And if you’d like to explore how we here at Ed Consultant Marketing can become a valuable member of your content marketing plan, we’d be happy to chat about it. Just hit that link 🔽…

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