The secret to content marketing success is to build a well-oiled machine.

You could create completely unique content for every medium. But why waste content that still has legs? For resource-strapped startups, content marketing thrives on milking every last drop out of your content.

Running marketing at a smaller organization means wearing a lot of hats. That doesn’t leave much time for content creation. Recycling your content dramatically decreases the time you spend creating it, thus increasing the return on your investment. Even some of the largest marketing departments on the planet recycle content.

Does your content live life to its fullest? Below are a handful of ideas for getting the most out of a single piece of content.

Turn a conference presentation into a webinar

Executives, often with help from marketing, create great content for events. Sometimes, that content doesn’t leave the presentation hall.

Don’t retire that presentation. Transform it into a webinar.

Webinars are powerful for lead generation. They’re interactive and happen in real-time—both features that make content compelling.

It isn’t hard to move from a presentation to webinar format. Most of the legwork you’ll need to do here is recruiting attendees. Beyond that, the content has already been created.

Turn a webinar into an eBook

In your webinar, you have a structured piece of content, straight from the expert’s mouth. Now, have a writer transcribe the content, massage it, and turn it into content for an eBook.

Bring a designer into the mix to bring those dull presentation images to life in unique ways. Investing in strong visuals will supplement the copy in the eBook and gives you more options for recycling down the road.

Turn an eBook into a video

Send content and visuals to a professional video editor. Here, it might be a good idea to capture other video footage—an interview with the executive who created the presentation, for example.

Have the video editor animate visuals, splice in live video, and add a voice-over (if necessary) for a lively piece of content.

Turn an eBook into a blog post

Whether your eBook is light or heavy on copy, it should cover a breadth of content with plenty of potential to expand. Pull out major concepts, points and themes from the eBook.

Transform each point you pulled into a blog post. You might need to do some extra research here, but you’ll already have a main point and some evidence to build a case around.

Turn everything into social media posts

Your social media channels are hungry for content. By recycling, you’ll feed those channels, nurturing their continued growth.

Take everything you’ve created so far and divvy them up socially.

• Take descriptive chunks of copy, supplemented with pictures, and post them to Facebook.
• Make provocative snippets for Twitter to accompany links to content.
• Upload presentations and eBooks to Uberflip.
• Post recorded webinars and videos on YouTube and other video networks.
• Add pictures to Pinterest and Instagram.
• Create shortened versions of content for Tumblr.

Link back to the original piece of content on your website to drive leads into the sales funnel.

Turn social media feedback into new content

The content you’ve created over the course of this lifecycle can (and should) live online for a very long time. But just because you’re done promoting it doesn’t mean your interaction with it is over.

It’s time to start the cycle anew by listening to how your audience reacts. Take part in the conversation and find out what content they would find most valuable.

How do you recycle content?

Does this list miss anything big? Share your ideas on recycling content with us in the comments.

About the Author

Mark Sherbin is a freelance writer specializing in technology and content marketing. He shares occasionally insightful information at Copywriting Is Dead, where he promotes authentic communication between organizations and their audiences. Say hello on Twitter: @MarkSherbin.