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Written by: Austin McNair
At the heart of nearly every professional services marketing department exists an extraordinary dilemma: Those who are best equipped to write the sharpest and most relevant content are often the ones with the least amount of bandwidth to sit down and do so.
It hardly matters whether writing comes easily or not! Quality writing takes precious time to produce. And when a business leader or subject matter expert is faced with a choice between responding to a hot lead or starting a new blog post, it’s almost a guarantee that the writing will move to the back burner.
But professional services firms who are revitalizing their marketing efforts by producing a steady stream of keyword-driven blog posts, articles, and other pieces of content need their experts to contribute to the flow of content. So is there a better way to support them?
If your team finds itself struggling to churn out fresh content week after week, take heart. There’s a proven way to get great results by doing less work that doesn’t rely on tools like ChatGPT. While generative AI platforms can certainly play a role in developing new content, the chances are high that you’re sitting on a gold mine of content that you may not even realize is there.
I’m talking about repurposing and rewriting content you have already produced. This means using existing articles as a foundation for valuable, new content pieces – avoiding square one each time someone puts pen to paper.
Rewriting content doesn’t mean that you change a few words in an article and republish it. (That’s a different strategy, entirely.) When rewriting content, you’ll want to take the basic ideas from your original article and put a new spin on them. Here are some easy ways to do that.
1. Convert a list into a series of individual pieces of content.
How many times have you encountered blogs or articles that have headlines that include a number? Countless, right? This formatting technique is commonplace but it is still effective. Articles written with a numbered list help readers organize and retain the information you’re presenting.
So you or your team may have already written articles like these “7 Ways to…” or “7 Reasons You Should Invest in…” If so, you’ve created the basis for seven new articles. Take each point in your list and turn it into an individual article. This gives you the opportunity to build on and expand your ideas, demonstrating deep knowledge of the subject. Consider adding background information or case studies to make each blog post more substantial.
2. Take several related posts and combine them into a single summary post.
Perhaps you’re an accountant who has written several blog posts on ways to prepare for the busy tax season. Or you’re a lawyer who has been blogging about the evolving developments of an important legal issue. Take the key point from each article, summarize each in a paragraph and publish an all new article such as “Top Tips for Tax Season” or “What Every Business Needs to Know About the XYZ Law.” (You may have noticed that this approach turns Tip 1 on its head.)
3. Draft a Guide or Whitepaper
Perhaps the idea of whittling down a blog post to a single paragraph seems impossible — there’s too much relevant information to cut out. If that’s the case, consider turning several related blog posts into a valuable guide or white paper. Review and edit the content you have, add transitional text to ensure that the articles flow together and write an introduction. Then package the whole thing together.
If you want it to look great, hire a designer to develop a cover and a polished layout. You can share the guide with clients and prospects, put it in your online library or place it behind a registration form and use it to build your email list. And if you have an upcoming speaking engagement or sponsorship event, you can distribute hardcopies of your guide as a reminder of your expertise.
4. Revise an old post for a new audience
Here at Hinge, our target audience is the professional services. While the industries we serve have a lot of unique issues, they also share many challenges. Consider common concerns among your own client base. If you’ve written an article that is geared to your non-profit clients, for instance, could you rewrite the article to speak to similar challenges faced by the small businesses with whom you work? If you have an active media outreach program, you will also be able to target a broader range of publications with minimal extra effort. Substitute stories, anecdotes, and data and you should have a new blog post ready to go in no time.
5. Update an old post with new information
Even though change happens at a rapid pace in today’s world, many issues faced by professional services firms, such as business development and employee retention, remain the same. That means that a blog post you wrote three years ago may still be relevant. Review old posts to determine if you can update them with fresh statistics and new case studies so that they engage readers today.
Quality content will play an important role in professional services firms’ marketing strategies for the foreseeable future. Learning how to rewrite content without sacrificing quality is a skill whose benefits will be realized for many years to come.
Related: The Top 10 Benefits of Using Social Media Marketing for Business