You Can Multi-Purpose Your Marketing With One Article

Do you ever wonder how it is that some small business owners seem to have both an off-line and online presence? They might even be the same size as you in terms of staff or perhaps even a soho-entrepreneur and yet it appears that they've got a marketing team equivalent to that of a ten people. You wonder how on earth are they pushing out all of that content in some many places and running their business at the same time.

This is probably a conversation that a lot of businesses have, regardless of their size. They too are likely wondering, how do we maximize our reach when we have limited time and resources. One thing is for sure, no matter what size your company is, everyone has the same 24 hours in the day to work with. The key to maximizing your time and reach is: Write once and then repurpose the same content in multiple platforms. Let's look at what I mean by write once and repurpose.

When I think about how to best manager my marketing, it means I have to be strategic. That's what you'll be doing when it comes to writing and repurposing. Here are the steps for putting this marketing tactic into action.

1. Decide what you wish to convey in your article. The purpose of the article is to inform, educate or entertain your reader. Share something with them that will make their lives easier. This is not the place to boast about yourself or the company. Save that for the resource box.

2. A short article for a newspaper or online publication is anywhere from 700 - 850 words. Check with the editor of the publication to learn what their ideal word count is. Read past articles to get a feel for the style and tone of the publication. You don't need to reinvent the wheel here. Model what you see is being done by other writers.

3. Prepare a benefits rich resource box, (sometimes referred to as the author box) for your article. This is essentially the 'bio' at the end of the article that tells the reader who wrote the article, about their company and most importantly the URL of your business. This is where you promote yourself, your product and your website or blog. The aim of a good resource box is to do all three where possible. Take note that the content within the resource box does not count as part of the article word count.

Okay, you can now tick the first box. Article written. Check.

4. Now that your article with catchy title and resource box are ready to go, send it to the appropriate department of your local or regional newspaper. Sending article contributions does not necessarily guarantee that your article will be published; however you do stand a good chance if you are providing value for their readers.

5. After submitting to the local newspaper, you may choose to wait to see if it will be published locally first or you may choose to go ahead to submit to an article directory. An article directory is a website with collections of articles on different subjects. People looking for content for their own website or blog can search for articles in the directory.

Now every time your article is published whether it is in a newsletter or another person's site a backlink is established to YOUR site as a result of the url in the resource box. In addition this has the potential to build up web traffic to your site very quickly. Another important thing to remember is that backlinks will also raise your site higher in organic (free) search engine rankings.

6. Now it's time to list the same article on your blog. Because this has already been getting attention from the article directories, the addition of this on your blog will help your blog to rank within the search engines and draw traffic to your site. Okay, now you can tick two more boxes. Time to move onto posting to social media sites.

7. The last way to multipurpose your article is to use bits and pieces of the article to use in LinkedIn Discussions. If your article is written in such a way that you're giving tips, then break down each tip and start a discussion on that topic. Simply copy one or two sentences from your article to start the discussion and then follow that with a question that relates to what you just wrote. Let me give you an example of what I mean. A sentence from a branding article I have states: Branding is about perception and satisfying the wants and needs of the consumer. Now tie that together with a question as follows:

'Branding is about perception and satisfying the wants and needs of the consumer. How does your company create the brand perception for your products and services?'

You can start a discussion in LinkedIn in this manner or simply post your comments as a post to Facebook. Include a bitly link that drives people back to the full article on your blog. These discussions and Facebook posts can be spread out over a week or longer depending on how fast you create new content.

So there you have it, multi ways to utilize and maximize one article. Now it's time for you to start writing.