The calendar may be telling us that Spring has arrived, but looking out the window here in Boston continues to indicate otherwise. The cold weather lingers on making it safe to say that we could all use a little help breaking free of this endless winter. To help kick start your marketing and prepare your content for the warmer weather, we’ve rounded up four hot tips to help thaw out your content marketing this spring.

1. Repurpose Content – In an ideal world, marketers would always have the time and resources to produce fresh, relevant content. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Instead of just putting your content marketing on hold when things get busy, make the most of previous work by repurposing existing content. Doing so will not only extend the lifetime value of content, but also continue to engage audiences.
   • Turn an existing presentation into a webinar for potential clients
   • Use the PR materials from a recent project launch to develop a white paper or Case Study
   • Dissect an article or blog post into smaller pieces of content for sharing across social media
2. Go Visual – When it comes to content, the more visual, the more shareable. In a recent article by Sarah Browne, founder of Trendist, she reports 70% of actions taken on social media to involve visuals. This includes the 300 million images Facebook users post each day, 133,000 hours of video streamed daily on YouTube and 8,500 likes on Instagram per second.
   • Boost the performance of a text-based tweet or Facebook post by adding a branded image
   • Turn insightful research into a vibrant infographic that will draw user attention
   • Make sure all of your visual content can easily be shared by users across their personal social networks for maximum reach
3. Listen & Learn – It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all of the Big Data speak floating around marketing today. The trick is to know what information you are looking for and focus on the right outlets to discover such. Taking this targeted approach will not only more clearly inform your content strategy, but make the process of utilizing data much easier.
   • Leverage your customers by reaching out and crowdsourcing what topics they’d like to see covered in future content
   • Dig into your Google Analytics for insight into what content your users are visiting most and how you can maximize on this traffic
   • Head over to Facebook Insights to see which of your recent posts were most popular and how you can reuse these characteristics in future posts
4. Look Ahead – One of the most important practices of content marketing is planning ahead. Mapping your strategy in advance not only helps schedule posts in a timely, regular manner, but also leaves you more prepared to take advantage of seasonal keywords and trends.
   • Develop an editorial calendar that identifies when content will be shared as well as what format it will take to ensure a variety of topics and content types
   • Research upcoming seasonal trends such as awards shows, sporting events or holidays that can be tied into the keyword strategy of future content
   • Prepare for ‘slower’ times by creating evergreen content that never goes out of date and can be distributed at any time during the year

Regardless of the season or temperature outside, keeping your content marketing fresh and up to date will showcase your organization’s expertise and position you as a thought leader within your industry. Don’t let your strategy freeze up as a result of the endless winter- join 89% of marketers currently implementing a content marketing strategy and watch your business bloom this Spring.