For almost all the marketers I speak to the single biggest obstacle to maximising the opportunity that content marketing presents is the content bit.

It’s not that we don’t have the content ideas or that we don’t understand the principles of a good content marketing strategy. It’s quite simply finding the time to produce all of the new content that you believe prospects and existing customers will find interesting and / or useful.

Producing this valuable, helpful and informative content takes time. Before we go any further it’s important that I point out that I haven’t found a magic formula for producing new content at the speed we would all like to.

Instead, I have concluded that there is a far easier way to get the content in your content marketing strategy to work harder for you.

Sound like a plan? Let me explain:

As I’ve already said – producing good content takes time. After spending this time we unfortunately don’t maximise the benefit to be extracted from all that hard work.

I’m sure that you have on many occasions (as I have) upon completing your latest content project simply posted it on your chosen social channels, added it to your website and targeted relevant online discussion groups only to swiftly move on to the development of your next content project.

By doing this you are not maximising the potential for your content to generate leads, encourage attendance at your event, secure downloads for your white paper – whatever your specific objectives may be.

You worked really hard developing that content – so make the most of the opportunity it presents.

Only a very small proportion of your social audience will see your content if you only post it once. By using one of the many social scheduling tools and re-posting across different channels at different times you will greatly increase the exposure that your content gets.

It’s only then that you can be sure that you are extracting maximum value from the hard work you put in to developing the content in the first place.

It’s also a great way to conduct some live research – change the headlines, choose different images, post at different times of the day.

By doing this and studying your analytics you’ll develop a new awareness of what content works best, in what place and at what time.

You’ll then be in a position to decide which of your many ideas for new content will best help you to achieve your goals.

You’ll then find that all the content you develop starts working harder for you.

It’s easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that loads of content is all you need for a successful content marketing strategy.

What you really need is useful, helpful and informative content from which you extract maximum value.

I’m as guilty as anyone of being tempted by the exciting distraction of shiny new content – just remember that a lot of your existing content is new to an awful lot of people who haven’t yet been exposed to it.