When looking through content that you can re purpose for the web you should keep a few things in mind.  If you have the time and expertise to do some keyword research for your business and your industry.  The keyword research will give you an idea of what type of content people are looking for.  After doing the research you will know that certain content will be worth putting some work into so you can put it online and know that some content might not be worth the work.  If you don’t have the time to do keyword research or just don’t know what you should be looking for then you have another option.  Try and put yourself into your customer’s shoes.  Try and detach yourself from your business as much as possible and think like an outsider.  This is a lot tougher than it sounds.  You are constantly engaged with your work and know the ins and outs of the industry. You already know what is important and what doesn’t really matter.  For someone just starting their research they have no idea about you or your business they may only know they have a need or a pain.

From my prior post here are some different things to look for in your existing content.

The other type of presentation you may give is to a specific company or person who is already informed on your product but need to know more about it and why they should buy it from you.  This type of presentation is great for targeting searchers who are further along the buying process and now know they want product X but want to find the best vendor.  From this presentation you can pull out your main differentiators and create a blog post or page around those.  Or you could create a post or page on the details of how you implement a product  and give the details of that product or service. This allows potential customers to see what you offer and why they should consider you when making their purchase.

Sell Sheets – Like I mentioned in the previous post sell sheets work great because they are concise and give the important specs customers want.  So what is worth taking from a product sell sheet and putting online?  One thing you could look at doing is creating a comparison chart of your product and your competitors product.  Take the specs you already have from your sell sheet and put the same information for your competitors into a grid and create a new post or page titles something like “Comparison of Product X and Product Y”.  There are lot of searches like this on the web and giving a brief, easy to read overview of a buyers options gives you the ability to showcase your company.

Business Plan - The content in the business plan usually needs to be cleaned up more then other pieces of content because it is usually written for investors with lots of ifs and maybes.  The business plan does contain some really good content for the web like, what need you are filling in the marketplace or how you will set yourself apart from the competition.  Aside from the sales speak of why you are great and why you will succeed you will have information like market size and for some business very technical information.  That type of specific detail would be ideal to get search traffic from potential customers who already have a good idea of what they want or know what problem the solution needs to solve.

Print Marketing Material - Depending on the original use of the piece their are several ways to use print material online.  The easiest is to just upload it and have it as downloadable content.  If the print material is content rich then you can look at using that content for a page on your site.  When looking at the print piece try and remember what the original goal of it was and who you were targeting with that print. If you know that it was specifically designed to attract a certain customer or someone with a specific need you could then create a new blog post around that targeted message which in turn would target that same audience online.

Unlocking your hidden content is a great technique to begin loading your web properties up with valuable information that will drive traffic.  Be sure that you try and look for the content that will be useful to your target audience and it is presented in a clear manner.  This is a great start to creating great content and will give you the momentum you need to continue developing content.