Diving into social media and mobile media can be quite daunting for B2Bs. After all, it's an entirely new way of marketing, communicating, engaging and selling. The tools may be easy, but the environment is complex. One-way messaging habits are now moot as these new media call for two-way (and multi-way) communications with our audiences. And programs don’t have finite start-and-end dates. Much to the contrary, they keep going and going... which means a lot of content is needed to cultivate and grow our initiatives.

But, my beloved B2Bs, you have a BIG advantage. It’s just a shame that so many marketers have yet to realise it. What B2Bs have—and have TONS of—is thought-leadership content. We need it to move our high-risk, high-ticket offerings. Because we B2Bs aren’t selling two-buck soda pop. We’re selling two-million dollar software systems. So the sales process necessitates content that moves the conversation along by lessening complexity, increasing exposure and improving brand perception among our target audiences.

The result is that between all of our whitepapers, Web sites and Webinars, we B2Bs develop content in droves. And the benefit is that all the blood, sweat and bandwidth you placed into concepting, creating and publishing your past content gives you a huge leg up in the present.

Fact is, your vast archives of data can be “recycled” in new ways across text, audio and video that foster new conversations and spread your ideas to new audiences on a broader scale. But how, you ask? Use this 3-point framework to help you think differently about the thought leadership you've already created, as well as your efforts going forward:

#1 REPURPOSE: Repurpose the content you’ve ALREADY created.

Start with information-gathering and assessment through:

• Audit. Conduct an audit of all the thought leadership you company has created—especially content created in the last 2-3 years. Whether the content was delivered through an article, white paper, webinar, powerpoint presentation, speech, case study or other format doesn’t matter. What matters is that you aggregate ALL applicable content for your audit.
  
• Organize. Pinpoint and categorize the various themes, topics, challenges, benefits, key messages, methodologies and “hot buttons” that the content you've culled addresses. And make sure you’re focusing only on the content that is still timely, as some content is “evergreen” but other content may already be obsolete.
  
• Go to step #2...
  

#2: REPACKAGE: Repackage your content in entirely NEW ways through text, audio and video.

From your findings in step #1, start mapping out how the content can be ‘repackaged’ into new formats across these new tools, channels and platforms. The possibilities are near limitless. For example:

• A position paper can become a series of blog posts to be read, or a bunch of informative audio podcasts that your audience can listen to during their daily commutes.
  
• A white paper can translate into a cadre of forum topics and discussions.
  
• A conference where you videotaped several speeches by your company’s subject matter experts can become a series of online videos.
Categories, themes and challenges addressed in your content can give rise to and bolster a LinkedIn Group that you host… or a community that you build

• A Powerpoint presented at an industry event can become an online slideshow perfect to view on screens both large (laptop) and small (smartphone). You can even overly the audio onto the slides so that the presentation is that much more dynamic and personal.
  
• The industry data that your team regularly tracks can becomes a stream of mobile SMS alerts that your market can subscribe to and remain informed of industry developments while working remotely.
• The case study PDFs that you’ve published can become a “best practices series” delivered through a set of special Webinars where users can post questions via Twitter and Facebook with your team answering them in real time.
  
• Instead of the executive summary of your annual report published only in a text document, your CEO can deliver an overview via video and better connect with the industry on a more personal basis.
  
• Findings from a recent study you commissioned can become a set of tweets and wall postings... that link back to a blog post on the study... that links to an audio podcast which discusses the study’s biggest surprises... that links to a video interview of various subject matter experts discussing the study’s implications... while you also provide a “quick read!” synopsis of the study’s findings for mobile viewers.
  
• Proceed to step #3...
  

#3: REFINE: Refine your content for SEO best practices and to provide the best experience possible for audiences across VARIOUS environments.

From your plans for repackaging your content in step #2, ensure that you’re:

• Optimizing your thought-leadership content for search engines. The content that you’ll repurpose and repackage should be refined to include the universe of keywords that will help your site rank highly in search engine results. SEO could be a post all its own, but just be mindful that you’re not only marketing your content to your audience but also optimizing for the search engines that pull your audience to you.

• Optimizing your thought-leadership content for the viewing environments of multiple environments. The best practices of social-media content are vastly (!) different from the best practices of mobile-media content—because the devices from which your audience views your content are completely different. Just pull up the same Web content on a laptop and a smartphone and you’ll understand exactly what I mean. Optimizing for screens both large and small requires more effort, but it’s worth going the extra mile. For more detail, I recommend that you review this post on refining content for mobile environments.

All that said, the benefit of recycling your thought-leadership is far from just a way to more easily dive into social media and mobile media. At its core, this practice is an argument rooted in ROI. Why? Because you are MAXIMIZING the investments you’ve ALREADY made—as creating all that smart content took your team (and your vendors) a lot of time. Plus, it didn’t come cheap to your budget. So you want your content to have as many legs across as many media as possible.

And now you can repurpose, repackage and refine your thought-leadership content as far as these tools and your imagination will take you.