EP#15 Laura Kluz on Content Repurposing for Product Led Companies

Main Takeaways

Content promotion means getting content to the right person at the right time in the right format.
Repurposing content is a powerful strategy, with 90% of ProductLed’s content being repurposed. It is also an ongoing process that requires adaptation and variety.
Prioritize content based on audience questions and engagement. Ask your audience what they want and create content that speaks to them.
Use SEO and keyword research to align content with target audience interests.
Favorite tools for repurposing include Riverside, SEMrush, Rev, and AI transcript services.
Repurposed content can drive business results, such as increased page views and book sales. Metrics for measuring success include page views, returning users, subscribers, and downloads.
Regularly update and refresh repurposed content to keep it relevant and valuable.
Laura uses themed days to focus on specific channels.

Resources

Website & Social Media Links

Video

Transcript

Alan: Hello. Hello everyone. We have Laura with us today. Hi Laura. Welcome to the show.

Laura: Hi. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Alan: Hi. It’s great. Yeah. We’re gonna dive deeper into content repurposing and specifically everything that you do inside, product-led, which I’m really interested and curious to know more about. we’re gonna get started with, signature question that I always like to get started with, which is, what does, content promotion mean to you specifically?

Laura: Yeah. I think, I think con content promotion to me means just, getting content to the right person at the right time. In the right format that they actually want to consume it in. So whether that’s, reading, whether it is, watching a video or, listening to a podcast, I know that everyone has different ways of learning and I know even just like going for a run, I wanna listen to a podcast.

yeah, it’s just having, that content there for them when they need it most.

Alan: So there’s a lot of people that mention, reaching, the audience at the right time with the right content on the right platform. So I love that you mentioned, with the right formats. So that’s something else that people need to add to their, like process essentially. And so we’re gonna dive deeper into how you guys do that.

so can you share a little bit of your background and how you got to be working at Product Lab?

Laura: Yeah, for sure. so I actually am a reporter trained, and I worked in that industry for a while. so I’m always into asking questions and getting into the nitty gritty details of things. and then I worked, started doing marketing work, at an e-commerce agency actually that specialized in Shopify.

This was like pre pandemic. So before Shopify was like the biggest thing. and then, after that I was approached by someone to write the, or edit the book product led onboarding. and that’s how I got introduced to the world of product led. so I edited that book and then after that I just kept in conversation with Wes and, And Ramly.

And then, yeah, then that brought me to product-led. And, it’s just a whole different world of, I really feel like I found my sweet spot in terms of marketing. Like content marketing is definitely where I like to be. And, so I’m really happy to find my, like focus there.

Alan: Awesome. That’s great. And so you mentioned to me that, content repurposing specifically is 90% of your content strategy. Can you elaborate on that and share a little bit of a process with this?

Laura: Yeah, for sure. so product led, is, it’s funny, we have basically when I came on board, we had this entire library of videos that we had done nothing with. So to give a bit of, little bit of background, product led hosts, this product led growth summit, every. Year, it used to be two times a year.

And basically we would have about 30 to 40 experts on any given topic within product led growth. submit a video, between 20 to 30 minutes long, and they would be released during the summit. and so when I came on board, we probably had like hundreds of these videos that were just sitting idly by and I figured, this is like a goldmine that, would make a huge impact, with the little resources that we had.

and so then I just took it upon myself to. To take these videos and repurpose them to any, way we could. We started with blog, with blog posts, making them a blog posts. But it’s just evolved from there. And, now we take those videos and. they’re not just blog posts.

We put them into podcasts and we also, since they’re videos, we create YouTube videos and just became a whole cycle. And now any new content that comes in, we have this whole process of if it is a blog post first, let’s see if there’s other ways we can talk about it. So let’s get the author on a podcast and get them to talk about their article and then use that podcast as we’re recording and we will.

create that into a video. so it sounded became, its like little wheel, like flywheel, of repurposing. But it’s been really interesting to see just like the impact that’s had. so I would say, yeah, about 90% of our content is repurposed. And then,that remaining 10% is, original content sprinkled here and there.

But, yeah, for the most part it’s just using our community and huge pool of experts that have contributed to us, that has helped us grow our brand.

So that’s really interesting. I usually ask people what is their idea, for a balance between content creation and content promotion. So it sounds like you’re doing more promotion than creation, actually, but that’s probably because you already had a ton of content before you got started, To Totally. And yeah, totally. And it was basically just a. It was basically just I came in and it was like, how do I make the most impact? And I don’t know about you, but for original content, it’s very hard to create it, especially when you’re a small team. It takes a lot of research, it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of just, asking the right people, the right questions.

and so this was just a really easy way to have a big impact right away. And, there, yeah. But now, there is some struggles that come with it because,there is so much content, like how do you even prioritize it or how do you choose what to work on at that time?

So there is obviously some challenges that come with it, but, as long as you have a process in place, it gets a little easier with time.

Alan: And so my next question was, with so much content available on the site and that you started slowly repurposing, how did you ensure that the content was in the preferred format for your target audience?

Laura: Yeah, for sure. So I think that in, in that sense, it comes down to packaging. so obviously when you create, when you repurpose content, not everything is gonna be, available at once. Sometimes it takes a long time. So like even, we record a podcast, we do have the, The intention of creating a blog post and a video from it.

But obviously that takes a little bit of time. we definitely do put out, what we have,that new content, like if we recorded a podcast, we’re not gonna wait for it to have all the other. pieces in place for us to get it out there. We’re just gonna get it out there, but down the line.

usually what we do is just package it into a nice, a page, which is usually a blog post, but we, put the video in that blog post and then also put. The audio or podcast into that blog post too, so that whoever actually stumbles across it, they’re able to find that content pretty easy.

same with YouTube. If they go on YouTube in the description, they’ll see like the actual post there, so they can just click on that. There just becomes like a little loop. So again, like the packaging is really important. but it’s really interesting because what we’ve learned is that. Someone might hop on a blog post and they might, move on into a podcast cuz they’ve seen that it’s there. And what we actually found was just by, even by moving where the podcast is, within that blog post, either, what we did was we stuck it above everything else and downloads for that podcast went through the roof, which is in.

Which is crazy. I know one example in my head, like basically that podcast doubled, in downloads just because we had it in a place that was so easy for the reader to actually consume that content. and so now moving forward, we do that. We just put all of our podcasts on the very, very top instead of, embedding it.

Paragraph two or paragraph three, which is something really small, but it’s made a huge impact in how people consume our content. For sure.

Alan: So essentially people finds you first with your content, with your blog, but then they end up consuming the podcast instead of the actual article.

Laura: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Or, that’s just one example of how it would work or how it has worked in the past. But, we’ve also had a lot of people on YouTube and we always have the description on there and they find the blog and they come up

on, onto

Alan: So it’s kinda, so it’s kinda like internal linking on a website, right? Like you, pull people from one place to the other and they’re all interconnected, so they can easily navigate that. that’s awesome. And so you mentioned that you encountered a couple of challenges in the repurposing process because you had so much content.

so what were some of the challenges and how did you overcome them?

Laura: I know definitely. One of the biggest challenges was just figuring out, and we continue to have this problem, is just what is the focus of this content? So for example, if we had a podcast like this, we could probably write 10 different articles on just the content that we’re talking about right now.

and so sometimes it can be really hard to decipher through all of that content within one. conversation. And so what we’ve been doing in that sense is, we have this like bank of questions that our audience has asked us before. So whether that’s through, other live events that we’ve done, or just like emails I get, I have this bank of questions that like people have asked, and what I usually do is I’ll look at the transcript of whatever we’re doing and I’ll see if there is, Something within that transcript that people have asked before, multiple times.

like usually there’s like a pattern that you wanna hit. and then I focus on that and then that’s a good way for me to start. and it keeps flowing from there. So I would say that’s like the biggest challenge that I’ve overcome. And then obviously just having so much content, it’s like, how do you even choose what one to.

What, when to start with. and so again, that comes down to just looking at our community and checking out our slack and seeing what people are asking and talking about. And and then from there we do a lot of validation in terms of just like social posts and see, and, see if there’s engagement on those, and that kind of stuff.

But yeah, I would say

that’s a big one.

Alan: And do you do any seo, to find keywords

that have some

Laura: Oh yeah. Yes, of course. I feel like that’s like a no-brainer. Yeah, for sure. aside from just like the questions that our audience asks, you obviously have to align it with your keyword bank that we have also created, which we usually go back to every couple months and just update it and make sure that they’re relevant and they’re still, being talked about For sure.

Alan: that’s cool. I really like the audience first approach. but what would you say is maybe an advice for someone that doesn’t have a huge audience? And so they still have a ton of content, but they don’t really have a big audience, so it’s difficult for them to get the insight for which pages, which blog posts, which videos are the best ones to kinda repurpose.

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Alan: someone like that?

Laura: Yeah, I, it’s, it sounds stupid simple, but it really works is just ask your 10 audience members what they want. it really, is it, maybe you have an audience of 50, maybe it’s a hundred. Just ask them. it might take a little bit of work, but it’s, and it’s gonna be manual, but honestly, like that’s your biggest, validation.

That it’s, that you’re onto something and they’ll give good insights into what they want. And if they’re your ideal audience, then that’s the kind of content you wanna create.

Alan: And, so in terms of tools, like what are the favorite, your favorite tools to be able to do all of this? Repurposing, like transforming videos into blog posts and vice versa.

Laura: Yeah, Riverside is one. we use this as well. It’s really handy. this is just like a, recording tool that we’re using right now. basically it records two separate files, which is, makes it really easier for our editor. I’m not a video editor, but apparently it’s. It’s better. and,I use SEMrush as well, which is great.

what other tools do I usually use? we have our, I have a designer, which is awesome. She’s pretty, I just make some stuff up in my head and she’s really great. but honestly, I don’t, it’s not. I don’t have any fancy tool that I use that really is wow. Like this is what?

is, I do use Rev, which is a transcript service a lot. and they’re really helpful too. And they have, right now they have, an AI tool that really helps as well. So you can just take your transcript and ask them to summarize things and it’s just one of those Yeah, it’s really efficient.

they can create, like show notes for you from the. The transcript. and I would actually say that service is probably my biggest time saver and life saver as

well.

Alan: And, so can you share any examples of some of these repurposing, like processes or things that you’ve done that have brought in some business results for product led?

Laura: yeah, for sure. I would say like most of our content, because, most people come to us because they’ve seen our content in some shape or form. I would like the book we have pr, product-led growth, sorry. product led is founded by West Bush. and he wrote the book on product led growth and recently, we released that for free on our website.

so basically we repurposed it in a sense, to our website and, we’ve had. Over 192,000 page views to that page. and not only that, but the majority of people who take our programs have read the book, which is actually one of the reasons that we decided to release it for free cuz we had noticed that a lot of them had read the book.

but it’s just making a lot more accessible for people to actually. Grab the book now and what’s been the most interesting part actually is our book sales have gone up. They have not gone down since we released it for free. Yeah. that’s a cool case study, but, for sure, yeah, it’s, I would say that is like one of the biggest like success, stories that we have in terms of actually like hitting our bottom line that’s really tangible for us to see.

Alan: And so you mentioned using, like questions from the audience to be able to decide which content to prioritize. Do you have any other criteria, like any other processes that you follow to know which content has more potential to be repurposed?

Laura: yeah, for sure. So I think one of what we’ve been trying to do recently is I. Kind of see if a topic resonates with an, with our audience first. So I will either, ask it in Slack or,Or Wes will do like a LinkedIn post on it and we’ll see if people even engage with it. If no one engages with it, I’ll just throw it away and say okay, this isn’t worth my time.

which has been really helpful for sure. and then just looking at my target persona has been really helpful. so if you don’t have a target persona, it’s gonna be really hard to create content for. For, anybody, because it be, it becomes way too general and then it doesn’t speak to anyone.

So if you can really nail down your target persona and ensure that your art, like your topic really resonates with them, then it’s worth pursuing. And sometimes, like even when I look at my giant library of articles, I realize this, or video, sorry. I look at him and I’m like, oh, this topic, our target persona is not going to care, or it’s a little bit too high level for them, or, et cetera.

And so then I just skip it. so that’s a really big powerful tool that if you don’t have your target persona dialed in, I would recommend starting with that.

Alan: So I, so yeah, any advice on how to come up with the best possible target persona or how to test a few different ones? Maybe,

Laura: Yeah. yeah, that’s a big question cuz it takes a lot of, takes a lot of user research for sure.

I’m, again, like you have to talk to your audience and see who’s actually coming to your site. that’s gonna tell you a lot about who you’re actually attracting and is that someone who you want to attract?

Maybe it’s not. but you actually do need to get the data behind it first. I know for us on our site, once you sign up for, our newsletter or anything, you get sent to a, just a quiz and it just asks you some basic questions like, what’s your company size? What’s your title? Super simple questions, but it’s really helped us narrow down, okay, these are the types of people who are coming into our site versus who we thought was coming into our

site. and that was really beneficial for us to be like, okay, so now we’re realizing who actually is coming to our site. Are we creating content that speaks to them? And that I think itself was like really powerful. We had found out on our end that I was creating content that wasn’t for someone that I, for people we thought was actually coming to us.

So that was, yeah, that was good.

Alan: Awesome. Yeah. So a question that I had on my mind, that wasn’t in the document, so you probably didn’t prepare for this, but I’ll ask it anyway, is, so we’ve been talking about what you do inside product-led, but I’d be curious to know what you think about content promotion and repurposing for product-led companies.

Laura: Oh yeah, for sure. So for I, for product-led companies, they really need to harness their product in their content. and it’s really interesting, one quote that I’m not, I can’t remember who said it, but it really resonated with me. it was, a lot of people say content is king, but at our company I.

The product is king and content just supports that king, and I always thought that resonated very well because in product-led companies, that is what they need to do. They need to create content that speaks to their product. That helps. That’s what you know, if there’s some sort of pain point that their product solves.

they need to write about that pain point and then weave their product into it as like a potential solution, but doing it in a very natural way so that it doesn’t sound like it’s salesy. It’s

just

like a

Alan: little nudge, I think that’s the main challenge for a lot of companies try to do it in a way that’s not salesy. Like we see a lot of SaaS companies that have, like an alternative to page. but all they do is essentially say, we are better than them. We do this, we do that, and it sounds really salesy.

And most of the times you go and check the other competitor and then you see that essentially the things that they said that. Those guys weren’t doing, they actually do. And so you’re like,so what’s the unique setting proposition here?

Laura: totally. I think that’s a huge problem a lot of, SaaS companies have. and that’s why it’s, I think it’s, content is even more important is because you have the ability to showcase all the cool things your product does. You just need a narrative around it. It doesn’t have to be sales the age.

It can be very natural and it can be very, Like people can read it and be excited about oh, I found a solution that I can try and do this now. but it’s just a matter of creating a story around it. and I think a lot of people have a hard time

doing that.

Alan: Yeah. yeah. Definitely agree. so back to repurposing. what would you say are, your favorite strategies to make sure that the content that you repurposed is fresh and relevant to the audience? Cause we all know that like things change very fast, especially now with ai. there’s going to be a lot of noise, a lot of content being published.

So how do you make sure that the content that you have repurposed stays,current for the audience?

Laura: Yeah. Yeah. This one’s hard because it does take a lot of, does take a lot of, I guess motivation to go back into articles that I don’t know about you, but I, if I really write an article, it’s like consuming me for like couple weeks, and then I’m done and I’m like, I don’t wanna deal with you at all.

I don’t wanna see you.

But, you do need to go back to it every couple of months. Like it’s just the way that, it’s the way the game is, right? and so typically what happens on my end is every, I would say, three months or so, I’m not sure if that’s like entirely a best practice, but for myself, going into just our like high performing content, And just making sure that it’s still all the, data’s up to date if there’s like a new quote that I can put in there.

Typically we do a lot of events and a lot of podcasts and sometimes I can pull quotes from those people and stick them into this old piece of content that I had. and then, the. another trick was just looking at, pages that have decreased a lot and just, focusing on those ones.

Like even just going into search console and seeing which ones are like ranked from four to 10 and seeing if there’s just opportunities there. but I probably do that process, like I’m always constantly updating posts. But, for, in terms of a timeline, I probably do it. Like I look at a post like once every three months or so.

Alan: And so do you do mostly on page changes? Do you like you add content, you add quotes and stuff like that? Or do you also do some more, proactive like promotion, like link building, guest posting to boost, those pages?

Laura: Yeah. I would say go up. Most of what I do is updating, like in. on page updates in terms of, link building, I definitely do that too as well. I always, reach out to people and always like continuously promote something that I think if it’s a good fit, obviously. but in terms of guest posting, I personally don’t do that.

I find it, it’s, it can be really, draining just for myself. I’m sure other people might have. Might think differently, but for our business it doesn’t really make too much sense to guest post too much. but yeah.

Alan: Yeah. So the outreach that you do for Link is something like, we just added this new quote to this article. Would you like to link to it because it makes sense for your page.

Laura: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. and then also a lot of our, a lot of our. Posts. I would say obviously 90, 90%, I would say, because they’re all repurposed. They’re in, we always put the byline of the author or, whoever it did it. for example, if it’s a, if it’s a video that they submitted for the summit, they’re gonna be the author for the article.

because it’s their ideas, it’s their, thoughts, everything like that. and so we, we do a lot of sharing links back to those authors, and they typically share it out and add it to their own

network too.

Alan: so there’s some built-in distribution

in there as well. That’s cool. And,so what would you say are, the most effective ways that you found, at least to be able to measure success of,repurposed content? are there any metrics that you look at specifically?

Laura: Yeah, I guess it just depends on what channel you’re doing. I definitely have different success me metrics for each channel. so definitely for example, our book page, I talked about like 192,000 page views. I also look at returning users for that page because I find that’s really.

Powerful tool as well. I really like looking at returning users, cuz I think that’s a good indication of people really resonating with your brand and your content. so I mean that in itself I think is a huge metric that I look at. Pageview is in returning users, in terms of YouTube, subscribers are always, that’s a no-brainer.

And same with, Same with podcast downloads, et cetera. So yeah, they’re pretty like, pretty normal. But I would say in terms of like on our website, returning users is like my main metric.

Alan: Okay. Yeah, so it really makes sense and the, it depends on the platform, the format actually of the content. but then it’s pretty straightforward,

essentially, right?

yeah. so you’re the director of content in product led. How do you work together with other teams inside the company to make sure that the marketing strategy is cohesive and effective?

Laura: Yeah, for sure. I’m really lucky because I have a small team. I’m not sure if how, how to do it on a big team, to be quite honest with you. But, yeah, it’s, I think for. Myself. and what I’ve learned, and especially the last six months since I’ve been practicing this is, every week I have a specific channel per day that I focus on.

So Tuesday is like my podcast day. Wednesday is my. YouTube day, Thursday’s my blog day, and that just keeps me focused on one channel per day. Monday is my team day, so Monday I make sure that, I have all of my team members are aligned with what their priorities are for the week. And I don’t have a huge team under me.

I probably have four or five people I deal with. and that’s in terms of just editing and, design work and,what other, I guess Word editing. I was thinking video editing in my head, but I also word editing too,and then obviously I have writers too, so yeah, I just make sure that they’re all aligned during the week, that they know what they’re working on.

and then like by the end of the week I can piece it all together and see what, what needs to be worked on next week. but I try my best not to. Try my best to keep it in one channel. Otherwise it can get very overwhelming, really fast. And then you can really feel like you’re not getting anything done in any channel because you’re like scattered everywhere.

Alan: yeah. I love this. So it’s themed, days, right? Like most people do the same thing, like they do, Tuesday for like sales and then they do Wednesday for SOPs or like a delegation and so on. So yeah, I definitely like this approach and it’s something that I think. People in smaller companies can effectively do because they don’t have a ton of people to deal with, like you said.

And it’s definitely something that’s doable and manageable. that’s really cool. All right, so we’re getting closer to the end. so one of my signature questions is if you could have

any eighties or nineties as well a movie character to promote your content, who would they be and why?

Laura: I feel like I resonate with you on this one so much, and it’s Marty McFly and I just love him. I think he is just a stellar character. and I’d like him to go on stage and just play a cool tune and everyone would listen to it. Maybe it’ll be something about content,

but Yeah.

Alan: Awesome. We got a couple of doc Browns, so this is the first time someone says

Marty, so

Laura: Oh

yeah. I also, I was thinking Ferris Bueller at some point too.

He’s pretty,

Alan: too.

Yeah.

Laura: like him to announce to the school about my content. That would be cool.

Alan: All right, cool. So any final, tips or thoughts that you’d like to leave the listeners with?

Laura: No, I think we’re pretty good. I think it’s been, I think the one thing with content repurposing in general is just, it’s just a process and it never ends like it. You could go around in circles with a piece of content,and still feel like there’s more to do with it. And so sometimes it’s just when your energy is gone from it, move on because that’s just, I feel like human nature is to need something new and so sometimes it can get like a little continuous and repetitive. So just make sure that you change it up and, yeah,

I think

Alan: Okay, awesome. And so where can people stay connected with you and with your content?

Laura: Yeah. So all my content is on product led. If you go and search there, and then, anyone can email me@lauraproductled.com. I’m pretty responsive there. I’m not a huge social media user, so I’m not a LinkedIn guru yet. but yeah, if you, I have also our newsletter, you’ll see actually a PLG thought for me every week in there.

So if you go to product.com, you can sign up for the newsletter. Right there. And, that’s where you can hear from me usually every week.

Alan: Awesome. That’s great. Thanks a lot, Laura. It’s been very nice to connect and to have you on the show. And yes, we’ll talk soon.

Laura: Thank you so much.