Repurposing content is one of those content marketing strategies that many of us know about but don’t do all that often (if at all!). Any marketer who has struggled to develop new and exciting content, fear not. Repurposing content is a great way to still attract, engage and delight!
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What is content repurposing?
Content repurposing is all about recycling your existing content. That does not mean simply copying and pasting your existing content because that creates duplicate content and plagiarism issues. Instead, repurposing content is all about taking what you already have and putting a new spin on it.
Repurposing content provides a great alternative to churning out new content all the time, especially if you’re struggling to come up with new ideas. Instead, many marketers will have a library of content they can repurpose, whether it be blog posts, images, videos, you name it!
Repurposing content is all about expanding your reach. There are lots of different content formats you can benefit from when repurposing content, including:
- Blog posts
- Infographics and images
- eBooks and guides
- Videos
- White papers
- Social media content
- Audio and podcasts
What are the benefits of repurposing content?
When done right, content repurposing can provide you with lots of great benefits:
- Saves both time and money
- A great alternative for those suffering from content ideas or writer’s block
- Helps reinforce your message
- Reach new audiences
- Span your content across the buyer’s journey
- Can be beneficial for your SEO strategy
- Helps build and encourages social engagement, especially for sharable content
How do you choose content to repurpose?
If you have a vast library of content already, it can be difficult to pick which content to repurpose. Deciding which content to repurpose takes more than eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Instead, you should be looking at how well each content item is performing with your audience.
Content performance
Content that is performing well or has historically performed well is a good choice. Choosing content that is working well shows it is highly relevant to your audience. Repurposing top-performing content will help you to extend and grow your appeal to new audiences.
The thing to remember with repurposing content, however, is that it is not just about bringing an old piece of content up to date. It means transforming your content entirely to a new medium. For example, a lengthy blog post may work well condensed into a video or infographic.
Alternatively, if you have a piece of content that hasn’t performed well, this could also be a worthwhile choice. Some may be tempted to stay clear of content that hasn’t performed well, but don’t dismiss it just yet.
There could many reasons why a piece of content has underperformed, such as choosing the wrong content type of sharing at the wrong time. Repurposing content that hasn’t fared too well with your audience before can help bring a new spark of life to something that is forgotten.
Evergreen
Evergreen content is content you create that has a long life and continues to stay relevant over a long period. While the relevancy of some topics may fade away, evergreen topics (and content) will not.
Evergreen content is a great choice for repurposing content because of its long life and relevancy. Nobody will be interested in company news from months and years ago that has no relevance anymore. Evergreen content will still bring value to your audience, even years after you created it.
You should consider choosing evergreen content for repurposing. Anything that is time-bound will not be a great choice for repurposing content. Time-bound content, such as company announcements, will be yesterday’s news.
Relevance
Sometimes, topics can come in and out of relevance for many reasons. When a topic is hot and trending, it seems only right you would create content around it. But when the topic falls out of favour, you are left with content that won’t be valued anymore.
That is until a topic comes back into relevance. In the event a topic does become trendy again, you can go back to your old content and make use of it again. You won’t need to spend valuable time recreating a whole new piece of content again from scratch.
It may also be worth carrying out some keyword research to see which are currently gaining a lot of search queries, including long-tail keywords. If you already have content optimised for trending and popular keywords, it may be a good idea to repurpose it.
How can I repurpose content?
The great thing about content marketing is that it spans many different content types. From a blog post or social media post to visual images and online videos or podcasts. There are lots of creative ways you can find to repurpose your existing content. Let’s take a look at some:
Start by collecting and organising data
The first thing you should always do when looking to repurpose content is to collect and organise data on how well your content is performing. From your analytics, you’ll be able to see how well your content is performing.
- Google Analytics will allow you to see how well your landing pages are performing and the amount of traffic a page is gathering. You can also use Google Search Console to see how well your target keywords are ranking too.
- YouTube analytics will allow you to see the number of views your videos are gaining.
- Any SEO tool to see how well your pages and content is ranking in the search engines.
- Social media analytics to see how well your followers are engaging with your content, including likes, shares, and comments.
Then, you can group your content into categories which will make it easier for you to decide which piece you will repurpose. Categorising based on well-performing, poor-performing and potential for improvement.
Once you’ve determined which content you want to repurpose, it’s time to decide how to repurpose it. Here are some great ways to repurpose your content:
Creating videos from your written content
Videos are one of the most effective forms of content marketing. While short-form videos (typically less than 60 seconds) are the king of content at the moment, long-form videos can work just as well. Videos are most appealing and engaging to those who want to learn, discover, and shop.
Any written content, including tutorials, how-to’s, and lists make great topics for a video. And even if you don’t have a YouTube account, you can embed videos into your blog to increase the time a visitor spends on your site.
Start a podcast from a blog post
Podcasts are a great piece of audio content that allows your audience to listen while on the go. If you cover a lot about a topic on your blog, you may want to consider transforming some of that content into podcast episodes.
What’s more, you can get a guest to come on your podcast to provide more depth of discussion or a different view. Consider trying to get an industry expert or an influencer. It will also help extend the reach of the podcast to new audiences too.
Turning a blog post into an infographic
Infographics are a great sharable piece of content that helps get across information and data in a visual. If a blog post is data heavy or includes a lot of points on a subject, it may be worth transferring that content into an infographic that you can share with your followers on social media.
Write a new blog post from an eBook
eBooks are a great way of developing content that can be downloaded and provide much more in-depth content. eBooks are traditionally much longer than a blog post and is presented much more visually. However, you can take parts of an eBook and transform it into a new blog post.
Consider using key takeaways or transforming a section of your eBook into a blog post. You could even use the blog post you create from your eBook for guest blogs to provide the extra benefit of a backlink to your site.
Creating social media content from gated content
I’m sure we all have a landing page with gated content that isn’t performing as well as we’d like. While it could be a problem with the landing page, it could also be your content offer isn’t striking with your audience. In that case, you may want to take an interesting fact or statistic and use that for a social media post.
Make a written guide into a visual guide
People learn better with visuals. If you have a lengthy guide on your blog, it may be worth taking that guide and creating a visual guide instead. You’ll be able to walk people through the steps and processes required, making it easier to follow too.
Break a blog post into social media posts
Blogs can be very detailed and contain a lot of information. When a blog goes in-depth about a topic, it can cover a lot of ground. Sometimes though, it may be worth breaking down the contents of a blog and creating social media posts to highlight key points.
Re-share the same social media content
This one may seem a little strange to be re-sharing the same social media content. But re-sharing social media content further down the line can be a great way to recapture those who may have initially missed your post as well as sharing it with any new followers you’ve gained.
Uploading a webinar to a video-sharing platform
While other forms of content marketing appear to get smaller, webinars are one of the few content types with the opposite effect. On average, a webinar now lasts for around an hour making it a great way for hosting presentations or conferences.
If you’re business hosts webinars or live-streaming events, consider uploading them to a video-sharing site such as YouTube. As webinars can be held at any time and from anywhere, not all of your followers will have the luxury to watch the event in real time.
Transform a whitepaper into an infographic
Whitepapers can be a great content marketing tool for enticing and persuading potential customers nearing the end of the buyer’s journey. As most of your whitepaper will be supported by research and statistics, you’ll have a goldmine of content for use in an infographic.
You can take the most important statistics and transform them into an infographic. Think of all the charts and graphs that you can use to create a visual hive of information that will take a lot less time to digest.
Use statistics and research findings for social media posts
Have you recently conducted research and published your findings in a report? Most likely, the research you will have obtained will be made available in a gated content offer. While that may be great for generating leads, the average Joe Bloggs may miss it.
That’s why you should consider taking key statistics or findings and sharing them on social media. Sharing a statistic on social media can help you gain much more leverage. Short tweets or well-designed visual component helps increase shareability and boosts your reach.
Content marketing plays a crucial role in helping to answer your audience’s questions and provide value. However, you don’t need to continue developing new content all the time to do that. Making use of your existing content and repurposing will help provide new and fresh ways to continue attracting and delighting your customers. Why wait? See which piece of content you can start repurposing now!
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