Follow these tips for repurposing content to give new life to old pieces and reach a larger audience. Here are the best practices and benefits to know.
Having the right content that will attract the type of customers you want has long been established as a best practice online. This content can be anything from an article, blog post, landing page, or any other type of content. Traditionally, online content has been written content. If you've had a website for your business for any length of time, you are aware of how much written content you have.
However, like any type of marketing, the content that attracts new business to your website or brick-and-mortar store is changing. Users have more types of content to experience, like image content, video content, audio content, and AI-driven content.
All of these content formats have fans, which is not surprising as people learn in different ways. Each type of content is useful for different situations, such as listening to a podcast while driving or watching a video at a staff meeting.
But that doesn't detract from the value of your written content. And that's because customers still ask the same questions and want to learn more about your products or services before they buy. They need product knowledge and answers to frequently asked questions after they buy.
This supports the old adage that content is king. What has changed is how the content is distributed.
This situation makes repurposing your existing content a key factor in finding and retaining your customer base. You can take your company's blog posts and use them as the basis for new videos, podcast episodes, or social media content. So, what is content repurposing, and how can you use it to enhance your marketing strategy?
Content repurposing, also known as content recycling, is taking your old, traditional content and using it as a starting place for content in new formats.
Typically, when you repurpose content, you're using evergreen content that will stay relevant for a long time, meaning you can use it over and over again. However, that doesn't mean just copying your content from one format to another. In other words, it's not enough to read your blog content out loud to offer audio content.
Instead, you repurpose content by taking the original content and looking for fresh ways to present the concepts using YouTube video, audio, or social media to offer the product knowledge to your customers. When you do repurpose your content for new formats, you most likely will have to revise, edit, or add to the blog content to create high-quality content that offers true value.
For new customers, this information is brand new, but existing customers have already seen the content in one format. Instead, repurposed content is another way to engage them and refresh the content in their minds. And all of this is optimized to appear at the top of search engines' results pages (SERPs) for your keywords.
Benefits of content repurposing
Creating valuable content is essential for engaging audiences and driving business success. However, generating fresh content can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
Content repurposing maximizes the return on investment (ROI) of your existing content while extending your reach across various platforms so you can reach new audiences and reinforce your brand messaging.
The benefits of content repurposing include the following:
Maximizing content ROI
Content repurposing allows businesses to maximize their return on investment by leveraging existing content in multiple ways.
Rather than creating new content from scratch, repurposing lets you extract additional value from existing assets like old blog posts, optimizing resources and enhancing efficiency.
Expanding reach across different platforms
By repurposing content into various formats, such as blog posts, long-form videos, infographics, other visual content, and podcasts, businesses can reach a broader audience across different platforms.
This approach enables organizations to cater to diverse audience preferences and consumption habits, increasing visibility and engagement across multiple channels.
Improving SEO with diversified content
Diversifying content formats through content repurposing appeals to different audience segments and enhances search engine optimization. Search engines favor websites with a range of content types, leading to improved visibility and ranking in search results.
By repurposing an original post into various formats and distributing it across different platforms, businesses can attract more organic traffic.
Enhancing brand consistency and messaging
Consistency helps you build a strong brand identity. Content repurposing allows businesses to reinforce their brand message and maintain consistency across channels and touchpoints.
By repurposing existing content while maintaining brand voice, tone, and visual elements, organizations can ensure that their messaging remains cohesive and resonates with their target audience.
Saving time and resources in content creation
Creating original content from scratch can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. Content repurposing, which involves repackaging existing content in different formats, offers a cost-effective solution.
This approach saves time and resources while allowing organizations to extend the lifespan of their content, maximizing its value and impact over time.
When you get started, the best content to repurpose is your top-performing content. Why should you start there? It's highly likely that high-performing content in written form will translate into high-performing content in other formats. It's not guaranteed, but a good place to start.
To find your best-performing content, look at your metrics. Usually, the best-performing content is evergreen content. But, that is not a hard and fast rule. Your best-performing content may be seasonal.
To determine which content is already performing well, you can use website tracking tools like Google Analytics. Look at metrics like time on page, engagement, and bounce rate to determine which types of content are the most effective.
Understand your target audience
Don't assume that your target audience is exactly the same for each format when you are repurposing content. People learn better in different ways, and younger audiences are more used to newer formats. The range of demographics for each type of format overlaps, but is distinctly different.
To find your best-performing content, look at your blog's analytics. Search for posts that rank for shares, linking structure, organic visibility, and other performance statistics.
Other ways to find content to repurpose are:
- Read your recent reviews.
- Research competitors' content.
- See which content gets more user engagement.
- Repurpose all of your new content.
Find more ways to find your target audience here.
Repurposing content tips
Not sure what to do now that you've decided which content to repurpose? Here are some tips to help you get started creating quality content.
Create new formats
Repurposing content works very well when you create new formats. Suggestions of formats include:
- Social media posts
- Videos
- Infographics
- Slide show/presentations
- FAQ
- Podcasts
- Case studies
- Whitepapers
- Landing pages
- Testimonials
- Online courses
Update old content with new information
Your content is most useful to users if it is up-to-date. Consistently updating your existing content makes it more valuable to customers.
The easiest way to update content is to add new information that's relevant to the topic. This could be information that has been discovered after the initial publish date, or it could be expanding your coverage on the topic to be more in-depth. When repurposing old content, it's best to update the older content.
Turn long-form content into shorter pieces
Long-form blog posts aren't always read by website visitors. People often scan longer content. One way to get more interest in long-form content is to cut it into shorter pieces. This works well with posting content on social media platforms, video sites, or on slide shows.
Create a series of related content
Find or create related content and present it in a series. Think of it like chapters in a book, or a series of videos, or a group of podcasts. Shorter content is better for keeping the audience's attention. By linking the series together, your traffic will flow from one post to the next.
It's easy to picture turning blog posts into social media posts, but what about vice versa? If you have social media posts that get a lot of attention, why not turn them into new types of blog posts. Linking from your social media posts to your blog posts will drive traffic to your blog.
Collaborate with others to create new content
The easiest example of collaboration is an interview. Invite experts to offer their experience to add depth to your content. You can interview them on videos or podcasts on topics that you have blogged about, or you can create new content in conjunction with others.
This format works well with podcasts because you can listen to more than one voice, but you can collaborate with others to create most types of content, from FAQs to demonstration videos.
Whether you create video content or a podcast episode, repurposing content can maximize its impact across different platforms and formats.
Here are some essential tools that can help streamline the content creation process.
Content management systems (CMS)
If you're not already using a CMS as part of your content marketing strategy, now might be the time to find one.
Content management software provides a centralized hub for managing and repurposing content. These systems offer features that allow users to create, edit, and publish content in various formats, making it easier to reach a wider audience.
Social media scheduling tools
Social media scheduling tools simplify the process of repurposing content for social media. They enable users to schedule and publish posts across multiple platforms from a single dashboard, ensuring consistent engagement with the audience.
Design software for creating visuals
Design software is invaluable for creating visual content like infographics. These tools offer templates and editing features that make it easy to repurpose content into eye-catching visuals for social media posts, presentations, and even traditional marketing materials.
Audio and video editing tools
Audio and video editing tools allow you to repurpose content into audio and video formats. With these tools, you can edit and enhance content to create engaging podcasts, videos, and clips for sharing on various platforms.
Analytics platforms for tracking performance
Analytics platforms like Google Analytics and Mailchimp provide insights into the performance of repurposed content.
Whether it's a LinkedIn post, video on your website, or infographic sent to subscribers as an email, you can track metrics to measure the effectiveness of your content repurposing efforts and make informed decisions that lead to content marketing success.
Distribute and promote your repurposed content
Repurposed content is still content, and while you will get traffic from SEO, you also need to get it out there and promote it. Most businesses commonly create social media posts for every blog post, but you can promote podcasts on videos, videos on social media, and blog posts on podcasts.
Not every type of promotion is online. You can also promote content to customers you meet or talk to in person. This article on promoting blog posts can give you more ideas.
Remain consistent when you repurpose your existing content. Consistency is the best way to retain your audience. Podcasts that come out every Friday can become a habit for your audience to listen to.
The same is true of videos, blog posts, and any content with multiple posts. This concept is used for television shows, streaming content, and new book distribution. Think of how avid fans of a TV show wait for each new episode. This concept of a distribution schedule is a great way to whet your audience's anticipation.
Social media marketing is a tried-and-true method of spreading the word when it comes to anything new. Find the social media sites that are popular with your target audience. Then repurpose your blog content by creating social media posts for your followers. You can increase your reach with relevant ads on social media.
Mailchimp has several services that can help you get the word out. Mailchimp is well-known for its email marketing service, but Mailchimp has other services, such as ecommerce and retail marketing, mobile apps, and websites
All of these tools and services can help you create and spread the word about your products and services. Starting with email marketing, you have a lot of options in how to both repurpose your content and promote the same content. Use the expertise that Mailchimp can offer to reach out to your target audience, so they can learn what your business can do for them.
When you repurpose your old content, you are offering valuable information for customers that they can choose to read, listen to, watch on video, or another method that they like the best. This gives the customer the opportunity to choose how they want to engage with your business and makes it much more likely that they enjoy engaging with it.