Creating a range of high-quality, useful, entertaining, and informative content is now a crucial part of most companies’ marketing strategies. Content allows you to provide your audience with in-depth information on your offerings and how they can help in solving problems and meeting needs. Content also helps to engage your audience and create meaningful connections.
Understanding why and how to repurpose content is an important element of your content marketing strategy. Repurposing content increases the reach of each piece of content and reinforces your message.
Repurposing content also decreases your planning and creation time significantly. This frees up your time for other projects and helps to easily increase your content output.
Keep reading for all our tips for repurposing content to help increase your content marketing output and results.
Why Repurpose Content?
Repurposing content can provide many benefits and save you time by making content planning and creation easier.
The following are some of the main reasons why you should be repurposing content.
Reach New Audiences
Repurposing your content for additional platforms will help get it in front of many more people. Using a multi-channel approach means that no matter where your audience is searching, they can find your content.
Not repurposing content for multiple platforms is causing you to miss out on audiences that may be interested in your content and could convert to customers.
The message in a blog post, for example, may be received well by your audience on YouTube. But if they frequent your YouTube channel only instead of your blog or website, they’ll never see this content.
Repurposing content allows your message to be received by audiences on multiple platforms.
Reinforce Your Message
When you run advertisements, you’ll generally serve them to your audience multiple times to get your message across and create brand recognition.
This repetition is crucial in getting the desired response from your audience. A TV ad will be played multiple times or web display ads will be served to individual users three or four times or more.
A lot of companies, however, will create one piece of content and leave it in one place instead of serving it multiple times. Repurposing content fixes this.
By giving your audience the chance to see a piece of content and its message multiple times (for example, once in a newsletter, once on social media, and once in video) the message will be reinforced and your audience will be more likely to act on whatever you’re promoting.
Improve Visibility Organically
Creating one piece of content and repurposing it and promoting it on additional platforms increases your visibility organically.
Your piece of content and your brand are now being found in two or more places online as opposed to just in one place.
If you create ten new pieces of content a month, repurposing each for even just an additional two platforms increases your visibility drastically.
Help With SEO
Repurposing content that focuses on a certain keyword gives you more opportunities to rank for that keyword. Putting content in places other than your website (such as repurposing a blog into a YouTube video) allows you to get backlinks as well if you place a link to the original piece of content.
In addition, search engines put some emphasis on having multi-media website content. If you repurpose a blog post into a video and an infographic, for example, you can also add these to the blog post to create a post with three or four media elements instead of just one or two (text and images.)
Make sure that you’re using your chosen keyword in just one piece of content for each medium to avoid keyword cannibalization and duplicate content issues.
For example, you can use your keyword in a blog post, YouTube Video, and podcast. But don’t use it in multiple blog posts.
Make Content Creation Easier
Repurposing your content will decrease the time you spend planning and creating content. If you create unique content for all platforms, you need to spend time thinking about what you’ll make for each platform and then spend time creating that content from scratch.
Repurposing content means that a lot of that work is done. Sure, you’ll need to take time to film or animate a video when converting a blog post to video. But you have to do that no matter what. Repurposing content means that the video topic and the script, half the work, is already decided and created.
Repurposing content drastically decreases time needed for content planning and creation.
Do be sure to make slight adjustments for each platform you use and think about your audience on each platform. Think about if they’ll respond well to the content topic and message and how you can best repurpose the content to appeal to them.
Which Content Should Be Repurposed?
Start by repurposing content you’ve already created as opposed to creating new content with the intention of repurposing it. Look through all your content and select some pieces that are strong enough to be re-promoted.
The best content to repurpose is evergreen content and high-performing content. There should be overlap with your evergreen content and high-performing content.
Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is content that’s not timely or based on trends. It’s timeless content that will be relevant whether it’s being shared the day it’s published, a month from then, or a year from then.
Evergreen content also needs to be high-quality content. Your content strategy should focus a lot on evergreen content anyway and this content is also perfect for repurposing.
If you’re just starting out with content creation for your brand, focus on creating evergreen content first. Think of the main topics that relate to your business and create an informative and timeless piece of content around each topic.
These pieces of evergreen content will then become “pillar pages” from which you can create more evergreen content relating to subtopics.
For example, a travel company may create a pillar blog post on how to make traveling by plane easy. From that, they may create posts on how to pack a carry-on bag effectively, how to beat jet lag, how to make your economy seat feel like first class etc. These can then all be linked together and repurposed as well.
Top Performing Content
Next, take a look at the content you have that performs the best. As mentioned, evergreen content needs to be high quality and always relevant, so hopefully there will be cross-over with your evergreen content list and your high performing content list.
You may also find some content that isn’t evergreen but is very popular and is worth repurposing to promote in the short term until it’s no longer relevant.
To check your most popular website content, use Google Analytics. You can easily see which posts are getting the most traffic over a set period of time. See what performed best in the last month, last 6 months, and the last year.
You can also check content shared on social media, in newsletters, and on YouTube as well as on any other platform you use. Use metrics like reach or views, shares, comments, reactions, and click-through rate to find your best content that has potential to be repurposed.
Editing of Content
Now that you have your list of content to repurpose, take a look at each piece and see if it can be improved.
For example, could you add anything such as new information that’s come to light?
Do be careful not to overly edit these pieces of content. They’re performing well as is so you don’t want to change them so much that they stop being top performers.
How to Repurpose Content
Now that you have your list of different types of content to repurpose, how can this content be repurposed?
Try some of the following ways to repurpose your top content for multiple platforms:
1. Create Blog Posts
Having blog posts or articles on your website is a great way to boost your SEO strategy and increase search engine visibility. This helps in being found by prospective customers. Blog posts are also helpful in educating consumers and providing extra information about your offerings and their benefits.
Blog posts may be the main content type you have to repurpose. However, if you’re getting your original piece of content from elsewhere, such as wanting to repurpose a video, converting to a blog post is always a good idea.
If you’ve conducted interviews or hosted Q&As, the content from those is great for repurposing into a blog post too.
Make sure you include keywords and follow other SEO techniques to effectively repurpose content into a blog post or web article.
Are you looking to create more content for your brand? Learn why setting up a blog for your business is a great place to start.
2. Create Infographics
Infographics are great for sharing on social media as well as for adding to text content. They easily relay information and data from pieces of content.
Take the main points from a whole piece of content you’re trying to repurpose or the main points from one section of that content and simplify the information in an infographic.
You can then share that individually, for example on your Facebook page, along with a link to the original piece of content.
This will quickly and easily get your message across for the first time when your audience views the infographic alone. It should also encourage viewers to click through to the full piece of content. They’ll then gain more information and have the message reinforced.
As mentioned, you can also add infographics to another piece of content, such as a blog post.
3. Send Newsletters
You can repurpose content for use in email newsletters too. Many newsletters focus on sharing content, such as blog posts. This is a great way to promote your content but also consider making newsletters with more content within the copy.
For example, you can repurpose a piece of content into a Top Tips newsletter which highlights basic tips relating to your topic. You can then direct viewers to a more in-depth piece of content.
These tips may be the subheadings used in your original content. The viewer will get an overview of tips relating to the topic and can then learn more about how to implement these tips by viewing the original content.
4. Create an Ebook
A good piece of content can be turned into an Ebook too. You can expand on a current piece of content to turn it into a book. Split the content up into chapters and add in images and other media to help get the main points across. Alternatively, you can combine pieces of content to make your Ebook.
For example, you may have a blog pillar post with three cluster topic blog posts, as in the travel example listed above. You could combine all four pieces of content to make a more in-depth Ebook.
Or, if you do have pillar content and cluster topic content, make each piece of content into an individual book and use access to the next section as an incentivizer. Ebooks are great lead magnets. You can offer access in exchange for an email sign-up, for example.
5. Create Whitepapers
If you have content that’s based on research or includes a lot of data, you could create a whitepaper instead of an Ebook. This is a good option if you are in the B2B market or create content for industry professionals.
For example, if you run a blog on financial markets, repurposing information into whitepapers may be more appropriate than creating Ebooks. Like with Ebooks, access to whitepapers can be used as a lead magnet.
6. Create Case Studies
If you have testimonials, these make great case studies. Just ensure you have enough information on the customer’s problem, the solution you provided, and the results.
Case studies themselves are then easy to repurpose. You can take out quotes and condense them for use on lots of platforms and in other media and promotional materials.
7. Make Online Presentations
Content can also be repurposed into online presentations that you can share on platforms like SlideShare.
Creating a presentation makes information easier to digest and you can include graphics to help get your message across.
8. Create Videos
Video is a very popular form of content and a must-have in your content marketing promotions. Make video production easy by repurposing content you already have.
For example, if you have a well performing blog post, create a video covering that content. This can be as an animation or with a host explaining the content.
Be sure to include a link to the original content and a transcript of the video in the video description including keywords from the content to help with SEO.
If you don’t already make video for your brand, we highly recommend you start! Our video marketing guides are the perfect place to start learning about video marketing and its benefits.
9. Create Podcasts
Podcasts are another popular form of content at the moment. Like with video, you can convert high performing content into podcasts. This is quite an easy way to repurpose your content.
It can be done by live voice recording or you can use software that converts a given piece of content into audio. You can also separate the audio from videos you create and upload that as a podcast as long as this audio is not dependent on any images, graphics, or demonstrations included in the video.
You can then insert these audio links into corresponding blog posts as an extra piece of media. You can also upload them to podcast hosting websites and share links on social media.
10. Host A Webinar
Webinars are a great way to get information across to your audience. They also work well as lead magnets, especially to get sign-ups to your email list.
Like with Ebooks, the content needs to be a little more in-depth. Again, you could take a pillar post and related topics and combine into one intensive webinar on the topic. Or, split them up into a webinar series, with a webinar on a subtopic each week until completion.
11. Make Quizzes
You can repurpose content into quizzes or make quizzes related to a topic you have other content on. These can be in the form of quizzes with questions, such as repurposing a blog on SEO into a ten question quiz with questions whose answers are found in your original content.
Alternatively, create a more personality based quiz. For example, a clothing website may do a quiz on favorite summer activities. Each result could then link to content on how to build an outfit for that activity.
12. Create Checklists
Some content can be repurposed into a checklist. These are great to share on social media or in newsletters. They also make good lead magnets! Again, include a link to a more in-depth piece of content for those that want more information on the topic.
Both of the examples used in this post could be turned into checklists. In the SEO example, you could create a checklist with what needs to be done for technical, on-page, and off-page SEO.
In the travel example, you could make a checklist on what to do before, during, and after a flight to make it less stressful.
Are you looking to create more content for your brand? Learn why setting up a blog for your business is a great place to start.
Editing Under-Performing Articles with Potential
You may find that you have content already that isn’t performing well but has potential.
For example, you may have a piece of content that is related to a keyword that you think you can rank well for. But the content may be outdated, lacking information, and/or not following on SEO guidelines.
Therefore, it could be worth refreshing the content. This can be done by expanding on the information and making the article SEO friendly by adding your keyword multiple times in the copy and title, and using subheadings and images with alt text, among other things.
If you have to drastically edit the content, it may be best to unpublish the original piece and completely recreate it. Before you do this, run the URL through Google Search Console to make sure the content isn’t getting a lot of traffic. It’s unlikely but is possible.
Unpublishing or deleting a piece of content that brings decent traffic can damage your marketing efforts and it’s better for you to edit the existing content. Look at the traffic sources too. If traffic is coming from other domains, be wary of the backlinks you’ll be losing.
Make sure you set up a 301 redirect too from the old piece of content to the new one.
In Conclusion
If you’re creating any type of content for your brand (which you definitely should be) then repurposing that content is a must!
Repurposing content allows your message to be seen by more of your audience and allows it to be consumed in multiple ways. This makes it more likely that the message will be remembered and prospects will act on your call-to-actions.
Repurposing content also drastically reduces the time you need to spend on content planning and creation, allowing you to focus on other marketing projects.
If you would like some more advice on content planning, creation, and repurposing, get in touch with us at Brand Hause! We can help with your content marketing strategy planning, content creation, and other related efforts such as SEO and social media marketing.
Set up your free content marketing consultation today!
Is it time to revitalize your existing content? Brand Hause can help repurpose your content to boost your organic traffic and visibility, adding both value and relevance to your ongoing marketing initiatives.
