Content marketing is an ongoing marketing strategy to promote your brand and engage your customers. However, content creation is usually a time-consuming affair. Thus, you might not always have the time to create new blog posts. That is why you should consider repurposing content to give your business more exposure.
When you repurpose content, you recycle or reuse all or some existing content elements to expand its reach. In other words, you typically transform old content into a new format, giving it new life. For example, creating a video out of old blog posts is content repurposing.
Why Repurpose Content?
One of the most incredible benefits of content repurposing is that it becomes much easier to scale. In a word, you don’t have to write every post or create every infographic from scratch. Instead, an existing content piece forms the basis of new video content, infographics, webinars, blog posts, or social media posts.
Another benefit is that when you repurpose content, you enhance the chances of getting it in front of an entirely new audience. Consequently, doing so drives more organic traffic to your site. While more traffic shouldn’t be the ultimate goal, it serves to get more paying customers for your products or services. Remember that you should have a strategy for converting traffic into new customers.
Guidelines to Repurpose Content
Choose the evergreen or most popular content to make the most out of your repurposing efforts. Evergreen content is high-quality content that remains relevant over a long time. On the other hand, popular posts resonate with your audience the most. Once you identify such content, consider the following:
Repurpose Content into a Large-Scale 10X Piece
10X content is the idea of creating information that is ten times better than the original content. To achieve that effect, you must focus on producing something truly outstanding. Firstly, invest in keyword research to gather hard data and metrics that prove that people will be interested in the content you repurpose.
Next, use the skyscraper technique, which entails:
- Reviewing the top ten search results for the keywords you identify
- Creating a spreadsheet of the vital information in each original post
- Taking note of the missing information
- Writing a long-form blog post that captures all the information a searcher would want to see about that topic. In short, the new content should be better-researched and more resourceful.
A simple Google search will help you find top-performing content to help you scope out your competition. Alternatively, you can use tools like BuzzSumo to find the top-shared content on social media, based on specific keywords.
The last step is to create an outline to determine what your post will cover. A draft prepares you to create your blog content or whatever type of content you want to make.
Optimize Your Post for Repurposing
Once your large-scale 10X post is complete, you can optimize it for repurposing. In this case, you’ll use pieces of your 10X post on other platforms or social channels like LinkedIn. Here are some ideas:
- Use the introduction of your blog post for a YouTube video description
- Convert parts of the blog post into a SlideShare deck for your digital signage content
- Repackage elements of the blog post into a content upgrade, for example, a downloadable PDF or infographic, list of resources, checklist, cheat sheet, or template
- Turn the blog post into a podcast, teleseminar, webinar, tutorials, or interview,
- Create a Pinterest board if your content is particularly visual
- Repurpose content into a Quora Q&A
- Convert blog headings into Twitter posts
- Make an eBook out of the blog post
- Use the content to make a guest post
- Republish content on different platforms
Repurpose Content Offline
Keep your offline audience in mind alongside the online one when you repurpose content. It’s important to realize that you can use the content on your online platforms to build more credibility offline. Consider repurposing content into:
- A printed book: Becoming an author lifts your brand image and gives you credibility. In fact, a printed book does that in a more powerful way than an eBook. As such, repurpose blog posts, email courses, or eBooks into a printed book.
- A contributory chapter to a book: You don’t have to write an entire book to get the benefit of repurposing content. On the contrary, a contributory chapter on a particular topic co-created with other authors allows you to claim authorship status. Content to repurpose this way includes an online course, whitepaper, guide, report, or blog post.
- Printed publication: You can repurpose content for printed publications, for example, offline newsletters or magazines.
- Live event: Create a workshop or weekend seminar from a book, online course, or series of blog posts.
Final Thoughts
You don’t always have to create new content from scratch for your content strategy. Repurposing content for digital marketing helps you save time and reach a wider audience. With this in mind, the above three tips are effective ways to repurpose content to get the most out of it.