This is the key to a successful content marketing strategy. One of the best ways to be successful at content marketing is to repurpose your content. This means that you use the same content in different ways, for example by turning an article into a video or a podcast. This is a great way to get the most out of your content and to make sure that people keep coming back for more.
If you want to save time and get more exposure, leads, and conversions, then you should repurpose your content for social media, marketing, and sales.
This means that you can achieve better results with less content. Wouldn’t that be great?!
What does it mean to repurpose content, and how can this marketing strategy be used to grow a business? Content repurposing is taking old content and reusing it in a new way. This could be turning a blog post into a podcast episode or creating an infographic from a presentation. Doing this can help you reach a new audience or get more mileage out of content that performed well in the past.
What is content repurposing?
The process of taking old content and making it into new content.
You can turn a single idea into multiple pieces of content, and breathe new life into old content, by repurposing it. This will help you continue to get results from your content long term.
Basically, what Benjamin Hardy did was take his blog posts and post them on another site.
He started growing his platform on Medium without any idea about how to get subscribers and ended up with more than 20,000 in six months by simply reposting his blog content.
He realized he needed a better call to action and a more robust website after one of his articles went viral. His subscriber rate skyrocketed as soon as he made those two minor changes.
Top benefits of repurposing content
The biggest benefit of repurposing content is accelerated business growth. But generally repurposing content can provide:
- More audience engagement
- Exposure to new audiences
- More leads, which means more sales
You don’t have to produce new content every day to get these results. That way, you can focus on other opportunities for income, such as online courses or coaching programs.
When you do that, one important thing happens: your audience is able to consume content in the format they prefer. This strategy involves transforming existing content into new formats, such as text to video or video to audio, in order to make it more accessible to your audience.
This is important because not everyone learns in the same way. Some people prefer to watch videos, while others like reading articles, or looking at infographics. But if you use a mixture of all these methods, it will make your content more accessible to everyone.
If you want your audience to remember your brand, share the same information in multiple formats. Repetition is known to be one of the best ways to help people remember information, so this is a good strategy to use.
If you’ve been in business for a while, you likely have a backlog of content, including articles, graphics, and videos, that your followers have never seen. Updating, recycling, and republishing this content can help you easily maintain a full queue of content.
How to repurpose content
To begin repurposing content, you need a strategy and an easily managed workflow.
What’s your repurposing strategy?
Although it has many benefits, you shouldn’t try to recycle every piece of content you’ve ever made as it will take up more time and effort with little return.
That’s not a good way to do business.
Instead of looking for new content ideas, you should focus on finding ways to breathe new life into your best existing content.
Many businesses revise and reuse older content instead of creating new content because they want to see how well the original content can still perform.
Here are some tips for deciding which pieces of content are worth repurposing.
Evergreen content
Content that is evergreen remains relevant for months and even years. However, no content lasts forever.
You should not just share old content that is always relevant. You should update it by adding new methods or ideas, refreshing links and statistics, and removing outdated references to culture.
Once the information is updated, try thinking about other ways to present it. For example, it could be turned into a video, an infographic, a podcast episode, or a series of social media posts.
Popular Content
It is worth the effort to keep popular content fresh and relevant, as this will result in more traffic, comments, and conversions. Additionally, it is worth repurposing this content so that more people will see it.
You can use analytics to find out which of your posts are getting the most traffic, as well as to look for trends in your content.
If you’re noticing that your how-to posts are getting more traffic than your list-based posts, consider switching things up and writing more of the former, since your audience is clearly interested in that kind of content.
Outdated Content
If a topic is still relevant, updating the content can make it fresh again. Once it is current, it only takes a little extra effort to repurpose it for other uses.
If a piece of content is so outdated that it would require a complete overhaul to refresh it, it may be better to delete it so it doesn’t weigh down your brand.
How to repurpose your content
1. Convert a blog into a content upgrade
A content upgrade is a piece of additional, gated content that a visitor can access by signing up with their email address. This is a popular method of building a mailing list, and works in a similar way to other lead magnets such as ebooks and white paper downloads.
However, content upgrades are typically shorter and crafted for a specific blog post. Ideas include:
- PDF version of a blog post
- Cheat sheet
- Checklist
- List of resources
- Template
If you have a long tutorial or list of resources on your blog, you can use the same technique.
2. Repurpose a blog into multiple guest posts
Guest posting is a way to build backlinks, increase brand exposure, and put yourself in front of a new audience by writing articles for other people’s blogs.
Why not use an existing article on your blog as inspiration for your guest post? This way you can recycle content and come up with a new topic.
If you had a blog post with the title “The Complete Guide to Creating a Content Strategy,” it would probably include sections on deciding what kind of content to create, conducting a content audit, defining key performance indicators (KPIs), creating a content calendar, and promotion.
A good blog post could be divided into sections that could be further developed as guest posts on a blog. This would be a great way to get a backlink to the original article.
If you want to publish your content elsewhere, you need to make sure it is original enough. One way to do this is to change the format, such as turning a section titled “How to Create a Content Calendar” into a list post of tips, steps, or ideas for creating a content calendar.
If you’re unfamiliar with how to pitch guest posts successfully, these articles will help get you started:
- “Guest Blogging: The Definitive Guide (2018)” by Backlinko
- “Learn How to Write a Guest Blog or Use One on Your Site” by Lifewire
3. Convert a blog post or ebook into an email series/course
An alternative is to consider your blog entries as separate segments of a longer email series or course. Basically, you’d create a drip campaign that automatically delivers emails to these visitors over a set number of days after they signup with their email:
The first email will be sent right away, the second will be sent after two days, and so on. This drip campaign will send different emails to signups based on whether or not they opened the initial email.
This method can be used to repurpose content in a few different ways.
The best way to get people to read your blog posts is to send them signups to your drip campaign. You can include a summary of the post in the email, but the ultimate goal is to get them to click through to the full article.
You could create an email series where all of the content is delivered in the email itself. For example, the first email could be titled, “What is a Content Strategy & Why Do You Need One?” and the second email could be titled, “3 Tips for Deciding What Type of Content to Create.”
If you can’t find a long article to post on your blog, you can always create a round-up from multiple shorter posts. You can compile an email with tips, facts, quotes from experts, or statistics.
If you are new to creating drip campaigns, this guide will teach you the basics as well as what practices are considered to be the best.
4. Update past blog posts and repromote
Buffer took an extreme approach to this strategy in 2015. They decided to spend a month only updating and promoting old blog posts, without creating any new content.
In the past, Buffer focused on creating two to three new pieces of content per week. However, they recently changed their focus to repurposing old content. This experiment saw organic search traffic grow by more than 4%.
5. Turn blog headers, statistics, and quotes into Twitter posts
If you’ve written a blog post that you’re hoping to promote on social media, don’t just stop at sharing the title of the article. Create a whole series of different posts, using the headers, statistics, or quotes from throughout the article. This will give you more content to share, and help people to engage with your blog post in different ways.
This can also be done with quotes from an expert or headers from a blog post.
Tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, or MeetEdgar can help you schedule social media posts in advance. This can be helpful if you want to make sure your posts go out at regular intervals or if you want to plan ahead for a time when you won’t be able to post yourself.
6. Turn a webinar into a YouTube video or blog post
Webinars are events that are held online at a specific time that people can register for. They are usually live events.
What if webinar attendees are unable to attend the specified date?
Although someone may have missed the event or neglect to sign up, you can use the content for those who couldn’t attend.
Since the webinar is already a filmed event, it should be easy to pull a few short videos from the webinar itself. Maybe there was a specific tactic mentioned that you could turn into a 5-minute video posted on YouTube?
You could take screenshots of some of the scenes from the webinar or use presentation slides to create a blog post.
There are benefits to both live and pre-recorded webinars. You can follow up with those who couldn’t attend a live webinar and let them know what they missed. This can also be a good way to promote future webinars. Pre-recorded webinars allow you to offer a sample of the content to potential attendees.
7. Turn a blog post into a podcast (or vice versa)
In a consumer report published by Edison Research and Triton Digital, the two companies found that 40% of respondents had listened to a podcast and 24% listen to podcasts on a monthly basis. Meaning, an estimated 112 million people in the U.S. have ever listened to a podcast while 67 million listen monthly.
Without podcasts, you are alienating a large number of potential listeners.Luckily, they are not difficult to make. You can record a podcast by simply reading a blog post out loud.
8. Choose your best platforms and types of content
The success of your social media outreach largely depends on your audience and where they are active online. However, your own preferences and strengths are also important factors to consider.
You will generally be best at creating one type of content – be it text, video, or audio. Start with that, and then try to find a balance between the type of content you create and the type of content your audience prefers.
If they are active on TikTok and YouTube, you should focus on publishing videos. If they prefer podcasts or books, you should focus on audio or long-form text.
9. Optimize over time
You need to check your analytics to see what is working well. Notice which types of content and topics get the most attention and use that information to help you improve and finalize your strategy.
Make your workflow more efficient over time so you can get better results without putting in a lot of extra effort. Focus on what works and cut out what doesn’t!
If you’re looking for ways to get more out of your content, repurposing is a great option. You can use old content in new ways to reach new audiences, breathe new life into your work, and increase your ROI. Plus, repurposing can help you sell more products and services.
Related posts:
