How and Why Should You Repurpose Content?
In the ever-evolving digital landscape, creating fresh and engaging content consistently can be a daunting task. However, what if there was a way to maximize the value of your existing content and breathe new life into it? Enter content repurposing, a strategy that allows you to take your existing content and transform it into new formats, giving it a wider reach and extended lifespan. In this blog post, we’ll explore the hows and whys of content repurposing and uncover the benefits it offers for your brand or business.
Repurposing content involves taking a piece of content, such as a blog post, article, or video, and adapting it into different formats or mediums. For instance, you can transform a blog post into an infographic, a podcast episode, a social media series, or even an e-book. By repurposing your content, you not only save time and effort on creating entirely new material but also open up opportunities to engage with different audiences who prefer consuming content in various formats.
The benefits of content repurposing are numerous. Firstly, repurposing allows you to reach a broader audience. While some people may enjoy reading blog posts, others may prefer visual content or audio formats. By repurposing your content, you can cater to different learning styles and preferences, increasing the chances of attracting and engaging a wider range of individuals. Additionally, repurposing enables you to extend the lifespan of your content. Rather than creating something once and letting it fade into obscurity, you can breathe new life into it by repackaging it in different ways, making it relevant and valuable for an extended period.
One of the biggest benefits of repurposing your content is that can enhance your reach and extend the lifespan of your content. Search engines like Google appreciate fresh content, but that doesn’t mean you have to create something entirely new every time. By repurposing your content and presenting it in different formats, you increase the chances of gaining more backlinks, social shares, and user engagement, which are all factors that contribute to a higher search engine ranking. So, if you’re looking for ways to boost your SEO efforts, content repurposing is a powerful strategy to consider.
By repurposing you can unlock its full potential, reaching a wider audience, extending its lifespan, and boosting your SEO. In the following sections, we’ll dive deeper into the practical aspects of content repurposing, explore effective strategies, and provide tips to help you get started on repurposing your own content for maximum impact.
What Other Benefits Are There To Repurposing Content?
As well as being a great time saver, there are other ways that content repurposing can benefit you.
Breathe New Life Into Content
If you have a piece of content that hasn’t done as well as you would have liked, then you can help breathe new life into it & get it out there again. Sometimes we schedule content at the wrong time, use the wrong hashtags or simply put out content that doesn’t reach the audience we would like. By repurposing content we can give it a fresh look and get it back out there again. Take a look at which parts your audience did respond to, or consider who your audience are and why it didn’t reach them. You can then use a different approach to the article & help it reach a better, wider audience.
Get Seen By Search Engines
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a great reason to create quality, targeted content. You can give your website a boost by having several articles around the same topic so that Google sees you as a valuable resource and boosts your page rankings. It is also worth considering off-page SEO and how having content out there on other websites pointing to yours is worthwhile. SEO and relevant keywords often change too, so if you have a piece of content that isn’t quite hitting the market SEO wise, you can repurpose this into something that does tick all of the current SEO keyword boxes.
Reiterate Your Voice To Your Customers
Customers don’t often read something once and trust it/decide to dive straight in. By reinforcing your message and ensuring that you have lots of well written, relevant content about a particular topic you are showing potential customers that you know what you’re talking about and are a resource to be trusted, which makes them much more likely to go ahead and buy from you.
Is It OK To Repurpose Content?
Repurposing blog content on your own website is not only acceptable but also highly recommended and is generally seen as a smart and strategic move for several reasons. Repurposing content allows you to maximize the value of your existing blog posts by leveraging their core ideas and messages. By presenting the same information in different formats or mediums, such as videos, infographics, or podcasts, you can reach a wider audience and cater to various learning preferences. This not only increases engagement but also extends the lifespan of your content, ensuring that it continues to provide value over time.
How and Why Should You Repurpose Content?
We know that there are many reasons why you should repurpose content, but how can you do it so that it isn’t just the same version of content be posted multiple times; which actually does damage to your SEO and is not recommended at all. But, what is the best way to repurpose content?
Create New Blogs
This is probably the easiest way to reuse content because there are so many different types of blog posts that you can create. For example, if you have a ‘top 10’ style blog post that is mostly made up of a list, you can give this a fresh look for a post by using paragraphs rather than using a numbered approach. If it is valuable information for your customers you can also use the same topic to create a newsletter or social media post.
Posts That You Can Share
In a similar way to blog posts, you can create posts that can be shared and posted elsewhere. Spend some time researching a topic in full and then considering where you can post this and what audience each post is likely to reach. As an example, if you’re writing about the best ways to save money you could write:
- 5 Ways To Save Money
- Our Tips For Spending Less Money This Month
- How To Can Save Money Without Even Trying
- Are You Spending Too Much? Here’s Where You’re Going Wrong
- Have More Money Left At The End of The Month With These Lifehacks
As the research behind all of these will be the same, you get to repurpose all of the information you have found into 5 posts, all of which can be posted in different places – great for building your brand and SEO, as well as ensuring your own website is packed full of well-written contact that your audience will appreciate.
Change The Content
When we think about content creation it is written content that usually comes to mind first. However, when it comes to repurposing content you can mix it up a bit. For example, you could turn the information you have within a blog post into an informative YouTube Video or take some snippets from a page on your website to create some picture-heavy social media posts. There are lots of options – designing an infographic, using a post to write something on Instagram and even sharing bits of information on Twitter. You already have the information there, research and written down so repurposing it to be used in a completely different way shouldn’t be too time-consuming.
Break Down Your Content
You may have an awesome 4,000-word blog post that you know hits the mark. Not everyone is going to want to consume content of that length though. You can look at these longer pieces of content and find a way to break them down. This can lead to you drip feeding smaller pieces of content through the likes of social media posts. With content being more easily digested, the chances are that you will grow your audience.
The Importance Of Content Repurposing
There is definitely going to be content you have created that has missed the mark or not aged well, after all, things are changing all the time. When you have put time and effort into creating something it is a shame for it not to be seen by the right audience. By giving your content a fresh look, you can ensure it is up to date and tailored towards the right audience. Repurposing content rather than creating something from scratch is much less time consuming, so you can take more time on other tasks.
Repurposing content also gives you a chance to mix up what you are putting out there, which is a great way to keep your audience interested. Rather than just written blog posts, you can switch this around, monitor analytics to see what goes down well & make sure that all of the content you put out there is working as effectively as possible for you.
Planning From The Start
You can now see the benefits that repurposing content can bring so we have no doubt that you’re going to be wanting to do this going forward. That being the case it is worth having a plan going forward with all of your content. Any content that you produce from now on should be done with repurposing in mind. So, how do you do that? There are four steps to follow:
The Brainstorming Phase
You’ll no doubt be familiar with brainstorming and how this works, but you may not have thought of applying this to repurposing content. When you are looking at content that you are going to create it is at this point that you should be thinking of how repurposing will work. You need to be finding an idea that multiple pieces of content can be based on. It needs to be a topic that will work across numerous content types.
Moving Beyond A General Topic
So, you have identified your topic and you’re happy that it is one that can be used in numerous formats. The next stage is to think about how that topic can be worked with and what formats it can be used in. The content may originally start life as a blog post, but at this stage, you are already considering how it will come across as a podcast, an infographic, or even an ebook.
Start The Research
Now you know your content topic and you know that it can be used in a variety of ways you now need to start researching. You should approach your research knowing which format your content is first going to take. It is this piece of content that will take the most work. The hardest work is then all done and repurposing the content is much quicker.
It’s Time To Repurpose
With your original content ready to go, now is the time to produce the follow-up content. You’ll soon find that the research that you have already done will go a long way to producing a whole host of new works. The hard work has been done and you can reap the benefits over and over.
The Two Golden Rules With Repurposing Content
Repurposing content takes work, but it certainly isn’t overly difficult. That’s not to say that it can’t go wrong though. There are two golden rules when it comes to repurposing:
- Only look at evergreen content
- Don’t repurpose rubbish!
Let’s have a look at these in turn:
Evergreen Only
Your site may well contain a mix of evergreen and seasonal content. That’s a great thing in itself but don’t set plans to repurpose your seasonal part. With your evergreen content, you know that it is always going to be relevant. If it takes you a short time to produce an infographic, social media posts, or a video then that’s all good.
With seasonal content, this isn’t the case. You may produce content looking at how great the latest iOS update is. By the time it comes around to repurposing this content it is already out of date as the lovely folks at Apple have issued yet another update.
Don’t Try And Repurpose Rubbish
When you repurpose your content, you are taking the opportunity to grow the audience that sees it. New formats and new platforms mean that your exposure is going to increase. If your original content is poor, or only mediocre, this is not going to reflect well on your brand. Any content that you are going to look at repurposing should be:
Substantial
You are looking at written content that is between 1,500 and 3,000 words. That’s not just because Google loves longer pieces. It is also because you’re going to have so much to say about your topic that it would never work when condensed to a 500-word article.
Relevant
Your content obviously has to be relevant to your industry, but beyond this, you want to be checking that you have hit the keywords that matter. No matter how you present your content, and no matter how you repurpose it, you need to make sure that it is going to rank.
The best of the best
There is going to be content out there that covers the topics that you are too. That’s okay, but why are people going to choose to consume yours over anyone else’s? You need to make sure that your content is the best out there. It has to give the best value and information possible. This is the type of content that is worth repurposing.
A service like ours can see you starting on the best possible footing. You are assured content that shines and is the best in your sector, with in-depth research and a tone that matches your company brand. Get in touch today and let us create the perfect content for you that is primed and ready to be repurposed.