7 ways to repurpose content
What does it mean to repurpose content, and what are some of the best examples of content repurposing? Let’s dive in.
The “write less, promote more” concept isn’t a new one. In the current content climate, just publishing your content creations isn’t enough. You’ll need to get out of your cocoon and get your great content in front of your target audience.
One effective way of getting more eyeballs on your content marketing output is to repurpose content on other platforms, such as social media sites and various marketing publications.
Content repurposing also known as ‘content recycling’ is the practice of taking existing content and adapting it into different formats or repackaging it to reach a new audience (for example you can turn a blog article into an informative carousel)
If you’re working in small marketing team, creating entirely new content from scratch requires a lot of hard work. From brainstorming, researching, writing, formatting to designing and posting is not easy — especially if you’re managing several brands. Been there, done that, here are some of the things I have learnt about content repurposing.
Why is content repurposing important?
The #1 benefit of content repurposing is the fact that it makes content MUCH easier to scale. In other words, you can put an end to the continuous process of having to write every post, design, and shoot every content piece from scratch.
The question is, how do you actually start to repurpose your content? Let’s cover that next.
Best practises for repurposing content
01. Find evergreen content
I have said this before. There are way too many websites with 100s of blog articles sitting in idle that get 0 traffic, and creators are still aiming to finish their backlog tasks by writing 10+ new articles per month.
The first step to find content on your site that’s worth repurposing. And what exactly do I mean by evergreen content? These are content that’s designed to be relevant and beneficial for the audience over the long haul.
This is what an article with a short shelf-life looks like:
But unlike most content, this is what evergreen content would look like, welcoming traction throughout years:
For example, let’s say you publish a new post about a new Google update that Google just announced.
However, by the time you consider to make that post into another format, it’s stale news.
On the other hand, if you published an evergreen post (like Best practices to follow when dealing with Google content updates), you will have plenty of opportunities to repurpose the post multiple times, in multiple ways!
How to find content that’s worth repurposing?
- Google Analytics
Go to your “landing pages” report (Go to engagement → Landing page)
This report shows you the pages that brings in most traffic, meaning people are loving the content that you put out here. And there are so many other people who may have not yet discovered this content and might like checking this out.
- Youtube analytics
This is the same with Youtube Analytics as well. Go to Youtube Studio and find out the best performing content and aim to turn them into podcasts, shorter reels or blog posters.
02. Update your old content before repurposing
Go through your articles to see if any update is required for any of the blogs written. Taking the same example as previously, if you have written a blog post about “best practices to deal with Google updates” in the year 2017 — some pointers may not be relevant in 2023. So make sure to add/remove any information according to the current context before repurposing.
For example, what you see above is a snippet from my article “a definitive guide to content marketing” but I had to make sure to update about a few tools before I went ahead to make a carousel out of this article for LinkedIn.
03. Split your content into pieces
You can also repurpose your content by breaking them down into bite-sized content. Then share those smaller bits of content on social media. Not only will this help build an audience in the long run because you’re keeping them waiting for more interesting content.
For example, long videos will work great in Youtube, but on most of the other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, people want sort posts and videos.
So make a short teaser out of the video and post that in platforms like Instagram and Facebook, and give the link to the full video in the description!
You can do the same thing with keynote presentations, long-form blog posts, interviews and more.
All you need to keep in mind is to focus on featuring the best bits and pieces on social media.
04. Focus on creating visually-rich content
In my experience, one easy way to repurpose content is to make the existing content visual.
If you’re not a Youtuber or a designer, most of your old content is probably text-based articles, whitepapers, e-books or long-form content.
If so, you’re sitting on an untapped goldmine of visual content.
05. Reuse without hesitation
A lot of people think “Once I talk about something, I can never talk about it again because people will remember”
Well, the good news is — that’s not true.
You can absolutely talk/write about the same tip, technique or strategy multiple times across different channels!
06. Republish your existing content
Repurposing your content by directly republishing it on blogging platforms such as LinkedIn articles and Medium.com may seem like the simplest approach.
However, based on my experience, this strategy is not as effective as creating fresh content or modifying your existing material. The reason is that it results in duplicate content. Nevertheless, republishing, also referred to as “content syndication,” is a convenient method to increase the visibility of your content by reaching a wider audience.
However, according to Neil Patel’s recent article on content repurposing —
There’s no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. Google and the search engines reserve the right to penalize your website, but only if you’re excessively copying blog content in a manipulative manner.
With repurposed content, you are only trying to increase the awareness of your brand — so you aren’t violating Google’s guidelines.
07. Learn more from others around you
The GaryVee Content Model: An incredible example of how Gary Vaynerchuk transforms a single piece of content into dozens of blog posts, videos and social media posts. This SlideShare presentation, in particular, effectively demonstrates his approach to content creation.
Types of Content Marketing: A massive list of the different content formats you can use to create and repurpose content. I recommend checking out this list whenever you want to give some old content new life.
Repurposing content for your advantage
If you’re sitting on a wealth of content. content repurposing might be ideal for you, if you don’t want to sit at a computer all day, creating content every day. But if you’re someone who’s new to writing content, and just learning about this strategy, that’s fine too. Let’s start with a recap:
Frequently Asked Questions on Content Repurposing
- What does it mean to repurpose content?
Repurposing content is like giving a makeover to your existing content, so it fits perfectly with a different group of people/audience you want to reach. Picture this: you take a blog post, give it a casual, conversational tone, and bam! You’ve got yourself a snazzy podcast or video ready to be published. It’s all about making your content shine in new ways and connecting with even more awesome folks out there.
2. Is it OK to repurpose content?
It’s totally okay to repurpose. It’s highly recommended. The trick here is to avoid duplicating content. repurposing content is all about giving it a few tweaks to match medium, while duplicating content is just serving up the same old stuff in different dishes. For example, reading a blog post word-for-word and turning it into a podcast or video would be duplicated content.
3. What is the benefit of repurposing content?
The sunny side of repurposing content is that you get the chance to push your content marketing strategy much further than it would go if you were to create content piecemeal. When you repurpose content, you are able to reach a wider, more diverse audience. You are also able to get more creative in how you market your content.
Wrapping up
In conclusion, there’s only one caveat with Content Repurposing.
You can’t just copy and paste your content between formats. It won’t work. Every format and platform has its own wrinkles. And to succeed with content repurposing, you need to adapt your content and your content strategy for that format, just like how I’ve shown below:
Bonus: Create high-value content that converts
Founded by the team behind In Plain English, Circuit is a strategic growth company for developer-focused software startups. We help companies produce a higher ROI on their content marketing efforts.
If you want to build a better content strategy, scale content operations, increase product awareness and adoption, and grow a community, we help brands make this happen.
