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Repurposing content is the best and fastest way to save time and money on your content marketing strategy.
One of the big reasons organizations shy away from blogging and social media is the constant requirement for fresh content. Like any marketing channel, social media channels need to be primed in order to deliver an audience. That means new and fresh content at regular intervals.
Read on to learn more about how repurposing content helps you get traction and save time with your content marketing.
Fresh Content from Existing Content
Developing fresh content can be a real challenge to the small or independent business owner who has to market and service clients at the same time. This is where “Repurposed Content” comes in.
What does it mean to repurpose content?
As you might imagine, repurposed content refers to using one piece of writing in a variety of ways. Savvy content marketers have realized that turning one longer piece of content into many different formats improves their online visibility in many ways without too much extra work.
Is repurposing content beneficial for SEO?
If you’re working a content
For example, you can take an existing blog post and convert it to a video or slide deck. Then, select a section and submit it as a guest post to an industry site.
You can also convert that same blog post into an audio blog, take the script and convert it to a slide deck and post it on LinkedIn.
You Repurpose Content Without Realizing It
For example, let’s say that you were a speaker at a conference. Chances are you’ve created a PowerPoint presentation and that would have been “purposed content.” Now, let’s say that they video taped you giving that presentation and gave you access to that video. That’s already an example of repurposed content because you can turn that into smaller trainings or a blog post on your own website.
How Does Repurposing Help your Content Marketing?
You put a lot of effort into all aspects of creating high-quality content. Much of that is evergreen content that can continue to inform your readers and followers weeks or months after it’s created.
Reinforces your marketing message
There’s a rule in marketing that says that people need to see your message at least seven times before it registers. Repurposing your content across channels gives your brand message the opportunity to land with your ideal customers
Improves your chances of being seen by your target audience
To make the most out of all your existing content, it should be repurposed into different formats to connect with new followers as well as to provide valuable data to existing followers.
If you think about your own experience as a consumer of content marketing materials, your social media feeds are busy.
You’re probably subscribed to more email newsletters than you can realistically read each week. You might have your favorite podcasts or Youtube video channels to follow, too. There’s a good chance that you don’t always see new content posted by your favorite creators the exact moment it’s uploaded. You might stumble across it later when it’s been repurposed into a different format.
Your target audience might have their own preferences or channels they follow, so you want to increase your chances of reaching both a new audience and your existing target audience with each piece of content you create. Even if you get great organic traffic to your website already, you might be missing followers who prefer to consume content through YouTube or podcasts.
Builds trust
You can’t sell if you don’t have a following of people who know, like, and trust you. Video and podcasting in particular help you build those three important elements because they showcase the human behind the marketing.
In the light moments shared during your videos or podcast is when your audience gets to know you. This can build a much faster relationship between you and your target customer than if you only used text-based mediums.
Makes your life easier
You don’t need to recreate the wheel with new content all the time. Get off the content creation hamster wheel and instead focus strategically on what you can cover in 20 to 45 minutes of each “episode.” Within those longer video or audio files, you can cover many different topics and subtopics. Pulling out one minute clips or memorable quotes can leverage some of those subtopics in mediums appropriate for them like social media.
General tips for repurposing content
Each of the formats you create should include a call to action, which you might vary based on where that final format is shared. In general, you want to drive people back to your own website whenever possible.
Secondly, help, don’t sell. Don’t jump too far ahead in your new relationship with your followers to try to make a sale. Early on, it’s best to share the high-quality content you’ve created that is available for free so that you put yourself in the best possible position to build that trust. As you repurpose content more, those followers will continue to recognize you as a credible authority.
Thirdly, don’t repurpose into just one blog post. As you approach the entire process, think about how you can get the most traction from any one piece. A how to article or a list post are great places to start your brainstorming, but there are many other ways to breathe new life into an older piece, too.
The Repurposing Content Formula
With your own marketing, you should have at least one active channel where you create and post content. If that’s pre-recorded presentations, a YouTube video, or a podcast episode, you can incorporate different versions of that same information into your content strategy. This reduces the amount of time you must spend creating “new” material.
Start with a Video
Starting with a video or audio file gives you the most possibilities for repurposing, complicated turning blog posts into audio or video format. YouTube is also the second-largest search engine in the world, so it makes sense as a good starting point for your original content.
Here are some ways you can turn video training or recorded presentations into multiple formats for content repurposing. With a few tweaks, you can turn your valuable information into ongoing marketing for you in a few ways.
Embed the video on your website
You posted on the second biggest search engine out there, but you still might not get views immediately on that platform. There are a few more instructions necessary to ensure you get the broadest reach possible. Make sure the same video is embedded as a video post on your website, too. This helps with your SEO and also sends good signals back to search engines if people stay on your site to watch 20 minute or longer videos.
Turn your audio or video into a blog post
By either listening to the recording or getting it transcribed directly, you can get a text format to turn into new blog posts. You could also create an original post before you deliver the presentation
This can help draw in organic search traffic to your website since SEO engines don’t yet have a way to read audio or video format the way they do an original article.
For those transcribing to report on their own blog, use a tool like Descript to remove filler words. This will make your editing process that much easier as you work towards a final version of your blog post.
If your original video or workshop is very long, you could turn it into a series of multiple posts based around keyword research, too.
An online workshop
If your in-person workshop went well, you can use any feedback you got to turn this into published content on your website, too. The same presentation can be easily adjusted and offered for sale online as a workshop.
For something as high value as an in-depth workshop, you might want to make this into exclusive content for your email subscribers only.
Social media graphics
For some of your best tips, share these through social media. You can include the short tip as well as a link to the longer published format, too, so that you appeal to the broadest possible audience for that video content. Use Canva.com to create these graphics easily and quickly. Simply upload your logo, apply your brand colors, and set up templates you can return to time and again!
If you used slide decks to present the original information, these are a good starting point for social media graphics and written content, too.
These new versions should be short and simple for things like Twitter posts and Instagram stories.
Downloadable white paper
If you shared a lot of great information that would also work in a multi-page PDF, consider creating a whitepaper that is used to drive email signups.
Online course
If you have a lot of blog content already and are looking to provide an even deeper introduction to your educational style, consider repurposing content into an online course. To keep with the “help, don’t sell” strategy, this should ideally be an easily consumable free course.
What to do with old content
You’re not limited to repurposing content that you start now, either. Your repurposing efforts can reach back into your archive by looking at the following valuable resources:
- High performing marketing campaigns
- Previous posts on Medium
- Guest posts you wrote on other sites
- Your most-downloaded or featured podcasts
- Social media posts that got great engagement
- most popular blog posts, guest posts, and social media posts. This can serve as a starting point for reinvigorating those older posts and turning them into new audio or video formats.
- Your best-selling online courses
- Your most-viewed blog posts in Google Analytics
These are just a few examples of how to repurpose content. Take a few minutes today and go through your inventory, then literally pick an article or presentation and see if you can create at least three new pieces of content from it. This turns those old blog posts into evergreen content and has the potential to reach an entirely new audience as well.
The entire process of creating repurposed content might take some effort when you first start, but you can create templates and tools for content syndication that you can use and reuse. As a content marketer, you’ll continue to build your relationship with current followers and attract new audiences of people who view you as an authority in your field.