New content is great, but have you ever tried repurposing your content?
For the sake of your budget, your team’s efficiency, your reach, and your SEO success, we HIGHLY recommend it.
To better understand the full value sitting inside your current content assets and examples of ways to start your efforts, we invite you to continue following along.
And feel free to listen to our recent discussion on this topic as well:
Table of Contents:
Repurposing content is the act of taking existing content and recycling it into something fresh to be shared on other marketing channels.
Content repurposing is often one of three things:
- Creating an entirely different media type for a piece of content you already have
- Breaking down and reformatting the messaging of a long-form piece of content into smaller, more digestible standalone content
- Stacking multiple existing pieces together to form a more comprehensive and informative guide
If you’re reading this, then you already know content marketing is a worthwhile investment.
That’s why your company has a whole team and/or agencies of people working to make that content generate demand and help capture leads.
The following are the core benefits of giving new life to old content.
Increases the value of your content investments
The beauty of repurposing your brand’s content is that you're giving your team the ability to take any old content piece that still holds value and relevance to your messaging and make it work for you multiple times – perhaps forever.
Do you have a 1-hour webinar video?
That one video can be repurposed into 5-10 short clips for LinkedIn posts, 5-10 short clips for Twitter, 6-11 new YouTube video uploads, 1 podcast episode, and into 1 or multiple blog posts depending on what you cover.
That’s 18 - 33+ freshly repurposed and ready-to-distribute pieces of content generated from a single webinar video (and we guarantee you can come up with more).
Did you create a 2,000-word blog with original research and insights?
That 1 blog post can very quickly become 10 - 30 Twitter posts, 10 - 30 LinkedIn posts, and recycled into a concise newsletter. Again, that’s 20-60+ pieces produced by recycling a single piece of content that your company has already created.
Recommended Reading: Breaking Down a Single Blog into 30+ Twitter Posts in < 30 Minutes For Content Distribution
Expands your content’s reach – allowing you to shape content for each distribution channel
Your company likely distributes its marketing content on multiple channels. This ensures you’re speaking to different audiences where they prefer to consume information.
And as experienced marketers, we know that each channel trains its users to appreciate a slightly different presentation style in order to generate the best engagement.
Repurposing content allows us to make sure that we have the most effective media, writing format, and positioning no matter which channel we’re sharing on.
A single long-form podcast video file can pretty easily put you on Spotify, Apple, or Google podcast platforms, be uploaded to YouTube, broken down into short social media posts that are perfect for LinkedIn, be embedded on related blog content, and fill out your weekly newsletter.
Additionally, utilizing different positioning allows you to speak to an entirely new audience and might be as simple as changing who you address in the hook of your social media content.
Gives your audience the media type they prefer
Your potential audience members all have their preferred ways of learning. Recycling content into new formats makes it easy for them to consume your content the way that they want to.
While someone might love one type of content, like reading a long-form thought leadership piece on what’s wrong with the current trajectory of their industry, someone else might be more inclined to listen to a podcast episode where you conversationally explain the same information.
With a little effort, you can quickly give people written, audio, and visual content based on your most effective content.
Syncs messaging across your marketing channels and team members
Content repurposing is all about extending the lifespan and reach of the messaging from your content creation efforts.
That messaging most likely was vetted by management, your executive team, perhaps legal, your product teams, and your PR team. Instead of having to create entirely new pieces of content that need to be checked by all those teams again, prioritize repurposing efforts.
Repurposing content across multiple channels also ensures that the messaging is consistent no matter where an audience member finds you.
And if your individual employees are working at generating their own influence on social channels - allowing them to reuse the messaging, data, and images from already created content assets ensures they communicate in a way that aligns their personal brand with the company.
Creates greater opportunity for link distribution and organic visibility
As an agency that specializes in generating SEO results, we have an interest in our clients doing this part right.
Repurposing content and sharing a URL to the original asset or a relevant webpage gives that link the opportunity to be shared, retweeted, and placed on other people’s content. Successfully distributing that link is what we call a backlink. Those backlinks work like research citations.
The more relevant websites link to your content, the more authority Google’s algorithms assume you have on that topic. The result is better search engine rankings and increased organic traffic.
Additionally, recycling a written post into an infographic or a video gives you more opportunities to appear in different positions on the SERP. A video might now pull your content into the video carousel, and an image might suddenly appear on Google image search for related keyword phrases. All of this improves your organic visibility.
Shows your executive team your resourcefulness
If you’re a marketing manager who regularly reports to an executive team or directly to your CEO, you want to show your competence and resourcefulness.
Effectively repurposing your content that has historically led to meaningful conversions or positive brand engagement means you’re extending your company’s investment dollars; further showcasing your and your team’s business value.
Identify your evergreen content
When it comes to choosing which pieces of content you’re going to repurpose, review your current content for evergreen topics.
These pieces of content ensure that you’re not focusing on a repurposing project that risks becoming outdated too quickly.
Select the content that generates your most valuable engagements
If you have pieces of content, like videos, ebooks, or old blog posts about topics that tend to generate organic conversions, social comments, shares, and inquiries from your ICPs, start your repurposing efforts there.
This will give you plenty of useful distribution materials for people that have a high potential of becoming customers.
If you’re too early in your content marketing efforts and you don’t have substantial initial data, then start with the content that you’ve created as a result of direct customer interactions. These pieces, likely created for sales or retention efforts, guarantee you’re repurposing information for a relevant, high-value target audience.
Additionally, repurpose content from your most popular posts that have stimulated brand engagement and community building. This will help keep people who follow you in social spaces engaged as you slowly drip out more insights, how-to’s, infographics, videos, etc. about the same topic.
Recommended Reading: Using Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) To Improve Your Content Marketing’s Efficacy
Find related content topics that match the criteria above and stack them
We often think of content repurposing as the process of breaking down long-form content.
But the opposite is also true. Review your shorter articles, case studies, first-party data, and videos about an overarching topic and stack them together, repurposing them into one cohesive guide.
Here are a few of the common ways companies tend to repurpose their content:
1. Repurposing content for your social media channels
One of the most approachable ways to repurpose content is to break down your long-form content into social media posts.
The sheer creative diversity of acceptable formats and lengths of content adds to the ease with which recycled parts of long-form pieces can become successful social posts.
This might include breaking down a post into shorter sections of value, sharing infographics, or posting shortened snippets of your last webinar video.
Common content repurposing tactics for social media
- Breaking blogs down into shorter pieces of content
- Turning blog posts into an overview slide deck (LinkedIn)
- Providing the standout highlights of an entire long-form piece as a Twitter thread
- Breaking down podcast/webinar videos in bite-sized social clips
- Sharing images such as infographics from existing content
Recommended Reading: How To Create a Never-Ending Supply of LinkedIn Posts By Repurposing Your Blogs [+ Examples]
2. Creating written content (like blogs) from video assets
Your video assets are engaging and they’re often undoubtedly loved by viewers.
The topic you’re discussing in that video will also be impactful (perhaps more) as written, well-structured content.
This blog post that you’re reading right now is an example of a repurposed podcast discussion that we had identified as:
- Aligned with our ICP’s Jobs to be Done goals
- Having valuable keywords associated with it
The result is that we now have a blog post that we can conveniently break down into written social posts – giving us more ways to share the value of topic repurposing with our target audience than with only video.
SEO pro-tip - While an exact transcript serves as a quick way to generate a new URL/piece of content, it’s unlikely that that page will perform from an organic search perspective.
If you’d like meaningful traffic to be generated - take the time to craft the transcript into an organized post (with headers and images) that targets a relevant keyword.
The readers will enjoy the added bonus of having a video to watch and your video will receive the additional views from the organic traffic that the copy generated.
3. Creating video content from written assets
Creating videos by repurposing written assets like blogs, emails/newsletters, knowledge base materials, ebooks, white papers, etc. is a commonly underutilized tactic in the content community.
Record yourself explaining the main points, your favorite takeaways, or simply introducing the topic’s importance to your audience. Then invite them to visit your written content resources as well.
If you’ve created something like a few thorough how-to blogs or knowledge-base articles for your customers - create a video recording yourself following the same steps.
4. Creating short-form videos from long-form videos
Creating short-form videos is a growing trend in the content industry that we’re all familiar with at this point. The good news is that it’s a trend that has long-term legs.
We all see short videos that draw us in, particularly on social media platforms. They often come equipped with closed captions so we can watch even if we’re in a space where having the volume on would be inappropriate.
If you’re already recording your hour-long podcast videos, webinars, events, or live streams, then with a little editing help you have all the short-form video clips currently sitting in your possession.
5. Rolling up parts of your content into a weekly or monthly email newsletter series
Some of the best email series and newsletters are round-ups and short, but value-packed breakdowns of already great content that a company has created.
For example, perhaps you’ve recorded a long-form podcast about a topic your newsletter audience might also appreciate learning about. You might listen to that episode over and distill it down into it’s most unique insights as a written newsletter topic.
You might also have a long-form article that features 8 actionable tactics for helping your audience achieve a specific goal. Repurposing that post as an 8-part newsletter series that discusses one of those tactics each week is a great way to continue offering the same messaging, but packaged as a new content series for your nurture email lists.
6. Building downloadable assets such as images, checklists, or templates
You might currently have blog posts that function as an overview of a checklist or template.
Creating unique versions of these assets in an easily downloadable and shareable way gives people yet another way to engage with that same material.
Recycling materials into these types of assets often gives users more value while simultaneously providing your company with a potential nurturing opportunity via an email exchange.
7. Stacking multiple pieces of content into one “Ultimate Guide” resource
Additionally, if you have multiple pieces of content that talk about specific parts of a larger topic within your industry – those parts can easily be stacked and glued together to make a major resource.
Perhaps you’ve got several blogs, a video or two, and a case study that all together create a thorough overview of the state of a specific industry, a complete guide, or can be turned into a course your customers can take.
Repurposing requires more effort than copying and pasting
Don’t let the above article distort your view of repurposing content as being too easy. It’s much more than copying and pasting.
The same critical thinking that goes into your most successful marketing efforts should still be applied to your strategy for re-using and re-mixing your high-quality content.
The best content repurposing efforts are planned from the start
For best results, build content repurposing into your overall content marketing strategy from the very beginning.
This ensures that you create new content that is laid out in such a way that it is more conveniently split apart or stacked.
Perhaps all of your content’s headers are organized to be social media hooks, or your outline for your podcast has predetermined prompts built in so that your editor can very quickly identify the best places to create social clips.
Starting at the strategy stage also gives your team the opportunity to put the repurposing and distribution efforts on the calendar. This will act as a clear roadmap for the future, and later as a data benchmark for the frequency in which you repurposed your assets at a particular moment in time.
Repurposing isn’t always about distributing an older piece of content
There is a tendency amongst content marketers who are pressured to garner leads to push traffic from one channel back into your website.
Become comfortable with not including a link back to the original source every single time you post something on social media.
Remember, you’re building a community in a space where people already exist and might wish to remain. Sharing useful advice that builds a loyal audience in that space will allow you the trust to occasionally invite them into your older, larger pieces of content.
It’s a balancing act.
Your turn to give it a shot
With the above ideas, you have plenty of examples to solidify your own repurposing strategy and fill your content calendar.
If you found this or any of our other pieces of content marketing, SEO, or SaaS marketing content we’ve done valuable, consider joining our newsletter to stay up to date on the latest conversations, tips, tactics, and strategies.
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Helping SaaS companies with content optimization services since 2020.
