Re-purposing is a way to ease the burden of creating content. But it’s also a way to get your content seen by many more people using formats they would prefer to use. Turning one piece of content into at least eight different formats for your audience to consume, is just so much more efficient and wide-reaching.
Let me show you how you can tackle the issue of re-purposing content.
What Is The Purpose Of Re-purposing Content?
Re-purposing content allows you to modify, refresh, or reuse existing content. It can be used with a variety of formats like blogs, ads and infographics, data visualizations, webinars, videos, and so on.
Re-purposing successfully, requires some imagination and experience but it generally isn’t as difficult as creating the original idea. You will also be able to re-use the research you had to do for the original article.
Re-purpose your content to make the most of your original content that you write. For instance blog posts contain a great deal of information and probably required a considerable amount of research to put together, however it’s just one channel. If you re-purpose that content in other formats, and then distribute it through other platforms, you can make use of exactly the same content (or some or a portion of it) and can reach a larger public.
It can also reduce time and energy as it doesn’t require you to create the content entirely from scratch. But, you must spend some time developing the criteria needed to adapt existing content to various channels.
What Are The Re-purposing Requirements?
Re-purposing isn’t something you can just wing it or improvise on, at least if you are looking to succeed at it. Here’s some tips to follow:
Set what your objectives are: Do you wish to create a greater quantity of original content with less effort? Are you looking to reuse your content to reach a different or new public? Do you require the content to be used in another way? Do you intend to use it to assist generation of qualified sales leads?
Define your channels: Which distribution channels will be hosting the re-purposed content? What is the audience of that channel? Would that new audience require a different approach from the original article?
Determine the criteria for re-purposing content Note that not all original content is suitable for re-purposing: Do you wish to make the most of content that has already been successful? Is there any existing content that can easily be updated with new information? Are you looking to make use of evergreen subjects that don’t alter over time? Be cautious about using information that is too narrow or time-bound, as it’s more likely to hinder reuse.
After you’ve identified your goals then you can think about how you can reuse material and connect with new audiences.
What are some possible ways to reuse content? I’ll show you the best methods to alter videos and posts and provide some examples of content re-purposing to inspire you.
Blog Posts
Blog posts can provide excellent opportunities for re-purposing. It is particularly effective for blog posts that have outdated information or outdated SEO targets. You can reuse them by making only a few updates of information, news and the most effective techniques.
You can also take a list of points used in the original article and then use that as a brief to expand upon. You will be able to re-use any existing research as well and so save a load of time in the process.
Backlinko’s Brian Dean wrote a post on his blog covering YouTube SEO back in 2016. Then, in 2021, the author revised the original article, eliminating obsolete sections, and adding relevant and new strategies, as well as screenshots. In just seven days, traffic increased by 50 percent to the blog.
White Papers & E-books
When it comes to recycling blog posts, e-books as well as white papers can be great to reuse content as well as lead generation.
By putting all the information related to the subject in a single format your users don’t have to go for other sources. It can be used a Lead Magnet which is a great way to boost lead generation.
They can also be used to lock premium content, where readers need to register to access the premium pdf. However, if you choose to block the content, be sure that you offer added value, not simply the repackaging of free content. It is also possible to market it in order to show the content to a larger audience looking for books on the issue.
Infographics
There is no need to limit your re-purposing only to transformations that are based on re-using the text. Since business is all about the visualization of data, it is a great idea to transform text-based information into infographics. It is appealing to a visual public.
The most important thing to do when re-purposing information into an infographic is knowing what you should keep and what to leave out. Headers are now sections of infographics. Text is reduced to icons or bullet points.
The goal is to cut down the information so that users are able to take in the salient points without the fluff. You may find that you need to add additional facts and anecdotes but that should all be in your original research.
Email Newsletters
You are quite probably using an email newsletter to recap the latest blogs, however, it likely won’t be enough to maintain your customer’s interest in your company’s message.
Instead, you can re-purpose content to create a more personalized email. By turning a newsletter broadcast into a min-version of the original article and then linking to the main article you will find that you entice more people into visiting your website and exposure to your marketing message.
Slide Presentations
Slide decks are another very visual way of getting information over to your audience. You can spice up the presentation by re-purposing material that has already proven of interest.
Have graphs and charts for your blog or social media page on the subject? Include them to provide a summary or illustrate key facts.
You can take a page from Copyblogger’s book to learn this re-purposing technique. They turned the blog’s content into a concise but captivating slideshow. It has racked up nearly 100,000 views.
Social Media Posts
There are many ways that Social Media can help you re-purpose content that has already been produced. It has to be visually appealing and compelling to deter scrollers. you will need to summarize and focus on points raised in the article rather than just reproduce whole articles on Facebook.
Tweets can be turned into an image for Instagram. A quote from the blog post can be an independent Facebook post. A screenshot of a blog post on a particular channel could be an Instagram or Facebook story promoted via Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok.
Video
Videos can be both the original content that you want to re-purpose or the end medium that you re-purpose an existing article into.
Re-purposing videos can require some extra effort due to the audio and visual aspect however the impact is well worth the effort. Existing longer videos can be made into short videos to be used in advertising and posts on social media. These videos can also be shared as a sequence of emails. Videos are great GIFs to use on Twitter or in blog posts.
The audio portion of a video could be broadcast as a podcast. On the other hand, you can record and broadcast a video or podcast making it both a live stream that could be listened to and a file to be downloaded for later.
Podcasts
Podcasts have been exploding in recent popularity, with millions of downloads. On average, three or more podcasts are downloaded each month per user. Podcasts have rapidly become the fastest-growing genre for information and music on iTunes.
Podcasts are also a great way of establishing an identity to your brand and then building a loyal following on the back of that.
It’s fairly easy to reuse existing content to produce a podcast format. A video transcript could form the foundation of the podcast episode, with slight tweaks, as could blog posts or other written content.
No matter if you listen to podcasts via your personal computer or your iPod or phone, the main benefit is that you can listen online without interruptions and download any time, from any location.
The addition of a podcast to your business is a fantastic method of expanding the reach of your audience to a new format, and is a simple method of repackaging existing content.
Take Advantage Of The Things You’ve Created
Re-purposing content can be done in a variety of ways. To be successful you must know the reason behind why you doing this and what goals you want to accomplish. Additionally, you need plans that makes the process repeatable. What are the requirements for content to be reused and what options for re-purposing are available?
When you understand the motivations and alternatives the team responsible for creating content will be able to take some relief from the burden of producing all new content every day. The more formats you have for the presentation or delivery of your content and marketing message, the more people who are part of your audience will view the content and interact with it in the format they prefer.
Conclusion
Re-purposing content is too powerful to ignore. Expanding your reach and getting in front of more potential buyers are great reasons for taking the time to add a system to take care of this for you. And the good news is that most of the heavy lifting has already been done for you.
