Creating and posting content is vital to your online presence, but putting out new material takes a lot of time and effort. This is where repurposing old content can be helpful. By taking existing blog posts, podcasts, videos, infographics, and other forms of digital content and recycling them, you won’t have to start from scratch every time. Learn more about repurposing content below in our guide.
What Is Content Repurposing?
Repurposing content, quite simply, is the process of taking an existing piece of content—whether that’s a blog post, a video, or a podcast—and either updating it or presenting it in a new format. Additionally, content repurposing is a simple solution for the sometimes difficult problem of content ideation, allowing you to build off of an existing idea and reshaping it in a different way, rather than having to come up with new ideas.
Why You Should Repurpose Content
Beyond saving yourself time and effort when creating content, recycling old content can provide several competitive advantages, including more efficiencies, improved SEO, and better audience targeting.
Increase Content Creation Efficiency
Research shows that brands that post content two to four times a week tend to see the best results from their efforts. Repurposing content gives you a head start in the process, allowing for faster content creation and more frequent publishing. This is because repurposing allows you to spend significantly less time on initial steps like keyword research or coming up with new topics, compared to creating new content.
Get Discovered by Search Engines
Search engine crawlers typically prioritize new content, so taking elements of old content and repurposing it can help put your website back on a search engine’s radar. Crawlers are designed to seek out fresh content and reindex updated content, so when you update a page on your website or republish content with new information, your content is more likely to show up in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant terms.
Reach New Audiences
Every piece of content you produce—including repurposed content—is another opportunity for your target audience to discover your brand. Some people may never read blog posts, but would be more than happy to listen to a podcast on the same subject, for example. Because of this, repurposed content broadens the scope of how many people you’re able to reach with a given topic.
Make Content More Relevant
Have old content that covers a now trending topic? Bring that content back into the spotlight with an update. Maybe you have a blog post about a design trend that’s recently become popular again, or you have a video that highlighted potential Google updates that have come to fruition. Whatever the case may be, taking the old piece of content and updating it to match with what’s happening now can be beneficial in reaching audiences.
Adjust Content Tactics
Revisiting outdated content is a great way to improve upon your previous content marketing tactics. Whether you plan to optimize around different keywords, restructure your content format, add new internal and external links, or use more up-to-date statistics, you can provide new value through old content by simply adjusting your previous content tactics to more current tactics.
How to Repurpose Content
Not sure how to go about repurposing your content? There are several ways you can create new content from existing content, including blog posts, podcasts, and videos. Here are some ways you can recycle old content.
Update Old Blog Posts
Sometimes, information you included in a blog post might need to be revamped. Tweaking existing blog content is quick and simple, and it’ll leave you with an end product that you can repackage for your audience.
Create Podcast Episodes
Podcasts are quite popular right now, so why not capitalize on the trend by repurposing old website content as podcast episodes? Consider, for instance, creating a podcast where you invite a guest expert to come on and speak about a subject you’ve covered in previous blog post or webpage.
Make YouTube Videos
Whether it’s on social media or your website, studies show that videos are the most preferred form of content a brand can put out. One easy and effective way to repurpose content is by taking information from existing blog posts, webpages, or even podcast episodes and creating videos for YouTube.
Build Infographics
If you have existing content with a step-by-step guide or some fascinating statistics, turn that data into a well-designed infographic! This kind of bite-sized repurposed content makes for great social media posts and can even be embedded into the original source content as supplementary media.
Add Transcripts
Not only do transcriptions make digital content more accessible and easier to digest, but adding this text onto your website also creates SEO opportunities. The text will likely include several keywords that could direct people to your content and, by extension, your brand. Going through your archives and adding transcripts to all videos and podcasts is a highly effective way to repurpose your content.
Host Webinars
Want to present your content’s information in a way that will more directly engage your audience? Host a webinar! Services like GoToWebinar, WebEx, and ClickMeeting make it easy for you to host live presentations and Q&A sessions with your audience—and you can share the presentations on your publishing platforms!
Utilize FAQs
If you have a list of frequently asked questions on your website, consider expanding those FAQs with supplementary blog content, video content, or infographic content. Not only does this allow you to go deeper with question-answer content, but it gives your audience new ways to get the answers they’re looking for, too.
Make Annual Lists
At the end of the year, check to see which of your blog content performed the best, then round them up into one “Top Posts” listicle. Directing your target audience back to popular posts is a good way to boost engagement and potentially get old content in front of new audience members.
Need help implementing new content on your website? Hurrdat Marketing’s comprehensive content marketing services can help you improve your current digital content strategy. Contact us today to learn more!
