Trying to keep relevant to customers with fresh, new content is time-consuming and expensive. To keep up with the need for fresh, unique content on multiple platforms it’s easy to focus solely on creating new content rather than optimising what you already have. While it’s important to always be looking for new and compelling ways to connect with your audience, you also want to make the most of the content you’ve already spent time and money on. So, it’s good to know that quality content doesn’t need to be lost to the whims of an algorithm or left to search engines for discovery.
But how do you access the continuing value of your content?
Repurpose it!
What is content repurposing?
Content repurposing, also known as content recycling, is more than tweeting a link to an existing article or cycling through the same set of social posts. Instead, content repurposing reuses existing content and presents it in different formats to extend visibility and lifespan. It’s a way to leverage your existing content and boost your audience engagement without devoting resources solely to developing new content.
Buffer focused on reworking old content for an entire month instead of publishing new content. While overall traffic remained mostly the same, organic traffic surged.
The goals of content repurposing are:
- Promote existing content to keep it visible
- Update existing content to keep it current and relevant
- Make sure every piece of content you already have is the best it can be
- Convert existing content into another format
- Rework existing information into a new piece of content, e.g. long form to short form
- Curate existing content to provide a new context for the information
The benefits of repurposing your existing content
Reaching a new audience
Some customers prefer to listen to a podcast than read an eBook. Others prefer visual infographics over text statistics. Reformatting your content transforms content existing solely on one platform into content on multiple channels. You’ll appeal to more audiences and extend your reach.
Bringing back popular content
If you have a piece of content your audience found especially valuable, don’t leave it to disappear into the depths of the back pages of Google. Repurposing revitalises once popular content and places it front and centre, ensuring it’s never forgotten.
Making the most of your efforts
Content creation is a resource-hungry production with no guarantee of a piece’s success. Repurposing content gives customers who might not engage with your content in one format the opportunity to engage with it in another. It also minimises time and money spent as you develop multiple pieces of content from one idea.
Meeting your audience’s demand for regular content
With the demand for frequent delivery of content, developing multiple formats from one piece means fulfilling your audience’s hunger for those constant updates without devoting more resources than you need to.
Boosting your SEO
Publishing multiple content pieces on targeted keywords can improve your position in search engines. Repurposing your content also gives you a chance to refine your existing SEO based on updated keyword research and data from any analytics on the piece.
Three steps to repurposing your existing content
Identify content you can repurpose
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- Check your analytics to see what content is working well and could work better
- Conduct keyword research
- Note possible evergreen content
Don’t repurpose content for content’s sake without taking the time to audit your existing content. Creating content in a specific format just to satisfy current trends won’t perform as well as content developed in a format best suited for the information itself. . Don’t force it. The goal of content repurposing is to maximise your content’s value while keeping additional costs lower overall.
Reuse and recycle that existing content
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- Repackage existing content into different formats e.g. infographics or social posts from blogs
- Use keyword research to update existing content with more targeted, lower competition keywords
- Rework popular content into evergreen content
- Edit evergreen content to make use of better performing keywords
- Combine several pieces of short form content to create a long form article
- Expand on an existing piece with more information and resources or references
- Cut long form content into several short form posts
Some content might not be suited for different formats, and that’s ok. You can still revise and update it for new audiences. Revising evergreen content is just as valuable as repurposing content for multiple formats and platforms.
Analyse the performance of each piece of new content
Performance of your repurposed content can be measured on whatever basis best suits your content strategy, but you might want to keep an eye on metrics like:
Performance of your repurposed content can be measured on whatever basis best suits your content strategy, but you might want to keep an eye on metrics like:
- Audience engagement on social media
- Traffic sources
- Search rankings
- Time spent on your website
- Bounce rate
- Average number of pages viewed
Remember, metrics are key to great content, giving you insight into what kind of content is successful on different platforms and in different formats.
Leverage your existing content
While content repurposing might seem like a bit of a cop-out or put you in danger of being overly repetitive, it’s an effective way of maximising what you already know has value to your audience. It’s not a substitute for creating new content as a whole, but it can help optimise your content marketing budget as you work to reach and engage with existing and new audiences.
Want a hand auditing your content? Take a look at our Site Strategy Package.
