“You don’t have to create content day in and day out. You just have to work on getting the content you already have in the hands of more people,”
— Derek Halpern, Social Triggers
It’s not always easy to come up with new ideas. Sometimes, we need a little help from our old ones. Repurposing content allows us to reach a broader range of audiences and expand on what might be an already successful piece for your company by adding more depth or taking it in another direction entirely that hasn’t been explored yet. All you have to do is go back through some of your analytics reports and see which blog posts or videos are performing well. And once you’ve identified those top performers, try repurposing them into other things like creating new blogs based on past interviews, etc. Let us take a look at a few tips to use old posts in new ways!
Key Takeaways
- Focus on adding value when repurposing old content, and your audiences won’t get bored.
- Repurposing is excellent for your content visibility.
- The penalties for repurposing content are almost none, so don’t worry about duplicate content.
Now, let us talk about how repurposing content is one of the most incredible content creation approaches. We can almost guarantee you are not doing enough of it.
Benefits of repurposing your content
Repurposing Content is an approach that takes published, existing content and remixes it with a new spin to create something totally new and different. We are a huge fan of repurposing content for two main reasons:
Maximize your content investments
Content is unique and costly. It takes a lot of time to create, which can be difficult for some marketing departments that don’t have enough funds or resources needed. Repurposing content will help companies get more from their current investments by getting creative with what they already own.
Refresh existing content
Creating content is a never-ending process for brands. The more we create, the more old pieces are buried and forgotten about. But repurposing these old gems can breathe new life into them, so they’re not just sitting in the dark corners of your CMS collecting digital dust – it will give you the visibility that could be all too absent otherwise!
Myths of Repurposing Content
Myth 1 – You’re going to be penalized for having duplicate content
When you remix and refresh your content, for example, turning the important conclusions of a blog post into infographics or takeaways from a webinar to an audiogram to make it more shareable on social media, search engines will see that a different material.
Repurposing is not duplication. Instead of copying-pasting like many people do when looking for new ideas – which often results in penalization by search engines – repurpose old content instead! The idea behind this technique doesn’t involve making small changes here and there; instead, it’s about wholly altering how something is presented so that users experience totally fresh information without seeing anything duplicate at all: whether it’s changing up copy style (blog posts vs. whitepapers), mediums (infographics vs. videos).
Myth 2 – You can’t reuse other people’s content
This ain’t true. Sometimes the best content on a particular topic comes from other people. And it is completely okay to get inspired by it and write something similar to your own. If somebody has created a framework or has published a blog that you have some feedback or opinion on, you can provide your own take on it, as long as you give due credit to the original author. But before you do that, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Give credit where credit’s due: Always—each and every time. No exceptions! Make sure you give proper credit to the original author. Leave a link to the original source content at the end of your published work. It’s the only right thing to do because being a thief is not cool.
- Ask for permission: If you are repurposing other’s work, always and always ask for their permission. If you are using their framework or some images from their blog/whitepaper/whatever, you need to ask for permission and let ’em know what you are using it for before repurposing it.
Myth 3 – Your audiences are going to be bored
Content repurposing is not copying and pasting. It takes a lot of creativity and effort to repurpose a piece. Republishing the same content over and over again will bore your audience, but if you take an infographic or white paper to create other formats like social teasers or blog posts series, then it will be different and new as long as there is additional value-added with each piece that warrants repeat reading. Also, focus on all the channels. You don’t have to keep posting in the same channel in which the original content was published.
How to Repurpose Content
What is the easiest way to repurpose content? There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to repurposing. Well, it comes down to what that existing content looks like, what format it is in, how out of date it is, and your repurposing goals. Once you analyze that, it will be much easier to repurpose content and see its impact on your audience, content, and goals.
Update existing content
Maybe you have some great content hits that are still getting a lot of traffic, but the links and examples in them are really outdated. That’s okay! Just give your content a slight refresh, publish it again with new updates to bring back audiences who might’ve already seen it before. And while you are at it, add some extra insight, updated stat, or additional examples. That way, you can give new value to your content as well as bring in new audiences.
Use the 1:4 rule for content atomization:
Use the 1:4 rule, which means we should be able to get at least 4 smaller pieces of content from it for every long piece of content we create, such as:
- A catchy line from “Blog A”→ Create a shareable social media infographics
- Summary from “Blog A” → Audiogram
- Summary from “Blog A” → Twitter thread
- Interview → Blog post
- Snippets from interview → YouTube Video
- A whitepaper → Blog post summarizing findings & highlights
- Reports & charts from the whitepaper → Downloadable graphics to share in social media
So, that’s about it. Let us know how you repurpose your content. Feel free to leave a comment/feedback in the comment section below.
💡 Bonus: Learn how to level up your Content Game with an Editorial Calendar!
