It’s the valuable content that gets the most traffic. But creating such content can be a pain. Writing something that the Internet hasn’t seen yet is too difficult when done regularly. Older but high-performing content can be easily rehashed. But, what about outdated content and unprofitable?
How can you get your way around this dilemma?
One of the techniques seasoned marketers do is to repurpose old but original content to increase traffic and improve conversion rates. This article contains comprehensive information on how to rehash your old content to make it fresh and updated.
What Does It Mean to Repurpose Content
Think of this as a reimagining of content. It’s not reusing an old piece again and again. It’s the reinvention of content. The newer variation should be better than the original. You change all or some elements of the content. Your ultimate goal is to convert more people. And a new set of audiences.
Not everyone agrees with this. Some say that this is an easy way out for days you might feel uncreative. But, think of three things when you rehash your old content: the content itself, who your target audience is, and where your audience can find content. Your repurposed content is the new kind of content marketing. It’’s reinvention at its finest. It’s more than reusing something old- it’s reimagining it to make it even better.
Here’s another take: you are creating versions of your content. It’s not just one, but many, spread across different platforms. When repurposing, you must exhaust this content so you’d get the best mileage. Who knows, you can discover some ideas you haven’t discussed before.
Creating more than ten blog posts often gets more traffic and leads than limiting posts to 4 in a month. But creating those blogs can take a toll on your creative juices. Repurposing allows you to concoct different kinds of content without compromising quality.
Remember the Rule of Seven?
Most people think that repurposing only means driving traffic to the site. While that’s partly true, that is not the ultimate goal. It’s to drive more buyers to your site. This concept may be old, but it still works. According to the Rule of Seven, the buyer has to come across your marketing message seven times before converting it to a buyer. You should repeat your message several times so your buyer can hear you out and buy your product. A repurposed content can do exactly does that.
Tips to Recycle Content for Traffic
Tip #1: Check your blog for evergreen content
Evergreen content has a lot of potentials. You can refurbish it several times. This content type stays relevant regardless of time. It’s this content that people keep asking about.
How to look for evergreen content on your site:
- Check your Google Analytics
Go to your Landing Pages report as this shows which pages have the most traffic. The more people are checking that page out, the more likely they love it. People from other platforms would most likely enjoy it, too!.
- Check your YouTube Analytics
There is a Views section in there that shows which posts videos have the most views.
- Check your blog posts
Check your posts one-by-one for topics that are still relevant today. This might be a bit tedious to some since you might need to update some posts before repurposing it.
- Check what posts on Facebook and Twitter have been shared the most.
Your social media platforms are great sources of evergreen content.
Tip #2: Adapt, Adapt, Adapt!
Ensure that the repurposed content contains details from the original content but tweak it to adapt to the new platform or format. You can add some images from your slide deck to make your format livelier. Have a lot of blog posts? Turn it onto a podcast. Or create an infographic.
Tip #3: Split your original video to shorter clips
Long-form content can be broken into small pieces. This kind of post is more suitable for social media posting. You can use that as a primer or on platforms where the audience prefers shorter clips over an hour-long video such as Twitter and Facebook.
Tip #4: Convert your long posts to visual treats
Most likely, you’d have a post that is pure text. That is a visual content goldmine.
Tip #5: Make your old content as the foundation for your guest posts
You can use your old blog post as inspiration for the new guest post. Make sure that you take a modern spin on it. Add some examples and include new insights on the topic so that the guest post looks fresh and new.
Tip #6: Share your repurposed article on your email list and social media
You can round-up your best articles for the year and create a post that includes all those best articles. You attach this post to your email list.
Tip #7: Make the repurposed content as the bonus piece for your gated content
Gated content is any type of content your audience can access in exchange for their information. Often, your audience needs to fill up a form before reading or downloading that content. This type of content is often used for lead generation and sales.
Tip #8: Make it part of your drip campaign
Your posts can be part of the email campaign, which sends out content on a schedule. Sometimes called behavioral emails, drip campaigns are triggered when your lead or customer performs a certain action such as signing up or purchasing. You can include a summary with a link on your email or put the entire content as a downloadable PDF on the email.
Tip #9: Turn the content’s salient points into quotes and post them on Twitter
Even with short content, you can still mine numerous quotes as repurposed content. Post these quotes on a schedule. You can use Hootsuite or Buffer to aid you in tweet scheduling.
Tip #10: Turn frequently asked questions into blog posts
What’s great about FAQs is it’s targeted to a specific set of buyer personas. Somebody is going to need those blog posts.
Tip #11: Refresh What’s Old
Aside from rewriting your old but highly valuable content, you can also add some more to it. You can include an infographic or an excerpt from your webinar to give that old content a fresh look. One catch, here, though. You must make sure that your content is evergreen.
Tip#12: Create bite-size tips out of a long post
Posts that include numbered lists are always a hit to readers. Otherwise, you can also turn each tip in the numbered list a whole post.
Tip# 13: Create a summary post
Gather posts of the same topic and turn the salient points into a summary post. Ensure that each time is summarized to give you readers a bird’s eye view of the topic. Link each of the items on the list to the corresponding post
Tip#14: The Hub and Spoke Method
With the Hub and Spoke method, you update your content on your site to make it relevant. You then write updates, news, and the likes about that content on other websites, linking back to your post on your website. This directs additional traffic to your website and, at the same time, giving them a more detailed uptake on the topic.
Tip# 15: Turn a list post into a quiz
Quizzes are a fun way to give teasers to your audience. You can post this on your social media platforms. Make sure to add a link to your website to drive traffic.
Here Are Actionable Ways to Repurpose Content
The type of original content determines the kind of repurposed content you’d have. For example, when most of your content is made of videos, you can transform it into a podcast.
When your content is mostly blog post
One of the best place to start looking for something worth repurposing is at your archives.
- Is it evergreen?
- Does it solve any problem your audience encounters?
- Does it have a relevant CTA?
If it answers all three of the questions above, you start creating smaller and shorter outlines. This can be challenging, but you should up to the task.
- Turn your blog to a rich media
- Turn it into a presentation or slide deck
This is the most suitable way to repurpose a long-form article. Why? Because there are so many things, you can do with a collection of images.
- Turn that presentation into a video
Turning a presentation to a video can be easy-peasy. There are lots of screencasting software in the market. Here are some of them:
- Separate the audio from the video
Once you’ve published your video on your Youtube channel, create an MP3 version of that video. You can, then, distribute it on audio sites such as the ones below:
- Use Your Slides as Images
You can use them as standalone images for social media. Be sure to include your branding, and the images are connected to the post.
- Create an Infographic from those presentation images
Try to use tools like Canva and Piktochart. These tools have drag-and-drop builders and templates, so even if you don’t have enough designing experience, you can still create engaging infographics.
- Embed your rich content in places where you publish
Add this type of content anywhere you think is applicable.
- Create an e-book
You can make this downloadable. You can combine several topics to make a comprehensive e-book on a general subject.
- Turn your e-book into a series or an online course
You can either create smaller posts in a series. If you can make it into a course, do so.
- Syndicate it
Medium is a great place to post and share content. It has more than 120 million readers. Your repurposed content can attract an audience you’d never imagine existed. Don’t publish to Medium at the same time as your published date on your website. Give Google time to index your original post so the Medium post won’t affect your rankings. Be sure that the one on Medium should be linked to the original post.
- Convert It into a Podcast
Podcasts are gaining traction now that Google has started indexing podcasts in its search results. Podcast listeners are more likely to be highly-learned, high earners, and highly engaged audiences. People who heard about a product on a podcast is more likely to purchase that product.
When you have responses in Q&A sites
When you engage in websites like Reddit and Quora to answer some questions, you can use your in-depth answers there to create a blog post.
When you have webinars
When you conducted a webinar, and some people could not attend, there are three ways you can repurpose that content. Remember that you need to inform people of the repurposed content. This content can also be a great platform to introduce future webinars.
- Turn It into a Presentation
You can turn your webinars into presentations on SlideShare. You have to create a Powerpoint presentation or any presentation tool similar to the former. Upload this file to SlideShare. You can share a link to the audience.
- Turn It into a YouTube Video
You can turn it into a video and upload it on YouTube. This would help your audience who have not been able to view your webinar on its scheduled time. You can make a shorter video out of your webinar.
- Turn It into Blog Post
Alternatively, you can take screenshots of your webinar and use those images as part of your blog of the same topic
- When you have infographics
You can create boards on Pinterest from your infographics. You can even post them on other social media platforms.
When you have video content
You can also create shorter blogs in a series out of your videos. You can also transcribe those videos and add them as blogs. You can even create an e-book and include that video as gated content.
When you have an Ebook
There’s so much data to be retrieved from an e-book. For a one-hundred-page e-book, you can curate many blog posts, videos, cheat sheets, and videos to be shared in all sorts of online channels. You can even repackage your e-book into chunks of content for email marketing. Send these to your subscribers. You might want to use Sendinblue or Mailchimp as your email marketing tool.
How Refurbished Content Can Benefit the Business
Small business owners and content marketers can benefit well from repurposed content. Targeting different social media platforms while conveying the same idea breaks the multiscreen reality. Your audience won’t get bored with your content because you are putting it on different kinds of rich media.
Different strokes for Different Folks
Different types of content cater to different tastes of people. Some people prefer images and videos over long content. Others prefer listening than watching hour-long videos.
Diversity
That used-to-be-performing well post can get a facelift from repurposed content. By changing how the content looks, you are showing your audience the diversity of content.
Wider Reach
You’d utilize your resources better and, at the same time, reach more audiences. Let’s say you’d refurbish a post and created a video and infographics from it. You distributed it to several channels. You wouldn’t waste a lot of time and money doing so.
Revamping Content vs. Repurposing Content
What Is Your Purpose
Did your goals change? The perfect time to repurpose your content is when your goals have shifted, but if you still want to keep your objectives, then revamping that old content might be the better strategy for you. Revamping would mean changing little bits of the content here and there. On the other hand, repurposing content means hugely changing the latter.
What Are Your Existing Content
Audit your content and choose the ones that align with your current goals. Repurpose your old content that is doing well. In essence, you are capitalizing on content that is already great. On the other hand, you revamp an ar