When content is king, marketers must use a number of strategies to ensure its utility and significance. Repurposing existing content is perhaps the smartest and most cost-effective way to leverage an organization’s intelligence.
Repurposing or recycling is one way of using available content in various ways to get its maximum value.
Firstly, what constitutes content that can be fruitfully repurposed?
We could list some content products here. Typically, these are pieces of content that can be repurposed for reuse, recycling, or for social media:
This is not an exhaustive list by any means. However, it indicates the kind of content pieces that can be recycled for huge benefit over various new formats and a long period of time.
With a smart social media deliverables structure, almost any existing content can be leveraged for better, far-reaching use.
What is Actually Repurposing Existing Content – and Why Should I Do it?
Repurposing existing content is about adding updated value to old content so its relevance is increased. For instance, using an older blog but updating statistics to make it more relevant to context. Perhaps adding some new thought leader opinions in the form of quotes will also add value to the blog.
So, reusing old content and reposting it as it is not repurposing. The whole focus is to make older content more relevant to current usage. Sometimes, this is also about creating several shorter bytes from older but larger content – like a whitepaper. Using some sections, portions, or infographics from it to create newer usable content pieces is the strategy of repurposing.
Moreover, using someone else’s content for your posting is not repurposing either. It’s stealing or plagiarism. And no, making cosmetic changes to the content and posting it for your marketing purposes is not repurposing either.
And lastly, using the same piece across different channels is not content repurposing.
Next is the question: Why should I repurpose content?
The first answer is to derive value from existing content. That content may have been good in its original form, but with a little updating, it might be priceless now! This will save time and money when writing saleable content from scratch. It also helps to increase the number of content bytes that can be used, especially in social media. A small idea – an eBook of 25 pages can potentially be the parent of 50 potential repurposed pieces, including infographics for social media and bytes for social platforms.
Another non-creative reason is that using similar content or on the same subject, centering around a pillar topic and similar targeted keywords, may give you a better SEO boost. New content is always good, but getting more out of what’s already created is better! Google identifies the writer as an expert, and this helps in better positioning your content for search engines.
How to Repurpose Content
Blogs:
- Creating a blog post requires a good amount of research. When the blog is finally ready, the writer ensures that the best nuggets of information are drawn from the research and used in the blog. This means it is an in-depth piece of work.
- Regular blog with relevant keywords
- Convert into infographics to bring out the context and impact. This is useful for blogs that are statistical in nature and contain a number of relevant data points.
- Convert into a short video, using content quotes from the blog and creating a flow. This is especially useful for blogs with a good amount of data and quotes.
- Along with a longer version of an eBook or video, a slide share of the same material is very useful for better media dissemination of content. It becomes much easier to insert relevant and popular keywords in context here! Slide Shares are easy to share with your audiences. They offer an interesting way to peek into your expertise and content. However, the biggest advantage of Slide shares is that you can introduce design elements that cannot be done in a plain vanilla blog.
- Create an eBook using a series of Blogs on similar topics. This will establish thought leadership in both the minds of your audiences and Google!
Repurposing Content for social media:
- Repurpose for social media– specifically for social media, thought leadership quotes can be used from existing blogs.
- Snippets from blogs, alongside these quotes and possibly very accurate and relevant data points, can be used for social media and outreach products like newsletters.
- Infographics derived from blogs can also be used for social media posting. It’s been established that visual data appeals far more to social media users than written information.
- Use older images as background for social media posts. These could be high-quality visuals that you paid a bomb for and could use only once.
- Use existing or podcast videos, and make snippets of less than a minute to post an impactful message on social media. Experts say video posts have the highest engagement rates.
- Every product, solution, or piece of content posted digitally can be used to invite user reviews or comments. Use these comments on social media to increase further engagement. This is content that you did not have to create, but it carries far more credit and trust for the market since it comes from the user base!
These are only a few ideas for repurposing existing content for better utilization.
We shall see some more in the next blog in the series.
Add a Comment