Why You Should Repurpose Content

Summary

The blog discusses the concept of content repurposing, which involves recycling existing content into new formats to reach broader audiences and improve SEO. By repurposing high-performing content and planning for future repurposing opportunities, marketers can reduce the workload, maintain consistency, and deliver valuable content to their audience through different mediums.

By Cameron Katoozi, Marketing Consultant at Heinz Marketing

It’s no surprise that we all have more work to do than there are hours in the day. As marketers, we have to continually bring exciting and creative content to audiences on a regular cadence, but with our busy schedules, it’s hard to dedicate time to brainstorming and content creation. Luckily, content repurposing can help us reduce that stress while promoting valuable content in new formats. In this post, I’ll cover the basics of repurposing content, the benefits, and how to incorporate it moving forward.

What is repurposed content?

Repurposing content is the act of recycling existing content in new formats. For example, converting an old blog on your website into an infographic. If the content is slightly old, this is your chance to reformat the information you covered in a new medium and provide updated info on the topic to match current events. Repurposed content should not be viewed as ‘cheating the system’ in any way, as you still need to update the info to be relevant and gain new traction. Simply posting an old blog on social media without updating the content is not repurposing content.

What content should be repurposed?

When planning your content calendar or creating a content strategy, you want to consider the types of content you can repurpose for future posts. You also should be thinking about content down the pipeline; how can I create this now so it can be repurposed 6 months or a year later?

First, we want to start with your highest-performing content pieces. With the help of a well-defined Martech stack, we can use different tools like a Content Management System to gather insights on the highest-performing content pieces and list those out. Something else to consider during this audit is which formats work the best with your audience – do you get the most traction on blog posts? Videos? Whitepapers? Capitalize on the highest-performing formats and repurpose your content to be in line with those mediums.

When looking at new content, we want to think about how this can be repurposed in the future. Long-form content like reports, whitepapers, and some blog posts often cover multiple topics. In some cases, these topics are mentioned at a high level but never go into further detail. This presents a great opportunity to provide separate deep dives on specific portions of those long-form pieces.

Have an old research report? Take the top 4 findings and create blogs or short videos on those findings individually. Make sure to link the original report in each of those new content pieces to help with content distribution. If your line of work doesn’t involve research reports, try converting a guide into an infographic. Visualize the steps in your guide to make the content easier to consume. You can also promote that visual across your social media and start new conversations in the comment sections. There are endless possibilities for repurposing your content.

What are the benefits?

Expand your reach

Everyone intakes knowledge differently. A blog may be easy for one person to read and understand but seeing that content in video format may resonate better with others.  Only presenting your topic in one medium automatically lowers your potential reach for that content piece. You might be writing about a very important topic in your field, but many people may glance over it or completely ignore it since they prefer to see things in an infographic or video instead of a blog post. Meet your audiences’ preferences by repurposing your content in different formats to reach new people you would have otherwise missed.

Better SEO

The best way to promote keyword searches is to have multiple links connected to them. By having multiple content pieces connected to one keyword, you are able to boost your ranking on SERP, which ultimately results in more clicks and higher website traffic.

Stay consistent

As previously mentioned, we do not have time to constantly be creating new content week after week. Some days, we may have terrible writer’s block and end up delivering half-baked content, or something you are not satisfied with. We never want to publish content for the sake of not missing a day in your editorial calendar. All content should be high-quality and purposeful. With repurposed content, you can allow yourself some breathing room and save some time on reformatting content you’ve already written, instead of creating something brand new. This way, you can stay on schedule, and deliver new content to your audience.

Wrapping it up

At the end of the day, we want to provide our audiences with insightful, and high-value content. We have to face the facts and realize that we don’t always have the time or energy to think of new topics and ideas. When facing a similar situation, you can save time and reach new audiences by repurposing your content instead. Don’t look at this as a replacement for developing new content but as a supplement to your existing strategy. Bring life to your high-traffic, old content and repurpose it in a new format for new viewers to enjoy.