Repurposing Content: Maximizing Your Reach and SEO Potential

You certainly have a lot of work to do as a marketer (and not enough time to get it done). Writer’s block may also occur from time to time, preventing you from producing original, fresh content.

You always look for ways to simplify your job while still producing high-quality content on a regular basis in light of these difficulties. Fortunately, content repurposing is available to alleviate part of your burden.

Repurposing content could initially appear to be a technique to game the system, but it isn’t. Your current, top-notch material is being reworked and presented on new channels in a different format.

In this article, we’ll examine specific tactics for repurposing content you’ve already written as well as the fundamentals of content repurposing and the advantages it can have for your company. Creating fresh material with future repurposing in mind will also be covered.

What is Repurposing Content?

Reusing old material and presenting it in a different manner to increase its reach and longevity is known as content repurposing, also known as content recycling. With content repurposing, you can plan ahead for a variety of methods to share fresh material as you develop it.

As I previously indicated, if you’re not familiar with the tactic, content repurposing may seem like a cop-out. Your audience shouldn’t get the impression that your content is repetitious or that you don’t care about producing original content for each channel.

You might also believe that content repurposing is using someone else’s original work and editing it to meet your brand’s message. Repurposing content is none of these. You’re not being repetitious; rather, you’re repurposing content that you and your team have worked hard to produce while ensuring that all demographic groups in your audience may benefit from what you have to give.

Let’s quickly go over what content repurposing is and isn’t to make things more clear.

Content repurposing is:

• Sharing a previous blog article that you’ve updated with fresh information, pertinent statistics, and quotes from thought leaders.
• Using important data from an Ebook, an infographic with the statistics was made and posted on Twitter.
• Making podcast recording session videos to share on Instagram to build anticipation and buzz for a forthcoming episode.

Content repurposing isn’t:

• Sharing a blog post from the past without upgrading it for relevancy and just modifying the description. (This could be viewed as being lazy.)
• The act of copyediting news content from another website to fit your brand or company image. Although it technically qualifies as repurposing, most of this is theft.
• Posting a campaign throughout many social media platforms. (This is cross-channel marketing; it is not repurposing.)

Why Should I Repurpose Content?

You can save time by repurposing existing material or by producing new content with repurposing in mind. You already have the data to help you identify high-performing content to rework and redistribute, or you’re writing a blog post that will work well as a podcast episode, a quoted snippet on Instagram, or a section of an ebook collection.

Repurposing content may also help your SEO efforts. Search engine crawlers will typically regard you as an authoritative source if you consistently provide content with comparable targeted keywords. You’re not just producing content for the sake of it; instead, you’re giving your users access to valuable materials in a variety of formats.

Repurposing content also enables you to scale in terms of content volume and audience reach. You can establish a presence by simply writing a blog post, but writing one that can also be converted into an email newsletter or a how-to YouTube video gives you three distinct types of content in one, as well as a presence across three different platforms with three distinct and diverse audience groups.

If you’re interested in learning more, the free content repurposing mini-course from any of the online sources goes into greater detail on the advantages of content repurposing.

Let’s discuss alternative strategies for repurposing your content given the advantages it can bring to your marketing initiatives.

How to Repurpose Content?

Repurposing content entails employing one asset in multiple places, as was already established. Start by looking at your stats if you want to repurpose current content for several platforms. Keep in mind what has been successful and come up with ideas for new ways to provide the same material to your various target audiences.

If you believe there is no way to reuse the content you already have or will have, there most likely is a solution. Below, we’ll discuss a few possibilities.

How To Repurpose Blog Content?

If you manage a blog, you most likely have a sizable number of excellent blog posts. Although it might not seem possible, there are techniques to change your text-heavy content into alternative formats.

1. Create a YouTube video.

How-to articles make excellent YouTube visual instructions, especially those with lots of visuals. Let’s say your company trains salespeople in the art of closing deals. A script can be written to go with a blog article, but it can also be turned into a YouTube video where a real salesman performs the script.

2. Create a SlideShare.

Since you’re only putting your blog content into presentation form, this is one of the simpler methods to repurpose it. Choose a piece of content that performs well and recreate it as a SlideShare. SlideShares are advantageous since they are simple to publish and expose your ideas to viewers in a fresh, appealing way. Also, you can include additional graphic elements in presentations that aren’t often included in lengthy blog entries.

3. Create an infographic.

Got a blog post with a lot of data or statistics? Think about producing an infographic.

Customers want visuals, so coming up with a summary of your posts’ most important stats is a fresh, interesting method to give your content context. These infographics can be used within the blog article, but they can also be modified and shared on social media (which we’ll discuss later).

3. Create an ebook.

Making an ebook is a fantastic choice for long-form blog content that benefits your audience’s education. You can briefly explain some of the most important aspects of your topic in your blog post and then suggest the ebook as a more in-depth analysis of the material you’ve written. This approach was taken by Search Engine Journal, a well-known SEO resource, with its blog post series on content marketing. They provide a more in-depth ebook guide in addition to ten articles on the topic that are available for free.

5. Extract thought leadership quotes

Do you frequently seek out thought leaders or professionals from the industry to contribute to your writing? If you do, you hire them because you are aware of their insightfulness (and your audience will think so as well). Use incisive quotes from stories to make infographics, send out email newsletters, or publish on your social media pages.

6. Create a podcast episode. 

Consider producing podcasts from these popular pieces in the same way that you would pull quotes from thought leadership or industry leader postings. The blog article can be discussed in its original form or you can utilize the copy as a script, call thought leaders back for more in-depth discussions of the insight they provided for the postings or both.

As a result, there are many ways to repurpose your text-heavy blog entries so that their information is exposed to a wider audience. Although we briefly touched on it above, we’ll go over more instances of content repurposing for social media below.

Repurposing Content for Social Media

Much of the content kinds that social media platforms can provide can be recycled from your existing material. Here are six options to consider.

1. Employ old images as post backgrounds.

Got excellent images that you’ve only ever used once? Use them as post backgrounds if you can. As long as you stick to Instagram’s size guidelines, you can publish these photographs on their own to highlight a previous project or use them as the backdrop for quotes you take from blog posts.

2. Post clips from already-existing videos.

Do you have any business-related YouTube videos or other video content? Share excerpts on social media.

You may simply reuse a video for each of the platforms you have an account on if you tweak it to meet their video-length requirements. The majority of platforms allow you to submit video material. If you’re on the fence about doing this or are new to video in general, take into account the Wyzol statistics below: 85% of firms now utilize video as a marketing strategy, and 86% of video marketers claim that video offers a high return on investment (ROI).

3. Post user-generated content.

User-generated content might include everything from product page ratings to random tweets from delighted clients. Despite the impression that they solely benefit their intended audience, these can be adapted for social media. This is an instance of a cosmetic company, Black Girl Sunscreen, using customer feedback in an Instagram video to introduce a new product.

4. Repost material from your other profiles on social media

You can share content from your social media platforms on your other social media pages, despite what may seem like a complicated process.

This could look like capturing a screenshot of a Facebook post to share on LinkedIn, a snapshot of a YouTube thumbnail to advertise a new video on your Instagram Story, or a screenshot of a Tweet for your Instagram profile.

5. Create new infographics.

As previously indicated, turning current information into infographics is a useful repurposing technique, particularly when it comes to data.

The impact of your words is increased by data visualizations and visualizations in general, even though your audience can read about your results in blog posts or ebooks. Images are more likely to be remembered and help your audiences understand the importance of the information you’re providing them with. In actuality, three days later, visuals are 65% more recalled.

6. Extract quotes from existing content.

I noted before how effective it is to pull quotes from popular content, especially when those quotes come from thought leaders in the field, for use on social media platforms like Instagram or Twitter. Take these quotations, turn them into social media posts, and utilize them across all of your preferred social networks.

How To Repurpose Webinars and Videos?

Videos and webinars are distinctive types of material. They’re a fun method for your users to interact with what you have to offer, but sadly, not everybody in your target audience can always use them. Fortunately, there are strategies for repurposing them so that every one may take advantage of what you have to offer. We’ll go over how to reuse video content below to satisfy your audience’s various needs.

1. Create text transcripts of your videos.

Making transcripts is one of the simplest methods to guarantee that your webinars and videos are available to everyone. You can absolutely make captions for your content, but adding transcripts gives your audience members who rely on assistive technology a different method to enjoy what you have to offer.

2. Turn video transcripts into blog posts.

Transcripts can be used to create blog articles, which is another advantage. A transcript of a scripted video that has a logical flow will probably just require little editing before it can be turned into a blog post. For instance, Whiteboard Friday is a weekly video series created by the SEO tool Moz. They utilize a transcription technique to convert the videos into blog posts while still treating each video as a standalone piece of content.

3. Create a podcast episode.

In addition to using accessibility techniques, you can turn webinars and movies into podcasts. Simply extract the audio file, tidy it up using your choice program (see this Adobe tutorial for instructions), then upload it to your preferred podcasting service.

How To Repurpose Podcasts?

Now, several small-to-medium-sized businesses have started to capitalize on the podcast craze. Consider reading some good guides on launching a podcast for your company if you’re new to podcasts or just want a reminder. You will learn how to create your feed, arrange your information, and market to your intended audience with this resource.

Podcasts are special in that they let broadcasters humanize a brand or company using their own personal experiences and tales, frequently in the context of humorous conversations. This allows creators to engage with their audience on a personal level. A terrific approach to connecting with younger audiences, particularly Millennials and Generation Z, is through podcasts. In light of this, let’s discuss a few strategies for repurposing your podcasts to appeal to a larger audience.

1. Record your podcast sessions for social media

The human-like quality of podcasts is one of their appeals. Use this to your advantage and think about filming your sessions on video. To get your audience excited about new episodes, you can share video clips of previous episodes or just release teasers of upcoming episodes on social media. This is done by the podcast Queen Business, which was developed by and for Black women, and Instagram users. Their podcasts feature famous guests, which adds a level of excitement for their listeners and following.

You can also post full-length sessions on YouTube, or produce short video samples of heavy-hitting moments.

2. Extract quotations to post on social media.

Although this has already been brought up several times, find pertinent statements for social media, particularly if you plan to have guests on your show. You can share quotes from people your audience admires and considers to be reliable resources, such as industry leaders or famous people, on various social media channels or even in your blog entries.

3. Create transcripts of your podcasts.

For accessibility reasons and for blog entries, you can produce transcripts of your podcast audio in the same way that you may for your videos and webinars. But, it’s crucial to keep in mind that if the conversational tone of your episodes doesn’t match your blogging style, the podcast audio may need more editing than a scripted video or webinar.

4. Embed your podcasts into your blog posts

Nowadays, almost anything can be integrated. It not only enables you to share various types of material, but it’s also a fantastic method to provide your users with more context and value. You can integrate podcast episodes right into your blog posts if you use a popular CMS.

Repurpose by Updating Older Content

Let’s face it: conditions shift.

Could you update a few of your older posts? Probably. You could have fresh information or advice to offer on a subject you’ve previously written about. So take your previous post, edit it, add to it, and then republish it. Even though it’s a possibility, you shouldn’t have to completely revamp it; just make sure that it speaks to the audience of today.

Finding your best-performing blog posts by performing content analysis is another trick. Don’t publish as a fresh post if you see that a blog post isn’t as current as it could be but is still bringing in a tonne of traffic, and leads, or is ranking highly for a competitive keyword.

Instead, promote the changes you’ve made while updating the content within the same post to maintain the existing URL and SEO value. Some blogging platforms even let you edit the publish date, allowing you to show it as a brand-new article on your blog.

To boost the likelihood of producing leads, it’s also worthwhile to think about updating (or adding new) calls-to-action to articles that are still receiving traffic.

Ebooks allow you to do the same thing. Whether you released it last year or five years ago, give it some new upgrades and boost your promotion! By doing this, you can avoid spending the time necessary to start from zero while writing a blog post or Ebook while still enjoying its advantages.

If you go this path, think about using UpContent to make email digests and social media postings to distribute fresh, effective articles to your audience.

Leverage Your Existing Content to Drive Further Engagement

Overall, you create content because you are confident in your ability to benefit your viewers. The unfortunate truth is that producing high-quality content takes time. It requires effort, time, and resources, and the process can occasionally be tiresome.

Repurposing your existing content is designed to be an additional tactic rather than a replacement for writing new material. You may continue to produce fresh material while also revitalizing your previously published, excellent works and providing timely, timeless knowledge to your audience.

INFOGRAPHIC: 7 Killer Tricks To Repurpose Your Blog Content