Do you have a collection of all of your best blog posts? The ones that feature high-quality content and received great feedback? I’m sure that you do – especially if you’ve blogged for awhile. It’s the posts that received comments and shares. Ones that are helpful and popular. So today we’re going to talk about how and why you should repurpose your old content. Because it would be a shame to just let them sit there. Especially if they could still help you grow!
It really is a great idea to repurpose your content. Mainly because it gives you the opportunity to breathe new life into old content. All while giving you value from your all-star posts. When you re-purpose your old content you are essentially making it work for you. Which is always an added bonus. Consequently it allows the best parts of your blog to continue to be in the spotlight.
Benefits of Re-purposed Content
We all know that time is a precious commodity. That’s why when you re-purpose content, you can save time in terms of the creation process. Repurposed content can be viewed this way: create less, promote more. Every writer hits a wall sometimes. Even bloggers. So if writer’s block has you in it’s hold, it doesn’t hurt to re-purpose your all-star content.
You don’t have to always create content, you just have to showcase the awesome content you already have and get it into the hands of more people.
Advantages of Re-purposed Content
Where to Find Content To Deserves To Be Repurposed
So how do you find the right content to re-purpose? The first place you should look is within your blog archives. Review your history of posts with the following in mind:
Review your most popular posts. Check your site analytics to see which ones have performed best in the past month. It doesn’t hurt to check the past year. So when you look at your monthly reports, keep your eyes peeled for top content.
See if you have more to say. Finally, go through your archives and see if you’ve written about a specific topic more than once. If so, you need to be open to any blog post that you might be able to improve on. Especially if something has changed. Or if there’s new information that you want to share.
10 WAYS TO REPURPOSE CONTENT
The goal is to add value to the original blog post. It doesn’t just mean taking an old piece of content and using it again and again. Consequently, when you repurpose your old posts you need to alter it to make it fresh. As result, you can appeal to a new audience. Let’s take a look at 12 ways in which you can repurpose your existing content.
1 Create New Blog Posts
High-quality content is a great way to create EVEN MORE high-quality content. The best part is that your readers can benefit from both posts. One of the easiest ways to do this is to go ahead and make those “list style posts” into a proper series. Make sure that each post covers individual pieces of content.
All you have to do is take a list post you already have and use each item as a new post of it’s own. This gives you the chance to expand, at length, on different aspects of the original post. You can go more into detail, add background information, tutorials and examples.
The flipside of the numbered lists can also be done. You can take a group of several related posts and collect them into a single summary post. This is really great for blogs that write quicker posts. Because you have a chance to easily create comprehensive posts this way.
2 Create A Presentation
Yes, like a little slideshow! If you have cool statistics, awesome quotes and advice – you can make them into slides. Which results in a presentation that can offer an easy-to-read recap of your original content. Share these slides to a site like SlideShare, so you can get even more engagement.
In order to create a slide, head over to Canva (which is a free photo-editing program). What makes Canva great for creating slides is that they have premade templates for social media images, blog graphics and presentations.
Once the slides are done, you can create the presentation with a variety of programs. Such as PowerPoint or Google Drive.
3 Build an Infographic
An infographic is a single photo that offers a complete summary of the content within a post. Think of it more as a visual outline of the major talking points. If you have a lot of data in your post, infographics a killer way to relay data or to simply break up an article. You can use PicMonkey to easily create an infographic.
4 Create a Pinterest-Friendly Instructo-graphic
Think of this as a graphic fit for Pinterest. These “instructographics” have a very similar look and feel to an infographic. But instead, they focus more on the how-to aspect. The word is pretty much a mashup of instructions AND graphics. So obviously there should be a teaching element to the design. Pinterest is pretty popular and it’s a great way to gain exposure. Mainly because it’s both visual and actionable. Any how-to posts in your archives would be great to turn into a instructographic.
5 Refresh and Republish Old Posts
Sometimes when you’re reviewing your blog content, you might come across an epic article that was held back by a few bits of information that hasn’t aged well. Change is inevitable. And even those posts written with 100% accuracy can become dated. In these cases, there is value in repurposing this content as a new, updated post. Just take a look at your posts and track which ones might qualify for a follow-up or modification.
It isn’t hard to modify old content this way either. It’s pretty straightforward. You might even be able to salvage the majority of the post and only change a few details. Whenever you publish, you can add a quick note at the beginning or end to let readers know about the post’s origin. As well as to let them know that some things have changed.
Here’s the easiest way to repurpose old content:
However, you may come across a post that needs a refresh, but still ranks well and gets significant traffic. In this case, it might be better to give the post a quick makeover as opposed to creating an entirely new post. Don’t fret! There is a workaround….
Update the content in the post, but make sure to use the same existing URL. This makes it so the SEO holds it’s value. Then promote it. Some blogging platforms even let you change the publish date. Which enables you to keep the URL but show it on your blog as a brand new post.
6 Repurpose and Re-Promote To Social Media
One of the best things about finding old content is that you can share it whenever you want. With almost the same value as you did when it was initially published. It might seem counterintuitive to share the same content to the same audience, but it can be effective when it comes to reaching people in different time zones. You even have the chance to reach new followers and test variations of headlines.
7 Repost On Quora
You might already have a social media marketing plan for your content. Especially on Facebook, Twitter, Google + and Instagram. But Quora might work for you too! The social answers site makes it easy to repurpose content in replies to questions or as posts to Quora’s user blogs.
This can also work in reverse – your answers on Quora can become the seeds for blog posts on your site.
8 Create a Daily Email Series
Some content, whether it’s one in-depth article or a series of posts on the same topic, has the ability to be broken down. Which is ideal for any daily email series. For example, this post you’re reading right now. Each of these methods can be an email of its own. Add in a few more instructions, examples and photos and you’re set. The foundation is already in place and you are able to extend the life of your content.
Once you have your email series all set, head over to a free or premium service like MailChimp. You can offer the series to readers on your blog and use it as a way to create new leads and subscribers.
9 Write a Guest Post
Quality content has a way of leading into new ideas, stories and posts on your own blog. And content can just as easily spark your outreach efforts and guest posts. One way to look at this content-as-a-guest-post strategy is the Hub and Spoke Method. The key is to view the original piece of content as the hub and your guest posts as the spokes. Pretty much like a wheel. These parts are connected, which means your content on other sites will essentially drive readers and traffic back to your blog. There are some pretty awesome benefits to this.
It helps you:
Keep in mind that these new, additional posts don’t need to be as in-depth as your original posts. So you can quickly write summaries and bring in new facts to spin the content in a new way.
10 Create a Podcast or Video Series
Chances are that some of your audience prefers content they don’t have to read. Podcasts and videos should be one of the most important methods when it comes to repurposed content. Because they open a new and different way to connect with others.
Podcasts are like books on tape. Or in this case, a blog on tape. Which is a good starting point, but the best podcasts use original content as a jumping off point for a larger discussion. You could do this by discussing a topic that relates to old pieces of content that you have previously posted.
The benefit is that each podcast makes a new post on your blog. You can always add in a transcript in order to appeal to your readers too. Because just like there are people who’d rather listen, there are ones who’d rather read.
For those of you who’d like to create a video, blog posts can be great for material. The text of the post can actually become the foundation of your script. You can present the topic in lecture style or even add some graphics and enhancements.
Well, there you have it… 10 ways to repurpose your content.
The takeaway here is that repurposed content can be a big time saver. There are benefits in terms of SEO, reach and much more. You might even find value in terms of thinking ahead. You can start to think of ways to repurpose your content before you start a new blog post. Think of it this way, a single post can actually turn into a dozen. So, as long as you focus on adding value to the original content, your repurpose efforts will be successful.
How does repurposed content fit it your marketing plan? What ways have you found to be the easiest or most effective way to repurpose content? Let us know in the comments below so we can discuss!
