A phrase you often hear is ‘repurpose your content’ But what does it mean and how would it work? Once the basics are explained it may sound very familiar and is certainly something that makes sense.
In simple terms, it’s the act of reusing your existing content. A sort of recycling option for a previously published piece. An opportunity to add more value, deepen and even broaden the content so you can reach more of your target audience.
Quality content deserves another outing
When you’re creating oodles of content there will be popular pieces. How do you know this? Because you can track engagement through Google Analytics or social media platforms, enabling you to identify which topics or mediums perform the best.
Even with the best intentions, you’ll not reach everyone you want to. This is why the act of repurposing your content becomes such a useful process. It gives you another opportunity to share and engage with your audience. You already know it’s of interest so give it another outing.
Creating evergreen content
There is such a thing as ‘evergreen content’ and it’s quite an apt phrase. As the name might suggest, once created this content continues to be relevant and of value to your audience. This means evergreen content was made for repurposing and there are two types:
- You can create timeless content. It has value and remains relevant to your audience. Not focussed on current events or the latest trend. More about ‘how’ you do something, ‘what it means’ or ‘top tips’.
Wikipedia is a good example here. An online encyclopedia everyone uses for reference and one that you can update. If you’re asking a question or seeking a definition, this site will appear on the first page of Google.
- Content that you need to revisit. Not in a major sense but more so you can update the information. For example, if your topic is related to technology or digital you may need to tweak the content as the latest developments will make it out of date.
A blog by Hootsuite published in 2020 shares the latest Facebook algorithm. What they also describe is how this has evolved since Facebook started in 2004. A topic you need to keep up-to-date with and in need of revisiting.
What is important for any type of evergreen content is the keyword search. If you’re going to invest your time in this research, you want it to continue performing in terms of Google search and SEO. Interlinking your posts will also help boost rankings.
Repackage your content
If you already have a large bank of content why not look at packaging it. For example, a series of related blogs could be repurposed into one piece of content.
Rather than talk about the individual topics in each blog, head it up as ‘9 ways to create quality content’. Or, why not go one step further? Create a guide or ebook that people can download to use as a reference resource.
You could produce snippets of your content in a newsletter. Round up a month’s worth of content and summarise each piece. This is a great way to increase the likelihood of your audience seeing your content. No one is waiting for your next post, so make sure you make it as easy as possible for them to catch up.
An area that is often overlooked is your internal content. You produce presentations, webinars and briefings for your staff, so why not take these and adapt them with your target audience in mind? It will be relevant, you just need to change your approach.
Present your content in different ways
When someone mentions content, blogs are often the first item that comes to mind. You may need to broaden your perspective. Reformatting content for different media is a big opportunity, it’s also quite exciting.
Taking words and putting them into a visual context will extend your reach and open up new audiences too. Podcasting, video and infographics are all popular mediums. The basic content will be the same, just presented through a different delivery channel.
Infographics are also very popular. Visually you can relay a lot of information in a format that is easy to absorb. It is fair to say that the design is just as important as the content is. It needs to be appealing to the eye with bite-size pieces of information. But the effort will be worth it as these are very easy to share.
There are free templates available from sites such as Canva or Visme.
Repurposing your content into social media posts is another option. You can share a snippet, a taster that attracts your audience. Make it intriguing or focus on a key benefit. Encourage readers to click through and view the full piece. In this scenario, statistics are quite powerful for grabbing attention and encouraging further investigation.
The focus is so often on generating new, fresh content. But if you have produced a quality piece in the first instance, there is no harm in repurposing. If you do this through different media it also becomes less one-dimensional.
