Repurposing Digital Content

Repurposing digital content sounds pretty easy, right? Take existing content, rewrite it a bit, add in some up-to-date stats and facts, and give it a new visual. Except that’s not what it means to repurpose content. Repurposing content is more than just a quick facelift. It’s all-over cosmetic surgery. When choosing content for repurposing, look at your metrics. Note what has performed well, and think about what can be done to deliver a fresh experience. Dig into your archives to find content that would benefit from being updated.

It Saves Times – Most businesses simply don’t have the time to produce new and engaging content each and every day. You can give your audience the impression that you do by making the most of the content that already exists on your website and adapting it to suit a new format or audience.

Your Old Content Still Holds Value – You’re probably proud of the content you’ve created over the time you’ve been in business, and it’s a shame to see all that quality content fester because nobody is coming to see it. Repurposing the content that still holds value and relevance for your audience can give it a new lease of life.

It Can Tease People Into Visiting Your Website – A primary objective of social media marketing is to get people to click-through to your website, but it can prove difficult to do that. With repurposed content, you can tease people into visiting your website by showing them a snippet of what they expect to see.

Good For SEO – The larger your online presence, the more visible you are to Google. However, it’s quite feasible your audience is active on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. Repurposed content enables you to be in two or three places at once.

Reach New Audiences – When you first publish a piece of content, the performance might be average. However, over time, it gains traction and does a little better. When you repurpose that content in a new format and/or update it, you can reach new audience segments that otherwise may have never found it.

Reinforce Your Message – Marketing Rule Of Seven states that buyers need to hear your message approximately seven times before they will close the deal. Rather than covering a topic once and letting it disappear into the archives, repurpose your articles to consistently deliver your message to your audience.

Sometimes understanding what is NOT repurposed digital content helps you understand what is good repurposed content. Here are some ideas to stay away from.

• Taking a news article and spinning it for your brand/industry.
• Taking multiple news articles and turning them into a blog.
• Taking a Facebook post and pushing it out on Snapchat.
• Re-sharing an old piece of content on social media with a new description.

Turn Blog Posts Into Podcasts – Podcasts can be a platform to deliver “dry” or “difficult” content in a digestible way. An ultimate guide blog post you’ve written with a lot of sections could be a contender for a podcast episode. A podcast episode, or a series of podcast episodes, allows you to expand on the information and provide examples you’ve pulled from the post in a conversational way. Podcasts are also more accessible. Listeners would be able to access the information on the go, rather than reading a blog post on a desktop.

Use Webpage Content For Video Content – Videos are engaging and entertaining. A video that has a couple of interesting graphics could really pull the viewer in. If you have a YouTube content strategy, producing a video with blog post information could fit into that strategy like a glove. This tactic makes your content available across more than one platform. Another distribution idea for video content is to add it to your blog post. Simply add “Video” to the title, keep the introduction, and use the video for the body.

Turn Internal Data Into Case Studies – If you gather social media metrics, collect SEO data, or analyze traffic performance, there’s room to use that data to make a case study. One benefit of turning collected data into a case study is that it shows your readership that you are effective at interpreting data. Another is that by doing the study, you’ll have the chance to figure out the cause and effect of important decisions you’ve made for your business. For distribution, you can turn the case study into a blog post, but you can also make it a content offer to potentially boost conversion. It can also be a special download offer for email subscribers.

Use Testimonials For Social Media Content Or Product Pages – Adding testimonials in visible places draws in customers who don’t consider purchasing from a business without reading a testimonial. It also lets customers know that your business is already trusted by audience members. Testimonials can also improve customer relationships. Putting reviews or testimonials in the spotlight sends a message to customers that their voice is being heard and matters.

Update Old Blog Posts With New Information – As you’re combing through your blog archive, pick out the posts that can still be valuable with a few tweaks. Updating blog posts is also a great time saver. You don’t have to write a completely new post, and most of the content is already publish-ready. All you have to do is make the information current. When it comes to distribution, you can notate in the title that the post has been updated with new information. Doing so draws in readers looking for the latest data.

Offer Guest Contributions For Topics You’ve Already Covered – Let’s say there’s a topic you feel like an expert in, but you’ve already written a blog post about it. Have you reached out to similar businesses in the industry for an interview about the topic? This tactic for repurposing content builds a relationship with a business in your industry that can be useful in future endeavors. Additionally, the exposure brings the audience of that business to yours.

Repurposing digital content is an easy way to take your old or new content and transition it into many different distribution avenues. The biggest advantage of repurposing your content is that it saves you time. It also has many other effects including teasing people into visiting your website, increases your SEO value, reaches new audiences, and reinforces your message.

So go ahead, take a look at some of your content and think about how you can give it an overall cosmetic surgery to reach new audiences. Look at your metrics and note what has performed well and think about what can be done to deliver a fresh experience. Dig into your archives to find content that would benefit from being updated. Most important have some fun with it.

Thanks for reading.

DZM