By Matt Bertram

By Matt Bertram

Matt Bertram, is the lead digital strategist at EWR Digital. He is the co-host of the Best SEO Podcast: Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. Currently writes for Search Engine Journal, Forbes and Entrepreneur.

Creating content—high-quality, engaging content that delivers results—is tough. Whether it’s an article, a podcast, or a short video, content creation involves a relatively lengthy process that can feel overwhelming. 

One of the crucial factors that can determine the success of your content marketing strategy is the quality of your content. According to Semrush, 55% of content marketing strategies that succeeded focused on brushing up on content quality. But what happens if you hit a content creation roadblock? How can you sustain growth even without a steady stream of fresh content? 

Why not look into repurposing some of your old content? 

Now, you might think that “repurposing content” simply means copying some of your existing content and pasting it onto other marketing channels. 

You might ask yourself, “Isn’t that cheating?” No, it’s not. 

Let’s look at why content repurposing or recycling can benefit your business and what you can do to give your content more mileage.

Why Repurpose Content in the First Place?

Repurposing or recycling content means taking your content, whether it’s the entire piece or just parts of it, and reusing it by giving the content a new format to get more mileage. For example, if you have an article that you want to repurpose, you can turn it into a podcast or a short video. There are many ways you can repurpose content, and some of the benefits it provides include:

It Saves You Time

Aside from saving you a lot of time, content repurposing offers more freedom to focus on creating additional high-quality assets like comprehensive guides or video tutorials. All without you having to worry about creating fresh content for all the different platforms that your business has. 

It’s Scalable

Repurposing content is easily scalable and improves content distribution. There’s no need for you to create content from scratch. Instead, you can use existing content and use it as a basis for future publications.This process helps you maintain your publishing schedule without compromising the quality of your work. 

It Can Improve Your SEO

Reusing content will help improve your SEO because you have several opportunities to target crucial keywords. This can also play a role in improving your site’s organic visibility as well as reinforcing your brand’s message.

Connect With a New Audience

Repurposing can also mean adapting your existing content for a different audience, allowing you to expand your reach and engage a new audience. Not everyone prefers written guides. Some visitors would rather watch a short video tutorial. Reformatting your content, helps you extend your reach by offering spots to place your content, tapping into new audience segments.

However, remember that you need to go about repurposing your content with intention. When you repurpose your content, be careful not to make your audience feel like they’re coming across something repetitive or mediocre.

What Kind of Content Can Be Repurposed?

Repurposing content makes a lot of sense, especially if you’ve built up an archive of popular or top-performing content. 

Some of the best types of content to recycle are the following:

Evergreen content

Start by browsing your archive to look for high-quality and relevant content. Evergreen content is ideal for content repurposing because it can be recycled in many ways. 

Popular or content that’s performing well

Go through your archive to find popular content. You can use tools such as Google Analytics or YouTube Analytics to jumpstart your search and help you find pieces of content that bring in a lot of traffic.

New content

Yes, new content can be recycled, especially if they’re long-form. Doing so can help you improve your content distribution, keeping in mind that the content you want to repurpose should still be valuable and relevant to your audience. 

Content that needs updating

Another way to approach content repurposing is to create new, unique pieces with the mindset of repurposing them later.

5 Clever Ways to Repurpose Content

Transform written content into audio content

Audio content, particularly podcasts, is a great way to boost SEO and brand awareness for your business. Plus, you can monetize your podcast. If you have evergreen content, like a long-form article, for example, you can repurpose that into audio content. This allows visitors who prefer listening to podcasts to tune in and listen to your content. Moreover, you can use your existing content as a jumping-off point for a podcast series where you can engage in more in-depth discussions. 

Turn your podcasts into video content

If you find content that you’re planning to repurpose, one way to go about it is to create video content. With your podcast, for example, instead of just releasing it as audio content, why not film your session and turn that into video clips that you can post on YouTube or Linkedin or Instagram? 

Create your own infographics

Using infographics can help boost website traffic by 12%. Aside from capturing your audience’s attention, colorful visuals like infographics can also help boost your sales up to 80%. For example, if you have content that’s heavy on data, then you can turn that into an easy-to-digest infographic that you can share on your social media channels. This also makes it more accessible to different types of audiences. Aside from data, you can turn instructional resources like guides into simple and shareable infographics. 

Update your old posts

Repurposing content can be as simple as updating your old articles or blog posts with new information. Say you’ve compiled a list of statistics for 2021. You can add new information for 2022 within that same post to keep its URL and SEO value instead of creating a new, separate post. Then, you can promote your updated article to your other channels. Don’t forget to indicate the date of modification. 

Break down long-form content into multiple posts

This is ideal for websites that publish a lot of long-form content. Instead of creating one very long blog post, why not break that down into multiple posts? One of the best content types for this content repurposing approach is in-depth guides. With this, you can break off your blog into sections or different posts, giving you more room to elaborate on each section. 

A Better Way to Repurpose Content 

Repurposing content can be an effective marketing strategy when done properly. However, navigating the murky waters of marketing, particularly content marketing, can be challenging. Need help with streamlining your content marketing strategy? Schedule a one-on-one consultation with us and allow us to offer you a better way to repurpose your content and bolster your marketing tactics.