Why You Should Be Repurposing Content

When it comes to creating quality content, you don’t always have to brainstorm brand new ideas. Oftentimes, you already have some superb pieces of content published that can be refreshed and repackaged for different platforms or audiences. This is called repurposing content.

Repurposing content is an effective tactic for improving SEO, brand awareness, audience engagement and your content strategy.

In this post, we’re going to share the benefits of repurposing content and discuss how to repurpose content effectively, including sharing our tips on repurposing blog content and repurposing content for social media.

Repurposing content is when you recycle and repackage existing pieces of content to better suit different platforms or audiences.

For example, you may transform a blog post into a how-to video tutorial or an eye-catching infographic. Or, you may take a detailed FAQ site page and transform it into a snappy Instagram story highlight.

Repurposing content is not about copying and pasting content from one platform to the next. Nor is it just a case of republishing an old blog post. Repurposed content needs to be thoughtfully tailored – whether that’s for a new medium, a new platform, a new audience, or all three.

Repurposing content should be factored into your content plan because it offers great potential for your brand, and here are five reasons why:

Repurposing content will help to give you an SEO boost. By sharing content with similar themes across different platforms, you increase the likelihood of generating organic search traffic.

When you repurpose content, you have the opportunity to target specific keywords, curate quality backlinks to your site, and signal to Google that you’re a knowledgeable, authoritative information source.

Repurposing content for social media and other platforms improves your chances of reaching a wider audience. You may even reach groups of people that you hadn’t realised would take an interest in your content or your brand.

You may want to tap into audiences who have different preferred styles of learning. Some people might not want to read a 1,500-word blog post, and are instead drawn in by an easily digestible infographic.

Also, you can recycle your content to target different buyer personas. As a company, you’re likely to have created more than one buyer persona, so it’s worth repurposing your best pieces of content in ways that will connect with each of them.

Another advantage of repurposing content is that it helps to increase your brand awareness. By maximising the use of multiple channels, you have extra potential to raise your brand’s profile with a wider group of people.

Recycling high-quality content for a multitude of platforms enables you to boost your online presence. In turn, it increases your chances of being seen and staying in the minds of potential customers. And, in time, this could improve your conversion rate.

Communicating similar, tailored pieces of content across different platforms helps to reinforce your brand’s messaging and voice. This repetition helps to increase the potential of people remembering your voice, and then acting upon it.

Seth Godin sums it up nicely:

“Delivering your message in different ways, over time, not only increases retention and impact, but it gives you the chance to describe what you’re doing from several angles”.

We love the idea of repurposing content because it’s an effective way to save time while sustaining high-quality.

You’ve already spent hours establishing the core of your content piece and thoughtfully strung together expert insight and ideas. So, by adapting your existing, best pieces of material to produce a variety of more content, you maximise your time without compromising on quality or results. Win-win.

Adapting your best content for consumption on different platforms is a good idea for reaching wider audiences, increasing brand awareness and strengthening brand voice. But, have you considered how working with different media across different channels is a good idea for content creators?

Repurposing content in various formats, and tailoring it to suit different platforms and audiences, helps you to develop your skills and expertise across multiple channels. This will enable you to become more confident and coherent in delivering your brand message, and more resourceful in marketing it to different groups of people.

Now that you understand what we mean by repurposing content, and why it’s a good idea, you’re probably wondering what are the best practises when it comes to how to repurpose content.

Firstly, take a look at, and prioritise, your top-performing content and your evergreen content. You can be confident that these pieces are high-quality and timeless and, in turn, can be repurposed into other high-quality and timeless pieces of content.

Next, consider how your content can be transformed into other formats. You’ll want to keep in mind that people differ in how they prefer to learn and in what platforms they tend to engage with.

If you’re repurposing blog content, there are many avenues you can explore:

• A collection of articles could be repurposed as an e-book, giving avid readers long-form content in a helpful, single resource.
• The key statistics in a blog post could be repurposed as an infographic, for visual learners to absorb a quick summary.
• A ‘how-to’ blog post could be repurposed as a short video for people who learn best from listening to the experts.

And, if you’re keen on repurposing content for social media, these are some of our favourite ideas:

• Infographics perform well on Pinterest, a very visual platform, so consider repurposing a listicle into a Pinterest-friendly infographic.
• Take the key points from a blog post and repurpose them as an informative thread on Twitter for those who want bite-size, educational content.
• Use Canva to create eye-catching visuals with quotes, facts or figures that can be easily shared on Instagram.

Before you publish your repurposed content, make sure to give the original content a refresh. Are there any figures you can update? Are there any links you need to change or add? Take that extra time to make your content as current as possible.

Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of how to repurpose content effectively, and why repurposing content should be a fundamental part of your content strategy.

For more advice on content and digital marketing, have a read of our blog or get in touch with us today.