Content Repurposing: How You Can Do It and Why You Should
Repurposing (or recycling) content is an incredibly effective strategy that allows you to maximize the return on investment (ROI) of your existing content, while diversifying your marketing portfolio and providing value to your audience.
But is it ethical to repurpose content, and if it is, how can your business recycle content for different marketing channels to leverage its full benefit?
Some business owners cringe at the idea of recycling content, worried it will come off as lazy or unoriginal. First and foremost, it’s important to banish this misconception. In fact, the world's most successful brands repurpose content on a consistent basis to great effect, and if your company hasn't capitalized on this marketing strategy, then you're missing out.
What Is Repurposing Content?
Repurposing content involves reusing previously published content on a different platform in order to expand the original content's reach. For example, a successful blog post can be repurposed into a YouTube video, which can later be repurposed into an infographic.
It is not simply republishing that blog post, or worse, plagiarizing another company’s work while adding your two cents. Instead, you’re transforming your own original, high-quality content into a new medium to suit a different marketing channel or platform.
By repurposing content, B2B companies are able to reach a wider audience by leveraging their existing assets, while minimizing their expenses. Repurposing content also helps marketers create a consistent brand image and increase awareness of their company's mission.
The Pros of Content Repurposing
In addition to reaching a wider audience, developing a consistent brand image, and increasing mission awareness, businesses can enjoy the following benefits after content repurposing.
Content repurposing saves time and money
Repurposing content is a cost-effective way to maximize the value of your existing marketing materials. By taking old blog articles and repackaging them into a different format, you can reach new audiences and expand your brand's reach without starting over. This saves both time and money that would have been spent trying to create new content from scratch.
Repurposed content diversifies your reach and generates leads
By diversifying their marketing efforts across multiple channels such as social media, email, search engines, and other online platforms, businesses can reach a broader audience with different preferences and behaviors, thereby increasing possible leads.
For instance, a long-form blog post may be effective at generating leads with customers of one segment, (aka a specific group of your customers), but by repurposing that content into a video or podcast episode, businesses can appeal to new segments of customers who prefer to use different platforms.Content repurposing improves SEO
How your audience consumes content will change over time, and it's a safe bet to say that what may have ranked highly three years ago won't perform quite as well today.
Repurposing your existing content into appropriate and digestible new media allows you to reoptimize the content. This SEO facelift is a way of demonstrating that your website has value and is updated regularly, helping you to improve rankings.
What's more, when you repurpose content, you are creating a valuable opportunity to develop backlinks. Particularly by publishing a guest post for other blogging platforms that cover topics from your previous content or syndicating your content across blog mediums, such as Medium. This allows you to position your brand as an authority on your subject matter while linking to your original website, thus increasing your domain authority within the search engine algorithms.
The Cons of Repurposing Content
Of course, there are a few key things to consider when you repurpose content—particularly, the risk of an overzealous repurposing strategy.
Content repurposing can impact cross-platform audience migration
Yes, repurposed content is an excellent way to expand your audience across multiple platforms. However, if you are presenting the same information on every platform, your audience is consuming all of what they need in one place and not engaging across multiple platforms.
In order to keep your audience engaged, you should continue providing fresh and varied repurposed content across all platforms so that people will want to follow multiple accounts in order not to miss anything.
Content repurposing can be difficult
Users can interact with many different platforms daily, from blogs to social media to video content. Each platform has its own unique requirements and audience, which makes repurposing content a difficult task. It takes an expert to understand how to modify and tailor the materials to fit a new platform without losing its original message or quality.
For example, to repurpose an in-depth blog post into several social media posts, you need to not only condense the content but also make it visually appealing and engaging to a different audience.
Concerned about the time and effort it takes to successfully repurpose content? BitterRoot Content can help. Learn how we can refresh, repurpose, and reoptimize your content to drive organic growth and new marketing channels!
How to Repurpose Content Successfully
If you're ready to reach a new audience, improve SEO, and successfully drive your brand messaging, it's time to repurpose content.
Step 1: Decide which content to repurpose
First and foremost, you will need to decide which existing content can be successfully repurposed. To do this, comb through all of your current blog posts, highlighting actionable articles and evergreen content like guides and how-tos.
Additionally, identify content that has performed well in terms of engagement and shares. You can do this by utilizing the Google Analytics "Landing Pages" report. By repurposing top-performing content, you can increase the chances of success with the new audience.
Step 2: Determine the new format of the content
Once you've identified the high-quality content you want to repurpose, you then have to determine what you are repurposing that content into. The format you choose should depend on a variety of factors, including the type of content you're repurposing, the intended audience, and the platform you're using.
It's also important to consider the preferences of your target audience and the platform you'll be using. For example, if you're targeting a younger demographic on social media, you may want to create short, visually appealing videos or stories. Alternatively, if your audience is more professional, you may want to focus on creating longer-form content, such as whitepapers or webinars.
Step 3: Optimize the old blog post for the new format and publish
When optimizing repurposed content for new formats, perform keyword research and analysis to provide the most relevant keywords. Consider the different ways you can optimize content across platforms and keep in mind what works best for the platform you're using.
For example, if you're repurposing a long-form blog post into a social media post, focus on the most important points and use eye-catching visuals to make it more engaging. If you're repurposing a video into a blog post, consider transcribing the audio to create a searchable blog post with relevant keywords.
Additionally, make sure to optimize everything for mobile devices, as most social media platforms and search engines prioritize mobile-friendly content. By keeping all of these factors in mind, you can optimize your repurposed content for the new format and platform, increasing its visibility and engagement with a new audience.
Remember to Prioritize the Audience
If you’re not adding value to the user experience, it probably won't drive engagement and help you achieve your goals. By prioritizing users, you can create more engaging content that resonates with them.
Interested in repurposing content but not sure where to start? BitterRoot can help! Contact us to learn more about how freshening and repurposing your content can help you create better content, increase engagement and drive results today.