How many times have you heard this about content marketing – write less…promote more?
Yes, but you are probably churning out blog post after blog post, week after week, month after month thinking that it will help your website pages rank higher in the search results.
Actually it will help but it doesn’t hurt if you are re-purposing content in different mediums as well because it helps increase your ranking and gets you out in front of a new target market audience.
Trust and believe, bloggers are not the only ones who re-purpose their content; professional speakers recycle their speeches; writers recycle ideas in their writing and trust and believe magazines recycle articles and photos all the time!
It’s the same thing with blog content. When the content we’re delivering is of high quality our audience will have no problem hearing it more than once, and re-purposing content can actually work to their benefit.
If we’re sharing something important, sometimes it can take a while to sink in, so by re-purposing it and allowing our audience to read it over a few times and we’re helping them better absorb the information. Remember, 7 times hearing something is before someone takes action is a common phrase.
However, just like anything else, there’s a right way to re-purpose content, and we want to get the best results for both us and our audience. So let’s begin with “when” to re-purpose blog content.
WHEN YOU SHOULD REPURPOSE CONTENT
The first question about repurposing content is, when is it a good idea?
And the answer is: it’s always a good idea to re-purpose content whenever you can use it in a different medium.
For example, let’s say we write an email newsletter every month that is full of great, useful and helpful content. You can then take that content and re-purpose it into a series of blog posts.
Or let’s say you wanted to write an ebook! Instead of starting from scratch, you could re-purpose the content from some of your best or most popular blog posts. This is a very popular strategy and a lot of ebooks are simply re-purposed blog content!
The point is, there are a lot of different places where we can publish content. And taking content from one place and re-purposing it in another format is a great strategy to keep the flow of ideas and content coming, rather than burning ourselves out trying to come up with new content ideas.
HOW TO REPURPOSE BLOG CONTENT
Now that we know when we should re-purpose our content, let’s talk about HOW.
TURN BLOG POST SERIES INTO AN E-BOOK
In a previous episode I talked about turning blog posts into an ebook, but the opposite works just as well! If you’ve written an awesome ebook, you can take that content and break it down into a series of posts to share on your blog.
SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA
As stated in last week’s podcast, there are more than 60 social media channels and there is no reason to create 100% unique pieces of content for each of them! You can re-purpose blog content across all your social media channels! However, you will need to make minor tweaks to suit each platform, ie images and clickable links in the bio on IG, less than 280 characters on Twitter, etc.
TURN YOUR CONTENT INTO A COURSE
If you’ve got a lot of great content on a particular subject, topic or niche, whether that’s in the form of blog posts, email newsletters, ebooks, or anything else this is a great way to re-purpose and repackage the content and turn it into a course or webinar. This is also a great way to monetize your content!
UPDATE AND REPUBLISH OLD CONTENT
Every blogger wants to get on Google’s good side, and re-purposing content is a great way in which to do that. Updating, republishing and sharing old content shows Google that we’re not just forgetting about our old content and leaving it to waste away in our blog archives. Freshening old blog posts with new copy and photos and republishing it can be a great way to boost our SEO.
PUBLISH IT TO A PODCAST EPISODE OR VIDEO
You know that I love blogging, but I love, love podcasting more and the content created as a blog post can be repurposed into audio via a podcast episode or video on Youtube.
Taking written content, using it as show notes then turning it into podcast or video scripts is yet another way in which to deliver content to our audience in a new and different format and visa versa!
RE-PURPOSING CONTENT COUNTS
I LOVE re-purposing content, but not everything should be repurposed.
Keep your audience in mind when deciding to re-purpose content as you always want to get the best results from re-purposing content. There is no need to re-purpose everything, but knowing which content has the best results is always going to be trial and error.
Re-purposing content can be a great way to give new life to old content and stretch out its life cycle, as well as save ourselves from having to come up with new topics every day, so now that I have given you a few ideas on how to re-purpose content, it’s time to take a look at your blog posts and find new ways to use the amazing content you already have!
Let’s Chat > What are some ways that you use to re-purpose blog content?
