Creating content is a vital part of any marketing strategy, but it can also be an expensive part. Hubspot reports that companies will spend, on average, 13.6% of their revenue on marketing in 2023. However, 90.63% of webpages get no organic traffic (meaning they’re paying for advertising to drive traffic to their website), and people who do find your page will spend about 37 seconds reading before they move on to the next thing. That’s an awfully high cost for a small reward.
With those statistics in mind, you don’t want to spend any more time or money on creating content than you have to. This is where repurposing your content comes in clutch. By this, we mean taking content that you’ve already created for one purpose and using it again for something else. This may sound complicated but bear with us while we take you through how you can effectively repurpose content.
Repurpose Your Content
1. Create an Archive or Knowledge Base
If you’ve been publishing content for a while, you probably have a backlog of blogs or articles on various topics relevant to your business. This is potentially a fantastic source of ideas for future content, so why not create an archive or knowledge bank where your team can pull inspiration?
While this information should already be available on your website, having a centralized location where your team can go to source information or generate ideas will lessen the time your team spends chasing their tails and allow them to focus on creating content.
This has an additional benefit outside of content generation. If you have a centralized content database, you can encourage your team to link to other blogs or articles you’ve created that could be relevant or helpful for your readers. Creating a strong internal linking structure is one of the best SEO tactics, which will ultimately drive more readers to your website.
2. Highlight “Evergreen” Content
Make sure you only repurpose “evergreen” content. Evergreen content stays relevant and accurate (you can read more about evergreen content here). Publishing information that is no longer accurate or relevant will cause your readers to believe that you are not a trusted source, and they’ll look elsewhere for information.
For instance, SEO techniques have changed drastically over the last decade. If you publish SEO advice that’s no longer effective, your readers will look elsewhere to find strategies that actually work.
If your content is relevant but includes some information that may no longer be accurate, you can update or refresh it. For example, if you find an old blog post with statistics from 2018, you could swap them for more recent statistics. Alternatively, you could add more information or a “since this was published…” note to address the issue. The most important thing is that you present the most accurate available information.
3. Use a Content Calendar
According to Benjamin Franklin, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” As a content creator, having a content plan or schedule is essential. Publishing content on a regular and consistent basis is a great way to beat the algorithm and push your content to more people, especially if you’re using YouTube as part of your content marketing strategy (the YouTube algorithm promotes channels that post regularly). You can also optimize your schedule to post at times of the day that work best for the algorithm.
A content calendar to repurpose content is a fantastic way to keep track of new and old content. You don’t want to republish the same content too frequently because it will become stale and repetitive, and your readers will not be interested in engaging with your page if it’s displaying the same things over and over again.
By using a content calendar, you can schedule repurposed content every two, three, or six months, for example, or whatever feels the most appropriate for your business. Or, if you produce content about an event, you could leave a note on your calendar to repurpose content on the anniversary, updating the information as necessary. This plan doesn’t need to be too detailed, as we discuss in this blog on how to create successful content.
4. Turn Sub-Headings from Previous Blog Posts into Longer Pieces
Coming up with content ideas is a challenging part of any content creator’s job. Repurposing content can take some of the stress out of this. Go through your published content and see if anything in them can be fleshed out to form a short-form blog post on its own, or if you have enough content, an eBook.
For instance, you might see a heading like the one above and decide to create an article about how to write blog posts (we have a post that covers this here, which was the inspiration for this section, so it can work both ways).
If you do this, you can then link new blog posts to old ones and, retroactively, old posts to newer ones, thereby creating a strong internal linking structure. Your readers will be able to click through your site to find other articles that might be relevant, causing them to spend more time on your website, which drives organic traffic and boosts SEO.
5. Use Statistics, Facts, or Quotes for Social Media Content
We started this article by giving you some statistics about company marketing expenditure, organic traffic, and retention. We could use any one of these statistics in a social media post with an explanation in the description box. Likewise, we could use the Benjamin Franklin quote in a post about planning or evergreen content.
Putting information into graphics is one of the best things you can do. Medium reports that people remember 80% of what they see but only 20% of what they read. This is because the brain processes visual cues better than written text. So, if you want to catch your audience’s attention and help them remember what they read, posting visuals to social media will help.
6. Create Videos, Podcasts, and Other Forms of Media
So far, we’ve spoken mostly about written content, but it’s important not to limit yourself. The two most common alternatives are videos and podcasts. You could create a YouTube account for your company (if it doesn’t already have one) and a podcast channel with content that’s relevant to your business. Or you can embed a video or audio file in a post, which has the added benefit of increasing the time that readers spend on your site.
Do note that having content on multiple platforms will increase your audience. People who don’t enjoy reading are unlikely to search out a blog; they’ll probably go to YouTube, and if you’re not there, you’ve missed out on a potential customer. It’s a good idea, then, to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of having content across multiple platforms.
The Role of Editors
You might be thinking that this all sounds like a lot of effort and time. But fret not! You don’t necessarily need to rewrite content in its entirety every time you want to repurpose it. Sure, you may need to expand on points or rephrase some sentences, but you don’t need to rewrite the whole article.
A good editor will be able to make the necessary changes to your content without starting from scratch. For instance, a social media post may need a different tone of voice than a blog post, and an eBook will need a different tone as well. An editor can tweak the phrasing to make sure your tone is right for whatever type of content you produce, which will save you time, money, and tears.
Do You Still Need Help?
If this all sounds too complicated, why not let us take on the stress? We’ll train a team of expert editors on your style guide to focus on your content so that you can focus on what matters most: creating eye-catching content that drives your marketing efforts. When you’re ready to see exactly what Proofed can do for your team, schedule a call with our team.
