Content is essential to your business’s success. If you cannot provide value or information relevant to your customers, it can be hard to gain organic traffic to your website, grow your social media following, or convert fans to customers.
I’m a firm believer that you should NEVER use a piece of content just 1 time. You took the time to create it (which for some of us is harder to find the time than others), so you should get more miles out of those tires!
In this Complete Content Repurposing Guide, you’ll discover the steps to make this process simple!
What Is Content Repurposing?
The basic idea behind content repurposing is to take a piece of content that you’ve already created and turn it into different types of content that are relevant for your audience.
There are many ways to repurpose your content, such as updating it for the current year, adding new suggestions, or changing your blog’s target audience.
You can turn a blog post into a video. A podcast into a blog post. Or a video into a bunch of social media posts. Or all of the above! One of the great things about content repurposing is that there are literally thousands of ways to do it.
Why Should I Repurpose My Content?
One of the best parts of repurposed content is that it won’t take you much time or money to create it because you already have a foundational piece of content to start with.
It might take you hours or even days to create content for your socials or website. Instead of focusing all your effort on consistently creating new content and wasting more of your time, consider using the content you already have made in new, relevant ways.
In fact, this video outline is from a post that I did last year and the year before that, and the year before that. It’s one that I update every single year to keep fresh.
Creating content for your customers generates a way to attract customers to your brand or business. By repurposing content you have already written, you’re able to increase your reach to your audience.
Here are the simple steps you need to take to repurpose your content in 2021.
1. Know Your Why
Don’t repurpose your content for no reason. You should know your “why” behind the idea of repurposing your content.
- Does the content you deliver change from year-to-year because of the development in technology or information?
- Did your ideal audience change?
- Did you introduce a new product or service that you want to integrate with your older content?
Make sure you have a purpose and understand the bigger goal of your repurposing project. If there is no reason to update your content, don’t waste your time! It won’t be a good use of your energy to edit your foundational content if it’s functioning well the way it is for your brand.
2. Go Through Your Content
Start auditing each of your videos or blog posts to find the pages that need your help or editing. Make sure each chosen post matches your “why” you identified in the last step.
What content will help you achieve your goal? For example, if you’re now going to sell travel packages, you might want to find articles that mention any type of travel to update.
This may include topics like things to pack, transportation, how-to guides, or travel gear recommendations. Avoid topics that don’t match your goal. In this case, articles about hair products aren’t relevant to your purpose. Be specific in the content you choose to update, don’t try to update every single piece of content if it’s not necessary.
3. Check Your Rankings
Y’all know how I feel about numbers! It’s essential to only work on the content that is already performing well. If it’s too old, outdated, or performs poorly, it might be more work to try to fix it than it would be to write a brand-new article.
To find your best ranking article, check the analytics on your website, YouTube, or socials. Be on the lookout for which pieces of content have the best performance in terms of shares, visibility, and reach? Use those posts to start your content repurposing project.
4. Research to Make It Better
The next step is to work with your chosen foundational pieces of content to repurpose.
Begin by reviewing the keywords you’re using for each post. Do they work for your strategy and goals, or do you need to change it up to meet your new vision?
Next, look for obvious fixes you can make. Are there any references dated back to 2020 or 2019? If there are, find the updates for this year. For example, if you had a post labeled “Best Things to Do In New Orleans in [enter year],” we now want to change [old year] to [new year] and look for any references to hours, dates, or locations that might have changed. If an attraction or restaurant has closed or the hours have changed, make sure to update it in your posts.
Think about the content that is not relevant to your ideal client.
- What new things have been introduced since originally releasing this piece of content?
- Are there new requirements or regulations that need to be noted?
- Are the statistics or information quoted still crucial for readers to know?
Take out information that is not important for your ideal client to keep your content knowledgeable, consumable, and to the point.
5. Publish Your Repurposed Content
Once you’ve finished re-doing your content, it’s time to share it with the world!
Share your content on social media platforms, or even consider using platforms like medium to post your new article and backlink to your blog. Or upload a video to YouTube to be consumed by a different audience.
Repurposing Your Content this year
Repurposing your content is a free and easy way to keep your content relevant to new industry trends or additional products and services you’ve decided to offer.
Plus, allowing yourself to use content that already exists will work as a guideline to create fantastic content, saving you hours of your time and energy to build from scratch.