Content Repurposing

Learn how to maximize your content production efforts and resources with content repurposing strategies. 

Creating high-quality content on a regular basis involves a significant investment of time and resources.

With a little planning, you can get more value from the time and effort you have invested and recycle and breathe new life into your existing content by repurposing it into other content types.

In this lesson, we’ll look at the benefits of repurposing content and provide different examples of content repurposing.

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What Is Content Repurposing?

Content repurposing is re-using your existing content and presenting it in a new or different format to expand its reach and maximize its lifespan.

Essentially, content repurposing is the process of taking existing content and adapting it for use on different platforms or in different formats.

This can include things like turning a blog post into a video, republishing an article on a different website, or creating an infographic from a research report.

The goal of repurposing content is to get the most out of the content you have already created and to reach new audiences.

Benefits Of Repurposing Content

Repurposing content has several benefits, including:

• Increased reach: By republishing content on different platforms, you can reach new audiences and expand your reach. For example, republishing a blog post on LinkedIn can help you reach a professional audience.
• Cost-effective: Repurposing content allows you to get the most out of the content you have already created, which can save you time and resources.
• Reinforcing brand awareness: By republishing content on different platforms, you can reinforce your brand and make it more familiar to your target audience.
• Increased engagement: Repurposing content in different formats can lead to increased engagement. For example, a video version of a blog post can increase audience engagement.
• SEO improvement: By republishing content on different platforms and linking them to your website can help to improve your website’s SEO.
• Audience targeting: Repurposing content in different format and platforms allows you to target specific audience. For example, republishing a podcast episode on YouTube can help reach a younger audience who may not listen to podcasts.
• Long-term value: Repurposing content can provide long-term value, as the content can continue to be useful and relevant to your audience even after it’s first published.

Content Repurposing Examples

Once you have created a great piece of content, all the hard work involved in researching, planning, and creating it is already done. You have an asset you can use to help promote and grow your business.

Sometimes, content created for a very specific purpose can have a limited lifespan. For example, let’s say you put a great deal of effort into researching and writing a great blog article, which then gets promoted to your newsletter subscribers and posted on your social media channels.

For a week or two, your blog article gets a lot of attention and attracts a good number of visitors, thanks to your team’s promotional efforts.

Then, new content gets published on your blog, pushing the article down the list, and traffic to your post drops. If that post isn’t ranking high on the search engines, traffic can dwindle significantly.

Now, you have a great piece of content with lots of useful information sitting on your site doing very little for your business.

What if you took that great content and reused it in different formats?

For example, let’s say you create a really great series of blog articles with well-researched statistical data, detailed screenshots, memorable quotes, etc.

With a little planning, you could easily repurpose these blog articles into new content types, such as:

• Long-Form Content: Compile your blog posts into a guide, eBook, online course, or report.
• Short-Form Content: Use testimonials, quotes, and statistical data to create sharable social media posts, tweetable quotes, news releases, etc.
• Emails: Turn your blog content into full email newsletter articles or email snippets pointing to your articles, or compile these into an email course (e.g. a “7-day course”)
• Images: Turn your information and images into an infographic, or a slide presentation.
• Videos: Turn your information into sales videos or video tutorials (tip: turn your blog posts into a slide presentation and use screen capture software to turn your slide presentation into narrated videos).
• Audios: Use Text-To-Speech software to create audio narrations for accessibility purposes, turn your articles into podcasts, etc.

You can do the same thing if you create a more comprehensive piece of content like a guide or eBook (i.e. turn the content into a series of blog articles and all of the above content types).

More Content Repurposing Examples

• Repurposing a blog post into a video for social media.
• Repurposing a webinar into a podcast episode.
• Repurposing a whitepaper into an infographic.
• Repurposing a podcast episode into a written article for a blog.
• Repurposing a research paper into a slide deck for a presentation.
• Repurposing a video tutorial into a written guide.
• Repurposing a live event into a recorded video.
• Repurposing a social media post into a graphic for a website.
• Repurposing a keynote presentation into an ebook.
• Repurposing a product demo video into a gif for social media.
• Republishing a blog post as a LinkedIn article.
• Creating a YouTube video from a podcast episode.
• Turning a webinar into a white paper or ebook.
• Repackaging a series of tweets into an Instagram post.
• Transcribing a video into a blog post.
• Creating an infographic from a research report.
• Using quotes from a podcast episode in a social media campaign.
• Repurposing a presentation into a series of slides on SlideShare.
• Turning a case study into a testimonial video.
• Creating a podcast episode from a Facebook Live Q&A session.

As you can see, you can get a lot of mileage from content repurposing.

In fact, the more time and effort you invest into researching and creating high-quality content with useful in-depth information, the more valuable content repurposing becomes as a content marketing strategy.

• For more information on how to repurpose content, go here: 20 Creative Ways To Repurpose Content
• For great examples of ways to repurpose content, see this article: 12 Great Examples That Prove the Power of Repurposing Content
• Here’s an article on content repurposing ideas for webinars.
• And check out this article on repurposing a whitepaper into a year’s worth of content.

Content Repurposing – FAQs

Here are frequently asked questions about content repurposing:

What is content repurposing?

Content repurposing involves adapting your existing content into different formats or for different platforms to expand its reach and lifespan.

How does content repurposing differ from cross-posting or reposting?

Content repurposing is about transforming content to suit different formats or contexts, while cross-posting involves sharing the same content across various platforms without modification. Reposting generally means re-sharing the exact same content on the same platform.

What are the benefits of content repurposing?

It can extend the life of the original content, reach a broader audience, enhance SEO, save resources, and provide more value from the content already created.

Which types of content are best suited for repurposing?

High-performing content such as popular blog posts, videos with high engagement, and content with timeless relevance are ideal candidates for repurposing.

What are some effective strategies for content repurposing?

You can turn blog posts into podcasts or videos, create infographics from data-rich content, use webinar content to produce guides or e-books, or convert a series of related posts into an email course.

How does repurposing content impact SEO?

Repurposing helps target various keywords, increases content visibility across platforms, and can generate more backlinks to your original content.

What challenges might I face while repurposing content?

Finding the right balance between reuse and freshness, maintaining the quality and relevance of the content, and ensuring it fits the new format or platform can be challenging.

How can I measure the success of repurposed content?

Track metrics such as engagement rates, traffic sources, conversion rates, and overall reach compared to the original piece of content.

Summary

Content repurposing is a great way to maximize the value of your content and your organization’s resources and reach new audiences.

Content repurposing can also be used to increase your reach and visibility online using different content channels, help improve your SEO, nurture lead generation streams, improve engagement and retention, and garner new insights to help you continually refine and improve your content strategy.

With the right strategy and approach, repurposing content can be a powerful tool for growing your online presence and driving results.

Action Steps

Take a great piece of content that your team has invested time and effort into creating, list all the ways you can repurpose it, and turn it into new content types.

Rinse and repeat this process with other additional existing content, and begin to incorporate content repurposing into your content planning.

Resources

• Free Content Ideas Course – Learn how to never run out of great content ideas for your blog, website, or email newsletters.
• Video Courses – Links to video courses on content creation for different content types (e.g. blogging, videos, emails, podcasting, etc.)
• Tools & Resources – Useful tools and resources for planning, producing, and promoting different content types.

References

• 12 Great Examples That Prove the Power of Repurposing Content
• 20 Creative Ways To Repurpose Content
• How To Write A White Paper That Inspires A Year-Long Content Strategy
• 13 Content Repurposing Ideas For Webinars
• How To Write A Book And Become A Published Author
• How To Become A Published Author In 20 Steps

Next Step

• Learn about different content types: Content Types
• Return to the Content Production Overview

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Image: Whiteboard