How much time does your marketing team spend creating content? According to research from CoSchedule, most marketers spend one to six hours, on average, to create a single piece of content. And that translates to about 46% of most companies’ marketing budgets, according to HubSpot. That’s where content repurposing becomes a value-add.
The good news is that content marketing is time and money well spent. According to the Content Marketing Institute, content is one of the most effective ways to promote a business, which is why:
- 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing to reach customers.
- 86% of B2C marketers think content marketing is a key strategy.
So, the questions aren’t, “Should we create content” or even “How much content should we create?” Instead, the question should be, “How can we get the most out of the content we create to improve our ROI?”
That’s where content repurposing comes into play.
What is Content Repurposing?
Without a doubt, every company wants more custom content online. And that’s what your customers want as well. The problem is that 60% of people find it hard to produce content consistently. That is unless you know how to use content repurposing to meet the challenge.
Repurposed content is exactly what it sounds like. It is the act of taking custom content that you have already created and transforming it into another type of content that you can share on a new channel. The idea behind content repurposing is to save time in the creation process and reach a wider audience at the same time.
It’s all about not reinventing the wheel but instead working with what you’ve already done to open up a world of possibilities. When done well, you can use repurposing to tailor your content to different formats, channels, and audiences for increased visibility.
After all, much of the content you create has a very limited lifespan. By repurposing it, you get the most out of it without missing any opportunities.
In addition, when you repurpose your content, you have the chance to optimize it. What this means is that you can revise outdated stats, update information for new audiences, and even improve your keyword selection for SEO.
3 Steps to Content Repurposing
So, how do you repurpose your content? It’s a fairly simple process that takes advantage of the hard work you’ve already done. And it just takes three steps to get started.
Step 1: Organize Your Content Library
The first step to content repurposing is to get organized. During this process, you need to review all the content you have available—blogs, podcasts, videos, webinars, eBooks, white papers, downloadable, etc. Keep your content to the past year or so to get started.
Once you have all your content in one location, you can start breaking down key features of the content and valuable information for your repurposing. For example, in a spreadsheet, you can outline:
- Content topic
- Original distribution channels
- Original format
- Original target audience
- Key statistics such as reach, engagement, search volume, conversions, etc.
Then, you can outline your ideas for repurposing the content:
- Updates needed
- New target audience
- New platforms
- New format
These spreadsheets will become your organized content library with helpful categories and data that you can refer to as needed.
Step 2: Decide What to Repurpose
However, not every item in your content library will be worth repurposing. In fact, there will be some blogs, videos, white papers, and eBooks that won’t be worth your time and effort. The key to successful content repurposing is to choose what content to reuse carefully.
The decision to repurpose should be based on key statistics, such as:
- Engagement: You already know that your audience enjoys content that has received a large number of comments, shares, likes, and clicks. And since the content resonated the first time around, there’s no reason to think it couldn’t do just as well when repurposed.
- SEO Rankings: Content that ranks well for SEO is great for repurposing. This demonstrates that the topic and information are vital to your brand and worth a second and third look.
- Search Volume: Check your content for keyword searches on Google and YouTube. If the content topic falls into a high-volume area, it’s worth it to repurpose it to take advantage of the audience.
- Conversion Rates: If your original content brought in customers and had a successful call-to-action, you’ll want to take advantage of those potential conversions on different platforms.
- Evergreen Content: Evergreen content is timeless. This type of content never loses its value, which means it makes the perfect content for repurposing year after year.
Step 3: Choose How You’ll Repurpose Your Content
The final step is to choose how you’ll repurpose the content to reach your wider audience. The good news is that there are many different options in front of you. You are only limited by your imagination and your audience.
Here are some ideas to get you started.
Break Down Large Content Into Smaller Parts
One of the easiest ways to reuse content is to take a big topic and break it down into smaller parts. For example, let’s say you’ve recently hosted an hour-long webinar or podcast about how your software enhances the user experience. This is a piece of Evergreen content that you want to use over and over again.
Instead of just writing out the podcast into a single, massive blog, break it down into bullet points. Then, create a new piece of content about each bullet to get the most out of it. This gives you a lot more mileage on everything you create.
Combine Shorter Content Into Something Bigger
You can also reverse what we explained above. For example, let’s say you have a half-dozen short blogs, Facebook posts, or LIVE event talking points that you’ve always kept separate. Consider combining those interrelated points together for a larger and more compelling piece of content.
For example, you can take five or six shorter blogs and create a large pillar blog (which is invaluable for SEO) or a downloadable eBook. You can also turn those talking points into an in-depth webinar, YouTube video, podcast, or seminar. Think of it as a chance to provide your most valuable information all in one location.
Transform Into Different Content Types
Now, let’s say you have a piece of content (blog, pillar post, eBook, video, webinar, etc.) that is perfect exactly as it is. That doesn’t mean you can’t give it more mileage. You don’t have to rewrite the blog to make it go further. Instead, just transform it into another type of content.
For example, you could provide all the same blog information in video or podcast format for on-the-go audience members. You could also take pertinent information from the blog and create an infographic as a quick reference guide. The key is to take a piece of content that you and your customers already love and give it new life.
Types of content:
- Blogs: Websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages and companies that blog get 97% more links to their websites.
- Podcasts: 45% of global internet users aged 25-34 listen to podcasts.
- Social Media: 94% of marketers use social media for content distribution.
- Images: Content with images get more views and more shares.
- Infographics: 84% of people find infographics effective.
- Video: 40% of millennials trust video, and marketers who use video can expect 66% more leads per year.
- Webinars: 87% of marketers find webinars effective, and 49% of marketers plan to take part in a webinar.
- Interactive Content: Interactive content—such as quizzes and contests—is highly engaging. 93% of marketers see interactive content as effective.
- White Papers & eBooks: 79% of B2B buyers share white papers with colleagues, and eBooks are considered great lead magnets.
- Emails: Emails have one of the best ROIs in content marketing, returning $40 for every dollar spent.
Update Your Content with New Media or Information
Sometimes a simple update is the best way to repurpose your content, especially if the content is a few years old. Even if that piece of content brings in a lot of potential customers and website traffic, letting it sit for years and years is not a good idea. Google prioritizes new, updated information over stale pages.
The good news about updating is that it’s a great time saver. You don’t have to completely change the content for an update. Just add new, pertinent information or make some tweaks to the media (videos or images). A few changes can make the content publish-ready and help you draw in a new audience.
When Done Right, Content Repurposing Saves You Time and Money
Content repurposing is invaluable for improving your marketing ROI, but that doesn’t mean you have to take the challenge of repurposing content all on your shoulders. There are plenty of tools and freelancers that you can use to make creating and scheduling new content easier and more efficient.
There are tools for organizing content and scheduling social media posts, such as HubSpot’s Content Management System. There are also tools for:
- Infographic creation (Piktochart)
- Optimizing content (Designrr)
- Transcribing (Audacity)
- Breaking down content into social media (MeetEdgar)
- Creating videos (Animoto)
Final Thoughts About Content Repurposing
Beyond tools, you can take advantage of content marketing freelancers to provide your team with an outsider’s perspective on content repurposing. These high-quality writers can help you be more efficient when combining, breaking down, or re-crafting content into anything you need or want. They are a great augment to your in-house team at every level.
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Editor’s note: This post was written by nDash community member Kelly Vo. Kelly writes a variety of business articles and website copy on topics such as Cloud computing, business safety, B2B & B2C marketing, entrepreneurship, e-commerce, and more. To learn more about Kelly, or to have her write for your brand, check out her nDash profile page.