Most of us already know that it takes quite a lot of time, effort, skill and creativity to come up with genuine ‘one-in-a-million’ content which your audience can instantly devour - The one that’ll boost your credibility and bring a sustained positive effect within your preferred niche or industry.
The essence of Content Marketing is not always about pushing ‘killer content’ every single time. Rather, Content Marketing ‘success’ revolves around coming up with great ideas that engages your target audience and addresses their ‘pain points’ through various content types or platforms.
And for those who are a bit short on the budget, or those who don’t have an army of content creators – Repurposing your previous content is one such creative ‘spin-off’ that will help you find the edge over your competitors and more so; help you breathe ‘new life’ to your old but ‘proven’ content.
Repurposing, or recycling your content is actually a clever way to:
- Reinforce your message
- Reach out to new audiences
- Improve your traffic and organic visibility
Today we look at 5 such powerful ways to repurpose, recycle or upcycle content to make the most of your content marketing efforts:
1. SYNDICATION – An Easy Exposure
One of the easiest ways to recycle your content is by ‘Syndicating’. Here you don’t need to do much; in fact there’s no ‘repurposing’ going on – you’re simply taking the best content published in your site and giving other parties permission to repost them on their sites.
Syndication does’nt work like ‘guest posting’ either, where you create a unique piece of content to publish on a third party website. And contrary to ‘duplicate’ content, syndicated posts always put a link to reach to the original article, to give the due credit.
Image Courtesy: Outbrain
This is a unique trick, where with minimal effort you can find more exposure to your content and reach out to more new audiences within your industry; and also gain an SEO boost. It is however essential that you choose sites that are of higher authority than yours; and make sure their audience relate to your content.
Some of the sites you can use to publish your syndicated content are; Medium, Social Media Today, Entrepreneur, LifeHacker, Business Insider, Forbes, Business 2 Community, Inc. Magazine, etc.
2. INFOGRAPHICS – Packing A Powerful Punch!
If you’re looking to repurpose content to deliver the info in the quickest and most effective way – then nothing beats an ‘infographic’.
Infographics help people to relate and grasp the data and the salient points of any article, just by taking a glance. Consisting of a unique blend of texts, images, numbers and illustrations; infographics can help simplify a complicated subject into an easy to grasp, captivating experience. Much of the credit goes to its ‘visual’ essence, contrary to the ‘texty’ feel of an article – because our human brains are equipped to process images 60,000 times faster than text and 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual!
The way to go about it, is to first break down your chosen post into just the major talking points and then simply work on a design that conveys the message in a succinct and visually appealing manner.
However, not every article is suitable to be repurposed as an infographic; content with lots of research and data are best suited to present the information. If you’re a non-designer, you can always tap into programs like Canva, PictoChart, Venngage and Visualize.me to help you create interactive presentations and infographics.
The infographic below from Customer Magnetism on the topic ‘What is an Infographic?’ - is a brilliant representation of how an infographic can be effectively designed to deliver diverse information on a single page; and still captivate the audience with its visual appeal:
3. Creating Podcasts and Videos
As marketers, we know that not all audiences prefer content that they have to read. Some are more accustomed to listening to podcasts; and prefer to learn from or enjoy watching content through videos. Repurposing your articles and ideas into ‘text-less’, audio or visual content; can appeal to a wide variety of audiences, helping you build more connections.
With podcasts, you are essentially making an audio file of your blog; or consider it as an e-book on a tape. Most seasoned marketers use podcasts as a platform to accentuate their brand identity, promote their books, or use it as a launching pad to stir up more engagement from the audience.
Take for instance, podcasts from Copyblogger, Rainmaker FM -The Lede Podcast; or The Tim Ferris Show – These seasoned marketers and influencers have gathered a large audience for their shows; with Tim Ferris Show ranking as the #1 podcast on all of iTunes:
And if you’re looking to transform your blogs into visual content, there’s nothing more inviting and rewarding than going with YouTube videos. The reason being, about one-third of online activities is spent on watching videos; and when it comes to YouTube; being Google’s ‘little brother’; a well optimised YouTube post does get a lot of special treatment and can rank well in search results, with attractive thumbnails to help boost CTRs.
4.Converting Blogs Into Email Content
A great way to recycle and refresh your old posts is to turn them into email marketing campaigns or Newsletter content.
The trick is to make an assortment of your earlier posts having valuable information and use them as key elements in the body of your newsletter or the subject matter of your email campaign. This helps to revive and reiterate the golden messages, all the while giving a new feel to the audiences – and not to forget email marketing still shines over other marketing approaches with an average of 122% ROI.
Depending on your content you can use any email marketing tactics – whether it’s about promoting your brand, introducing a new product, constructing intriguing subject lines or to entice customers for an upsell; your old content can get a brand new facelift and add exceptional value to your marketing goals if you can craft it strategically.
5. Hosting Webinars – Take Your Content To New Heights
Many marketers and influencers use this tactic on a regular basis; and you can reap huge benefits from it too. We’re talking about using your existing content as a ‘base’ or a ‘jump-off’ point to present/promote a topic or an idea and to engage your audience in meaningful conversations.
These days every successful entrepreneur and marketing guru are offering these ‘free’ webinars to their audience - an interactive audio-visual session where an idea, product, tips and ‘How Tos’ are offered to address issues and to offer incredible value to them.
For instance, take Neil Patel’s Advanced Customer Acquisition Webinar; or webinars hosted by the Content Marketing Institute – They all use existing content (could be content from a blog series) to make a palatable presentation for their audience.
You can also invite other experts and industry leaders to partner and discuss on the subject – with most giving an ‘exclusive’ offer at the end; be it on their consultation services, a membership discount, or early access of their new book – which works like a charm as it is used by 62% of B2B marketing professionals, and they generate, on average, 20 - 40% of qualified leads from webinar registrants!
Finally…
Content repurposing is a must-have for brands and marketers looking to generate optimal value with their existing content. It is however essential that you constantly try out new ideas to test how you can revive and realign your old content to bring about a win-win situation for both - you and your audience!
Call Andy Fox (me) on (03) 5249 5570 or email andy@element7digital.com.au
Our Website is www.element7digital.com.au
