Question: Have you ever visited a blog, website or social media account and been blown away by a vast amount of valuable content?
We all know that it takes a massive amount of work to produce quality content that stands out from all the noise on the internet. Creators pour hours into coming up with ideas, organising ideas into coherent pieces and promoting their work.
Unless you have a large team that is dedicated to content creation, you’re probably doing a lot of this process on your own.
One of the best ways to continually add content to your site without too much additional effort is to repurpose the content that you already have.
Repurposing involves taking a piece of content and converting it to a different format–for example, a blog post might become a podcast episode or a video might get turned into an infographic. It’s that simple!
Choosing Content to Repurpose
Some types of content will be easier to repurpose than others. As you develop your content strategy, look for pieces that are:
- Evergreen: you will have more success repurposing content that is applicable to a wide audience for a long period of time. As an example, an evergreen piece might be a guide on how to choose the best pet-sitter for your next vacation–it’s applicable to a wide audience (pet owners) for a long period of time (people go on vacations with some regularity, and they often go more than once). A non-evergreen piece would be a recap of a pet costume parade that happened in your community. The piece might get traction and be interesting for several weeks following the event, but it has a short shelf life.
- Easy to understand: complex pieces that require a lot of explanation and backstory might be a headache to convert to different formats. If you have a well-performing blog post or video that is worth repurposing, then go for it! But if you’re just starting out, go for the simplest pieces that will make the most impact. A how-to guide about your product or service is a great place to start.
- Shareable: if people are eager to share your content with their friends and family, you’re doing something right. Shareable content is a powerful tool that can catapult your online presence to the next level. If you had a blog post or a video that garnered lots of shares, try repurposing it to see how it performs in a new format.
- Interesting: the point of repurposing content is to draw in an audience that you might not normally reach. Some people are far more likely to watch a video online than to read a blog post, and vice versa. If your content is available in multiple formats you can reach more people–but your efforts won’t be worth the time if your content isn’t interesting and memorable. So focus on your strongest and most impactful pieces as you start your repurposing project.
Choosing the Best Formats for your Brand
Once you’ve decided that you want to start repurposing content you have to figure out how to get the best bang for your buck. In order to do this you have to follow a cardinal rule of online marketing: figure out where your audience hangs out, and make sure you’re hanging out there too.
If most of your followers are on Facebook and YouTube, you might benefit from turning your best blog posts into short, attention-grabbing videos with captions, good visuals and a strong call to action.
If your followers like to hang out on Twitter, you can turn a blog post or a video into an informative and easy-to-understand infographic. You can also grab the strongest sentences into pre-packaged Tweets that your followers can easily share.
If your audience likes Pinterest, try creating some appealing images overlaid with a quote or a bulleted list of points from one of your blog posts.
Lastly, if your audience is filled with readers and podcast enthusiasts, you can turn some of your best content into short audio clips or write a brief eBook on a relevant topic.
The possibilities are endless!
As you choose a repurposing format, keep in mind that some forms of media are harder to pull off well than others. If you decide to focus on video you’ll have to spend time either sourcing video clips online or creating your own, piecing the clips together and building a coherent presentation out of your content.
If images and infographics become your main focus, you’ll want to get comfortable with graphic design principles. If you’re putting energy into written content for a blog or eBook, you’ll want plenty of practice getting past writer’s block.
Every format has pros and cons so don’t be afraid to test out a few as you get started to see what sticks.
Marketing Repurposed Content
Your marketing strategy has to evolve with your content in order to stay competitive. What works for marketing a video won’t be as effective for a blog post or an infographic–you’ll need to think outside of the box and use other resources to reach your intended audience.
Consider these quick tips for marketing your repurposed content:
- Get audience feedback: ask for comments and suggestions from your followers about repurposing your content. Do they want to see a blog post modeled after a particularly interesting video you filmed? Would they like an eBook where you expound on a topic that came up in a blog post? With so many options available you’ll want to get guidance from your followers on what they’re looking for.
- Find and follow successful content: it isn’t hard to find high-performing blog posts, videos and images. In most cases this content will pop up before anything else as you search for it. Analyse this content to determine why it resonates so well with viewers and readers. Note how the content is presented, the ways in which it’s promoted and who is responding to it. Be especially watchful for people pointing out improvements or making requests about what they’d like to see in the future–these comments can point you toward a niche that might be yours to fill!
- Connect with influencers: connecting with influencers in your industry is a great way to get your content in front of new eyes, and it’s particularly useful when you’re testing out a new format. It’s rare to find influencers with an equally strong presence across different types of content–normally an influencer will have a large following on one platform that augments their following on other platforms. As you branch out into different formats, you’ll want to connect with the people who are masters in their space. The goal is to get in front of as many eyes as possible!
- Share and follow: let’s say you’re trying to repurpose a bunch of your blog posts into videos. Get involved with video creators by commenting on, sharing and liking their posts–if you build a relationship with creators in your industry they’re bound to share your content with their followers.
- Don’t go at it alone: your team might have to grow a bit in order to produce high-quality pieces across multiple formats–don’t be afraid of positive change! If your business can comfortably handle the increased expenses that come with expanding your team, there’s no reason to hold back. Recognise that onboarding the right kind of people will make a big difference in the long run.
Building a Strategy that Works
Content can’t exist without a framework. Producing content without a strategy is like folding a letter into a paper airplane, tossing it into the sky and hoping that it flies to the right person. There’s no guarantee that your letter will end up where it’s supposed to.
Your content strategy involves generating ideas, executing your ideas properly and marketing to your audience. Your plan will differ depending on the formats you choose to work with. If you’re trying new methods of marketing and ideation that aren’t working, pivot and try something different–there’s always an opportunity to reinvent your brand and to connect effectively with a new audience!
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