How and why you should be repurposing old content

Repurposing your blog content is taking a post that you’ve already written and re-packaging into a different format so it can continue to work for you.

Repurposing means that you will:

• Get more organic search engine traffic.

• Reinforce your message. Repetition can be an essential part of sending a message that sinks in.

• Reach more potential customers, maybe in a fresh niche.

• Spend less time creating content just to fill gaps.

• Get an SEO boost. Multiple pieces of content on the same theme can help to generate additional opportunities to target a desired keyword. Also if you take your repurposed content outside your site (maybe as a guest post or another network), you can receive good quality back links with the bonus of being able to control the anchor text of the link.

• Devote more time towards making connections and working on your blog to move it forward.

• Positions you as an authority. Publishing quality content in a variety of places on one topic can really help to raise your profile in the industry and cement your standing as an expert.

Repurposing content allows you to breathe new life into old favourites and continue to gain an ROI (return on investment) from these old favourites.

Which content should be repurposed?

The content which is perfect for repurposing is your evergreen content. Not sure what Evergreen content is? Don’t worry I got you, check out this video where I explain all.

To summarise Evergreen content is; high quality, valuable and timelessness.

• Syndicate your posts – Content syndication networks allow you to access a whole new relevant audience by sharing your post on their site. Usually you pay per click and your post is suggested as the “Recommended Reading” or “Related Posts”. These links don’t usually count toward SEO, but they will drive important and targeted traffic to your blog. Examples of these sites: Outbrain/ Zemanta/ Taboola/ SimpleReach

• Republish on a website such as Medium/Reddit/ Growth Hackers/ BizSugar/Social Media Today

• Add to Quora – You can use bits of posts to answer questions on Quora.

• Email newsletter – Use posts or parts of posts in email marketing to your list.

• Create a book – Expand on a post or group a few posts together to produce a physical book.

• Create a case study – Use post as basis for a detailed case study. This could be how you grew your blog traffic or a similar post which would enable you to show step by step with more detail than you would share in the post.

• Write an expert roundup – Ask a group of experts to answer a brief question about the topic of your post. Then publish all of their answers as a new post. Obviously linking to your old post in this new one and vice versa.

• Use portions for new posts – When you write on a topic that overlaps with one of your old articles, use some of the old content in the new content. For instance, if you are writing a tutorial on how to edit photos in Lightroom if you have already covered one of the steps in a previous blog post, simply copy and paste those steps and images into your new blog post, then just tweak it a little and you’re good to go.

• Instagram quotes/tips – Take some key points and use a programme such as Canva to create Instagram images, which you can obviously then link back to your post.

• Instagram stories – Use salient points from your post and create a short video/series of graphics for Instagram Stories.

• Expand for paid ecourse – Can you expand your posts to create an ecourse? Adding some extra resources and value, this blog post could become a source of income.

• Expand for paid workshop – Take the post and expand it into a workshop format which you could then run in person or via a google hangout style workshop.

• A spin off post – Could extend your initial ideas and add anything to the conversation to enable you to write the sequel to your well performing initial post.

• Create a series of posts from a list – If your evergreen post was a list, could you expand your individual points into a post each to create a series of posts?

• Webinar – You could create a webinar based on the ideas from the post and get interaction from the audience to delve deeper into the information in the post.

• Facebook Live/Periscope – Facebook LOVES its own Facebook Live video, so why not create a shortened version of your post and use it as a script for a Facebook Live video? Facebook will do the work for you and show it to lots of people, so why not cash in on this while they are pushing these live videos so much. If you’re on Periscope, then you could do the same thing over there.

• Ebook – If your evergreen post is part of a series of posts that fit together, maybe there is some scope to use them as the basis of an ebook. You can use plugins such as Beacon to help you turn your blog posts into ebooks. This could then be sold on your site.

• Printable – Reformat the post or use it as the basis to create a useful printable. For example if you had written about growing your Twitter following, you might chose to create a checklist to help people grow theirs.

• Create a Pinterest Instructographic – Unsure of what an Instructographic is? Here are some examples, you could always leave the reveal picture/last instruction off the instructographic to ensure people visit your blog.

• Update and republish – Keep the old url for SEO reasons, but add to it, format it, change the image, then republish it.

• Incentive to sign up to newsletter/Opt-in freebie – Email lists are so important if you want to grow and monetise your blog. To encourage people to join or to stay on your list you can use opt-in freebies. Format the post in a way good for sharing, perhaps you simply want the post to be in an email or as a pdf. So people are sent it when they sign up.

• Facebook content – Go through your post and extract the most powerful points. Then use these points as Facebook content. Perhaps linking back to the post or maybe just adding value to your readers without linking.

• Twitter status – As above, this time you want to be looking for a click to tweet type quote of succinct few words that get your point across.

• Create a free email series/course – Examine the post and break it up to create an email series. Again this could be an opt-in freebie or even a paid for course.

• Snapchat tips – I’m not on Snapchat, but I believe tips are widely shared. So extracting the most useful things from that post and share away!

• Create a presentation – Turn your post into a presentation slides and upload to SlideShare reaching a while new audience.

• YouTube – Then use the slides you created for Slideshare to create a video. Add your audio as you talk through the slides and then upload to YouTube.

• Podcasts – Use the audio from your YouTube video as a podcast.

• Turn your powerpoint into an infographic – Sites such as Piktochart and Visually make it easy to turn the salient points of your blog post into an eye catching Infographic

• Use it as a guest post – Amend the post, re-structure and even update it, but then it is ready to be used as a guest post on someone else’s blog. Obviously with a link back to your blog.

• Simply reshare it – I have lost count of the amount of people who say they share their posts a couple of times when they are first published and then they don’t bother again! Seriously, if you fall into this category you are missing a trick! How do you know your audience saw your two tweets, maybe they were working or sleeping when you tweeted it out. You are relying on people to go to your blog to seek out the post and a lot of the time people don’t have time for this. You need to take your content to them. I urge you to set up some automated tweets using a programme like social oomph. This will do all the hard work for you and you can simply add the tweet in once and then forget about it. This means that when your potential readers are scrolling through their feeds they will see your content and will click on your links. Don’t rely on them remembering you and coming to your blog to check whether you have a new post or not.

So, how do I actually do this repurposing thing?…

You might be thinking this is tricky or time-consuming but it’s really not and don’t forget you will not be writing as much new content.

The process: 

• Write an epic blog post on a topic that your audience will love or find this post from your archive. (or you can start with a Video, a podcast or a Facebook live and just adjust).

• Use the spreadsheet I’ve created for you and work across the different columns. Think about which ideas would work for you and your content and fill in the appropriate columns.

• Share the new content on your various platforms.

Are you going to give repurposing a go? Which post are you going to start with?

Want to get even more organised? Check out my Ultimate Blog Biz Spreadsheet bundle – 16 spreadsheets which will get you organised in no time.

So, are you convinced about the potential benefits of repurposing old posts? Is there anything new here that has got you thinking?

Are you going to give repurposing a go? Which post are you going to start with?