Believe it or not, creating good content is not easy. It takes a lot of time, effort, research, money, and effective marketing and SEO implementation for the content to do its job. When companies allocate a tremendous amount of resources for a solid piece of content, it only makes sense to use it in different ways to reach specific audiences on each search engine and the social platforms the audiences utilize. And while we all try to create evergreen pieces that will drive traffic for the long-term, those pieces need to be continually updated to ensure that the information provided is valid and useful.
In last week’s #SEMrushchat, the community and guest @lilachbullock discussed the reasons behind and the strategies for content repurposing. Below we have several important insights on things to do, things to avoid, factors to consider, and tools to make repurposing easier. Check them out and share your thoughts in the comments or via social.
Note: You can look at threads or retweet any of the tips/insights below by clicking on the Twitter logo next to the quote.
Revamping is often adding to or modifying existing content. Repurposing is using the same topic to create entirely new content. Like turning a portion of a blog into a video or infographic.
When you repurpose you’re basically rejacketing it. For example, a blog post can be turned into an infographic, a Slideshare presentation, etc., whereas content revamping means optimizing it to make it better. Think new stats, images, gifs, quotes from experts, etc,
I’d say repurposing your content means approaching it from another angle, with a different goal in mind — perhaps targeting a new audience. Revamping is improving what you’ve already got.
Repurposing —taking an existing piece of content and creating new channel-specific content from it. Revamping — refreshing or optimizing existing content to make it better or more relevant. I.e., updating a blog post to help it rank better in search.
CONTENT REPURPOSING – Widens your immediate reach and usually happens close to the publish date of the original piece. CONTENT REVAMPING – Helps bring in new traffic/maintain current organic traffic and occurs much later when a piece needs work to remain relevant.
Revamping vs Repurposing is making the existing content better with more information, data, images, etc. VS changing the content into infographic/video/other formats to cater to different platforms and audience..
Content repurposing is a good idea IF the content can better serve your audience in a different format. (It is NOT a good idea if you’re just looking for cheap filler for the content calendar.)
Not everyone digests content in the same way, so it’s important to have different types of content to reach a variety of audiences.
There are so many ways you can use a piece of content, there’s no point in using it once and then discarding it.
Not everyone in your audience learns or consumes content the same way. Repurposing a written post into a visual medium gives it more value to different people.
Content repurposing is important because developing original content can be quite expensive and time consuming, depending on your category. Repurposing content can help it reach a wider audience in a channel and format they prefer.
Repurposing content not only saves time, but allows you to widen your audience and reach for that content. Plus, as long as your evergreen content is also quality content, why not share it again?
Analyze which content is best achieving your goals and figure out how to get the most value possible from that content. Have a top whitepaper? Create a video to promote it, chop it up into an infographic, turn it into a webinar, etc.
Data! Oh, so much data. But look at more than vanity metrics – look at what content converts into leads and sales, rather than just views and likes.
Use your web analytics, social media analytics and any other analytics tools you use (depending on the channel) to identify all your most successful pieces of content.
Act upon feedback you’ve received from readers or people you’ve outreached to — editors often say ‘we like this but it would be great if X’.
Make #Analytics your friend and daily research your favorite tea. Check what’s working on your own page, what’s gaining the maximum interest. Similarly, has your competition done something similar, but only better? Collate your analysis and repurpose.
Use a tool like DeepCrawl & SEMrush together to find where you might be competing on terms. Also, look at the current SERPs for content that’s ranking and identify what they’re doing that your not between content, headers, and general ?’s they’re answering.
Yellowphin Digital Agency
Turn your content into downloadable resources! Be sure to repurpose it in a way that meets your business goals.
Each quarter, we create a digital guide for consumers. Most times, we pull content from blogs we’ve already created and add filler. This saves a ton of time compared to starting from scratch.
Creating lead gen/gated content from popular blogs… Especially for #B2B.
A lot of the options being listed are for sure easy… but I wouldn’t say there is a huge uptick in performance. You need to swing at a drastically different content type. Take a blog post content and get on a podcast and talk about it. Big changes = big results.
One of the best cost-effective ways to repurpose content is to change how you promote it. Pulling powerful quotes for copy or updating imagery can help rejuvenate interest in older pillar or 10x content.
Most of the time repurposing costs nothing/ very little. It’s the initial research and content production that has the highest cost. So why not increase your ROI buy repurposing?
#1 @wistia – It will help you with your videos and you can embed and share it directly from there. #2 @VismeApp – Helps you create awesome infographics and also animated ones that could please a lot of people. #3 @semrush – will help you find what’s trending.
@f_l_o_u_r_i_s_h can be used to create some awesome data visualisations. Check out this one from @OddsMonkey…
A spreadsheet and a process. if you are creating once and publishing many places then create a form where you have all the individual pieces needed for each channel – website, tweet, insta, etc. You can cond format to show whats over limit.
One of my fave tools for repurposing is @canva.
Careful here. Good repurposing is still about creating outstanding content, so don’t shortcut it just because it’s repurposed. An image template in Canva, maybe, for social media posts/quotes, but don’t let repurposed = cheap.
There are so many tools are your disposal. @headlinervideo and @canva are just a few of the wonderful tools that can use to refurbish and rejuvenate your content.
I use @LumenFive and @canva for repurposing for social media
Do you have any tips for improving old content?
Please share them in the comments below. We also want to thank everyone that participated in the chat. We will be looking for your expert insights this week; SEMrushchat starts at 11 am EST/4 pm GMT on Wednesday, November 13th.