Tired of your amazing content gathering dust after just one post? Want to supercharge your reach and slash your content creation time? Of course you do! The secret content strategy you’re looking for is content repurposing.
Let’s be clear, this isn’t about mindlessly copying and pasting. Nope! It’s about intelligently transforming your content to fit each new platform and resonate with its unique audience. Imagine taking a high-performing blog post and turning it into an engaging infographic for Instagram, a concise video for TikTok, or a compelling thread for X.
This strategic approach maximizes your brand’s reach across every channel and simplifies your content creation. No more reinventing the wheel for every single piece of content.
Ready to make your content work smarter, not harder? Keep reading to learn the benefits of repurposing content and get some ideas and tips for this advantageous content strategy.
Why is it beneficial to repurpose content?
Repurposing content is a smart choice to get the most mileage out of your marketing efforts. Here are four major benefits of repurposing content:
- Maximize reach: Not everyone engages with the same type of content. Some of your target audience may prefer blogs, others video, guides, or even quick snippets via social media. Repurposing content will allow your brand to share its message with new and current audiences where they are.
- Bolster content creation: Coming up with new topics for every piece of content can be tough. Especially if you’re posting multiple times a week. Keep it streamlined. Repurposing content allows you to have a variety of types of content covering different topics and to spread out the dissemination of the information over time.
- Maximize bandwidth: Content creation is a time-consuming process. Many marketers report spending anywhere from 1 – 6 hours developing a single piece of content. Luckily, there’s a simple solution! Repurposing content keeps your owned channels and brand top-of-mind for audiences without stretching your resources too thin.
- Build authority: By having many pieces of content in different formats, you can build authority with your audience as well as search engines through SEO best practices. The more backlink- and keyword-rich pieces of content created and shared, the higher your brand will rank.
How to repurpose content
What does repurposing content look like? How do you turn something into something else? Here are a few ideas:
- Break down blogs into shorter social media posts
- Turn a podcast into blogs
- Highlight quotes as social media images
- Take stats and turn them into infographics
- Take white papers and turn them into a series of shorter blogs
- Create videos from content or how-to guides
- Turn a video series into a readable blog or downloadable guide
- Take successes and turn them into case studies or user-generated content (UGC)
- Transform learning materials such as case studies, webinars, and presentations into blogs or social media posts
- Promote your content through a shorter email version and then link out to the longer form content
These are just some of the opportunities when it comes to repurposing content. The possibilities are wide-ranging and depend on what you have and what you need. This is a chance to be creative and flex your marketing muscles!
Content repurposing tips
How do you know which pieces of content should be repurposed, and what are some best practices? Check out these content repurposing tips:
Top performing – Start with your top-performing pieces. Chances are, if the content performed well in one format, it would do the same in another. Is one of your videos the most watched? Is there a specific blog that drives traffic to your site? Start with these and go from there.
Keep it relevant – Evergreen content, or content that is always relevant, is another good place to start. This way, the content stays informational and actionable for a long time, and it’s easy to keep repurposing it with few updates to the information itself.
Build around pillars – Don’t forget about pillar content. Start by identifying pillars (broad topics) and then brainstorm ideas and content around that pillar. Pillar content is generally long form, such as a white paper, and then you can break out the information into smaller pieces from there.
Take stock of current assets – Before you start to create a bunch of new content to be repurposed, complete an audit of your current assets (content, images, data, etc.) and see what can be repurposed from what you already have. Or you may be able to update those existing pieces and then start repurposing from there.
Keep goals in mind – What are your current business goals? What are your marketing goals? Be sure to select content and formats with these in mind.
Adapt from the beginning – When creating a new piece of content, consider how it could be adapted and repurposed from the beginning. If you do that, then it will be easier to repurpose down the line.
Give it some time – Don’t repurpose your content right away. Give it some time and see how it performs. Then you can repurpose with that data in hand to make sure the next piece grows in both relevance and performance.
Broadcast your content
Ready to amplify your content’s impact and get more done with less effort? Repurposing is a powerful content strategy that unlocks a cascade of benefits, especially when it comes to maximizing your reach.
Instead of constantly starting from scratch, you’re strategically building on what you’ve already created. By taking stock of your existing content and developing new ideas around core pillar topics, you can generate a high volume of valuable content.
This approach expands your reach across various platforms, makes the most of your resources and allows every piece of content generated to work harder for you.
Leslie Licano is the co-founder of Beyond Fifteen Communications, Inc., a leading marketing and PR firm. She is recognized for her expertise in branding, strategic communications, and helping clients stand out as innovators in their industries. You can connect with the content marketing experts at Beyond Fifteen to learn more about getting the most mileage out of your content.
