8 Ways To Repurpose Your Content While Practicing Social Distancing

In most instances, newly published content doesn’t always make the biggest splash in the wider audience pool. So, by repurposing your content for different channels, you create new forms of engagement for people who would otherwise not bother looking at your material. As summarised by Michael Brenner of SAP, “Multi-channel marketing … provides the content our audiences are searching for, in all the places they search.”

Reinforce Your Message

According to Marketing lore (ahem,  Marketing’s Rule of Seven), consumers have to hear your message around seven times before they decide to do business with you. Therefore, repetition is key to not only getting your message across to your audience, but also makes certain it sinks into their psyche. With this in mind, repurposing your content is a great way of ensuring you repeatedly deliver the same information to your people.

Get that SEO boost!

Multiple versions of content around the same topic means you can jump on keyword optimisation opportunities. This can help you get better search page for real estate for targeted searches. Additionally, if you take your content outside of your own site, you can gain some sweet, quality backlinks to your website.

Now here's the clincher of this whole spiel;

The hard work's already been done for you

If you’ve ever created baby-fresh content, you already know how much time and energy is required to make it. And because time is a precious internet resource, repurposing content means you don’t have to start from scratch. Instead, you can invest your time into other facets of the content creation and promotion process. Because, as  Derek Halpern of Social Triggers explains, at the end of the day, “You don’t have to create content day in and day out. You just have to work on getting the content you already have in the hands of more people."

So, which content pieces should I repurpose? 

Start by reviewing your blog and other content archives and keep an eye out for two things:

Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is subject matter that is timeless, meaning its consistently relevant, and high quality, meaning it holds authority and is useful for gaining traffic. 

Popular Content

Analyse you site's metrics and take note of posts that garnered high engagement rates. If posts performed well in the past, then its more than likely to perform well again. It just needs a little recontextualising or refresher. 

Now you've selected your content, here are 8 ways you can repurpose it while at home being socially distance

1. Refresh and repost old blogs

Let’s get existential here- everything changes over time. This includes information, which means your blog posts from a few months ago most likely have some information in it that is irrelevant or doesn’t hold true now. If you have a blog that, though a little outdated, still holds merit, you might find value in tweaking, adding current info and reworking its content into a new article. We at Neighbourhood, recently did a 2020 update to our blog about the differences between inbound and outbound marketing if you want to check that out for inspo. Apart from adding new information, other ways you can refresh a blog includes adding images (Pixabay is a really good source of royalty free images), using more whitespace, bolding keywords and segmenting content with headings to increase readability.

2. Guest blog

While reposting recycled blogs on your own website is great, posting them on outside platforms takes it to another fabulous level. Guest blogging on other related industry websites gets you targeted referral traffic that will convert better than other online marketing channels. Also, it improves your SEO by creating backlinks to your site and positions you as an industry thought leader. Using repurposed content means you can quickly create a body of work to be dispatched to your target businesses. 

3. Make an infographic

Info graphs are a cool way to turn laboriously long blogs into something digestible. Summarising interesting data, meaningful quotes, and actionable advice on a catchy and stimulating vector keeps your audience with a short attention span on your site for longer. Campaign Monitor's infograph is a great example on how you can transform content into a visual.

To make your own infographic, I recommend you check out Venngage and Canva. They have a great user interface that makes visual making stupidly simple.

4. Go get your video camera

Turns out most people don’t like reading. Go figure, with more than 85% of internet users enjoying video content instead of other forms of content. Capitalise on this turning your written content into scripts. As videos are inherently more eye-catching and alluring than text, embedding videos on blogs, especially at the top of the webpage, means you capture and hold your prospects attention. Moreover, posting these videos on other video-sharing platforms, like YouTube and Vimeo, means your content is available across multiple channels. For those who don't have access to video editing software, check out Wistia, a handy dandy online video marketing tool. 

5. Podcasts

. Podcasts!

According to a 2019 study by Deloitte, 44% of media consumers identify themselves as podcast listeners, with Millennials the highest users (59%). This number is expected to grow in the next few years and brands have already started jumping on this bandwagon of marketing opportunity- last year over $650M was spent on podcast advertising.  But rather than just paying for product placement in the middle of an episode like a noob, why not create your own podcast series? 

Creating your own podcast grants you a few benefits. One, it's a flexible means of leveraging existing content. Each episode can be related to topics you've already explored in past content pieces.  Two, you gain authority because you're speaking about something you know a lot about. Three, its human. The thing about podcasts is that it is a personal experience for both the podcaster and podcastee because you essentially talking into your audiences ear. And unlike other forms of content that is highly curated and edited, podcasts are raw, casual and unfiltered. Using the human voice reiterates to your audience that you aren't just a brand, you are people too, and that's powerful.

For excellent examples of branded podcasts, listen to TedTalk's TedTalk Daily, or Sephora's #Lipstories.

You should note that Tedtalk's podcast episodes are literally the audio taken from their video content.

6. Repost and re-promote on social media

An easy-as content tactic you can enact while lounging on the sofa is reposting and repromoting past content, namely blogs, onto Social media.  While it may seem weird and illogical to keep sharing the same content to your audience, it's been found to be effective for targeting groups in different time zones, finding new people and testing headline variations. Marketer Tom Tunguz found that reposting brings in 75 percent of the engagement of the original share.

Sub-tip: If you have testimonials, turn these into social media posts. Doing so increases brand awareness and lets prospects know that you are already trusted by others. Check out Go-To Skincare's Instagram for some testimonial ideas.

7. Make something new from something old

Did you know that many shows have spawned TV offsprings? Cheers had Frasier, Breaking Bad led to Better Call Saul, and Teen Mom 1, 2 and 3 came from the titular reality classic, 16 and Pregnant.

I didn't know this either, but its interesting how one brilliance can be created from another. 

Make spinoffs of your own material- Awesome content easily branches into equally awesome content, and more great content means your audience reaps extra benefits. To do this, go grab one of your popular or evergreen pieces and break it down into components that could easily be teased out further. For each component you've identified, use it as the subject of your next blog, and voilà! You have new content. Side Note: By doing this, you have just created a topic cluster.

Also, the reverse of this practice can be done. If you have a couple (4-7) related posts, you can collate them into a singular summary blog. This is a good tip if you need to get a high-quality, comprehensive piece of content out fast.

8. E-book

If you have content galore, the next logical step is to create an Ebook. As an inbound marketer, you want provide your audience with as many content offerings as possible in order to help and delight your people. With this in mind, ebooks are the ultimate content proposition. Ebooks boost your credibility because you are presenting quality and valuable content in an all-in-one package. Additionally, announcing you have an ebook on social media, particularly LinkedIn reinforces your stance as an authoritative industry leader and draws in a related audience. Furthermore, you can make an ebook a conversion opportunity, meaning, for a person to access your ebook, they have to provide some personal information, like an email or name. 

To formulate an ebook, consider the overall topic you want to discuss and collect blogs that feed into the topic of choice. Supplement with additional info and research and take time formatting and designing your ebook so it looks like its worth investing in. 

The length of an ebook can vary depending on what concept you're exploring. To get your head around what an Ebook should look like, check out the ebooks from three resources; HubSpot, the MailChimp resources centre and Help Scout.

Final thoughts

Let's be real, the possibilities are endless when it comes to recycling your material. Not only is repurposing content a time-saver and SEO booster, it'll give you a creative and constructive output while at home doing your part during the Covid-19 outbreak. And we've just given you 8 ideas to get the ball rolling!

Stay safe everyone and get creating.