With the amount of content created churned out into the digital universe, it is a little amazing to see how people keep coming up with new things to write about and others make the time to read (some of) it. We say this from the perspective of a content marketer who has to churn new, interesting, relevant, SEO-friendly, traffic driving, conversion-oriented content with high frequency. Even with all the hacks and tricks outside the book, it still isn’t an easy job to keep the content calendar full for many of us.
That’s why, when we create a content master plan for our client, we are very specific about doing a thorough content audit about all the content that has been created until the date and see how it fits in with our plan going forward. This helps us map out the analytics around that content and also see how the content can be purposefully reused.
While new and fresh ideas are always welcome, ignoring the evergreen content you’ve created putting in your blood and sweat is a criminal offense. Old content pulled out from the archives can very simply and easily be used to support your existing content strategy.
To Begin With
Other than solving your ideating problem, repurposing content is good for you in multiple ways. To begin with, it will save you a ton of time. Content creation is a time-consuming process which involves multiple resources in your company. Everyone from the editors to writers will be devoting time to creating new content. In addition to this, the content marketing team will work up a strategy to get it the attention it deserves. Contrary to this, old content will need a fraction of the efforts to repurpose it. Your content marketers will create a funnel strategy to analyse and use the medium which has worked well for the content before not making it a shot in the dark.
And believe us, Google is also going to love you for doing so. Fresh and better content around a topic can generate additional opportunities for you to rank on a targeted keyword. The enhanced quality can also mean better backlinking opportunity. Here’s how you can get started.
1. Do a content audit to find the content you can repurpose
Content that can be reused multiple times over the years is essentially evergreen content. This could be content about your brand, product or industry which has remained constant over time.
To find such content, head over to your Google analytic and look for content that has been receiving steady or incremental traffic over the last couple of years. For example, the blog that we published last July “How to write an SEO proposal that will get the client on-board”. It still ranks as one of our most visited blogs over the years.
The next step is to look for blogs that you think could have done better in terms of traffic and continue to be relevant. These will need minimum edits and a better push from the marketing team to experiment on traffic pull.
2. Flip the Format
Once you identified a piece of content to be worthy of repurposing, the simplest way to do it will be to change the packaging. If it is long-form content, you can convert it into a listicle with pictures. If it a short piece, you can make an infographic or video out of it. The other options are to do a ‘How to’ piece, podcast, slides and more.
3. Add an update to existing content
Have you been following the Facebook data breach fiasco?
Who hasn’t?
And beyond a point, many people have fragmented updates from multiple sources. This is a perfect case for creating a piece of content and keep updating it as more news comes in. This will give you the authority you need to rank for a topic and also keep your readers happy to have just one piece of news to follow.
4. Convert listicles into detailed pieces
We’ve all written “Top 5 ways to…” content which follows the catchy headline style and a quick list that can be surfed during a commute. If any such topics have caught your audience’s fancy, you can pick out points from the listicle and expand them into complete articles. This builds a strong internal link system and also helps with creating authority content on a topic.
5. Refresh it for social
Remember the article about Cannes fashion that you had written about last year?
The bloopers never seem to stop getting attention. Take advantage of the back history of bloopers you’ve already covered, add a new one and voila, you have another audience magnet ready to grab attention. With a news and dated headline, this can easily get attention from your social audience.
Another example of refreshing for social comes with writing different angles to the same content based on the medium it is consumed from. Let’s say you are working with a local destination tour operator. You are more likely to share stories via Facebook, nugget facts via twitter, visuals via Instagram and business overview via Linkedin. You can look at the avenues you’ve missed and created specific content for specific media.
6. Pick your top five blogs and give them a mix
If you have written multiple pieces of content around the same topic, you can get the best snippets from these articles to create a fresh view on the same topic. It isn’t the most exciting way to repurpose content but it works to attract new target audience as they may not have access to such content elsewhere.
7. Create a series
Take an article like this. Each point in this article can be repurposed into a chain in an email series that can be sent at regular intervals to keep the interest alive about the topic. Besides, it will keep people coming back for more if you do it right.
8.
An eBook is often the ‘free giveaway’ bait that you need to funnel leads into your conversion tunnel. It has been known to work like a charm if used well. Your old content can be converted into an eBook without much effort. Once you do this, be sure to push it out on social where it can grab eyeballs.
9. Host a webinar
Converting your coveted piece of content into a webinar will give you a way to interact and discuss the topic with a live audience and add in many more fresh views to the same story. Doing a webinar also is a doorway to capture leads for your business. All you need is a little bit of additional promotion to get the right audience for your webinar.
If you plan ahead, you will be able to create new content keeping in mind how you will be recycling it six months down the line. Content planning may not be an easy task, but finding innovative ways to reuse it will definitely help along the way.
Need help with a content audit to find your evergreen content and ideas to repurpose it? Drop us a line here