How Repurposing Content Can Revitalize Your Marketing Strategy
Content acts as the foundation of all the marketing you do online. As the base of any social media campaign or search engine optimization strategy, the content you create needs to connect with your target audience. However, sometimes it doesn’t have as big of an impact as you had originally hoped.
It can feel disappointing when your content falls flat. After all the time, money, and energy you put in, you want your content to get noticed by your target audience. If it is ignored, you can feel like that investment is wasted.
While we hope our content meets the mark the first time around, you’re not at a complete loss if your content doesn’t bring the punch you had hoped for. Through repurposing, you can put pieces you’ve already made back out there and get a higher return on your investment strategy.
However, repurposing content involves more than just reposting a piece you created months in the past. If you want to revitalize your marketing strategy, you need to get smart about the way you repurpose old content.
Let’s take a look at content repurposing, what it is, and how you can use it to improve your online presence.
What Does it Mean to Repurpose Content?
When you repurpose a piece of content, you’re taking an old piece and refashioning it in some way. Hopefully it’ll be more modern or reach a new area of the web. Repurposing content allows you to look back on pieces that may not have had the impact you hoped for. You’ll then recraft them in a new way which will hopefully attract more attention.
In order to repurpose a piece of content, you want to put the information in an entirely new structure. For example, if you’re looking to repurpose an old blog post, you wouldn’t get much benefit from creating a new blog post. Instead, you want to repurpose that article to be something entirely new, such as a video or an infographic.
Repurposed content can then be used in a variety of ways. In some cases, that new piece of content will completely replace the original. In others, that piece of content will be used to supplement the original piece and bring more attention to it.
What are the Benefits of Repurposing Content?
The biggest benefit of repurposing your content is that you’re able to save time. Because you’ve already done the research and have a foundation to work off of. You’ll then be able to create your content much faster. This can save you time and money in the long run.
However, shorter research periods aren’t the only benefit of repurposing your content. When you create a new piece based on something already existing, you have a better understanding of how it will connect with your target audience. That piece of content has already been posted, you know what information resonated with your target audience and what didn’t.
Repurposing your content can also give you a boost your SEO strategy. When you’re creating new pieces of content centered around the same topic or keyword, you’re making a stronger impression with a search engine crawler. When they become familiar with your name and the topic you’re covering, you can improve your chances of boosting your site ranking.
Additional pieces of content can also give you more information to link to. For example, if you create a video based on an old blog post, you can link to the video within your original article. This can help you grow your network of links and improve your search engine optimization strategy.
Your repurposed content also allows you to reach a new area of your audience. If you have audience members who only engage with specific forms of content, you can repurpose your information to appeal to their unique needs or preferences.
However, repurposing just any content isn’t going to help your marketing take off. In order to see positive returns you’ll need to be strategy driven about how your repurposing your content.
How to Repurpose Old Content for Maximum Benefit
It doesn’t need to be difficult to repurpose your content. Here are a few things you need to do if you want to revitalize an old piece of content and improve your marketing strategy.
1. Find the Right Content to Repurpose
When repurposing your content, there are two strategies you can take. First, you can find an old piece of content that didn’t get a lot of attention that you’d like to bring to light. This kind of content can be easy to find because it did not perform well.
However, if you choose to repurpose content that didn’t perform well the first time, you’re risking it missing the mark again. You need to fully understand why that content didn’t resonate with your target audience. If it’s because it isn’t a piece they’re interested in, repurposing the information isn’t going to help. However, if you believe it’ll pack a bigger punch in a different format, repurposing can make a huge difference.
On the other hand, you can repurpose evergreen content that continuously grabs attention from your target audience. Evergreen content is a high-quality piece of information that stays relevant to your target audience. Repurposing evergreen content can bring a major boost to your SEO and give past audience members something new to connect with.
2. Understand Your Target Audience
When you’re repurposing your content, you want to take a hard look at the way your target audience engages online. Because you want this new piece of content to make as big of an impact as possible, you want to ensure you’re creating something your target audience will enjoy.
Consider what forms of content they’re engaging with the most. You can do this by looking at your own content, but also take a look at the way your competition is promoting theirs. If you see that your competitors seem to be performing well with videos or infographics, you may want to consider creating videos and infographics of your own.
In order to get a true perspective from your target audience, you can also engage with them one-on-one. Reach out to some of your trusted audience members and ask what kind of content they may be interested in. You can do this in person, on social media, or even during a focus group.
3. Look at Your Budget
Content repurposing can help you save money but you’ll still need to budget for creating new content. Depending on the piece you create, your budget could need to be rather large.
There are some forms of content that will cost you very little to create. Blog posts and articles can usually be made for a small amount and promoted on your website for very little cost. However, videos and infographics typically involve much more time and investment.
When repurposing content, take a look at the budget you have to work with. Make a smart decision about what type you’re going to produce. While you want to connect with your target audience, you also want to create the best piece of content possible. It is better to invest your money to create a high-quality infographic than a low-quality video.
4. Promote Efficiently
Creating a new piece isn’t the only thing you need to do when repurposing. In order to bring new attention to the content you’ve just created, you’ll need to develop a strong promotion strategy.
The way you promote will depend on the form and who your target audience is. However, if you want to attract new attention, you can’t simply upload the content and hope for the best. You need to effectively let them know it is available, typically through social media strategy or search engine optimization.
Be sure to include your new pieces within the promotion strategy you already have running, or create something new to consider the unique angle of your new content. Once you give a piece a boost, it can typically take off with the power of your community and customers.
Whether you’ve created a piece of content that isn’t getting a lot of attention or you’re just looking for a new way to connect with your target audience, repurposing content can be a great way to get an extra boost. By creating something new out of something you’ve already developed, a deeper connection with your target audience can be achieved.
If you’re going to repurpose your content, be smart about what you create. Follow these tips the next time you want to give an old piece a fresh look.