It has arguably never been more competitive for brands to reach their target markets online. Our digital sphere is filled with thousands of brands grappling for attention across every platform imaginable. And creating a consistent flow of high-performing content that piques the interest of key audiences can sometimes feel like an uphill battle – but it doesn’t have to be that way. Brands of all sizes should make their content creation process work for them by strategically repurposing and reusing existing content in different formats and channels.
Content creation for most brands is time-consuming and resource-intensive, so repackaging this content in different mediums ensures your content sees the highest Return On Investment (ROI), by maximising its reach and value. Additional benefits of repurposing content include reaching new potential consumers, building brand awareness, generating high-quality leads and increasing conversions while also improving organic visibility and SEO. According to a recent 2023 report from ReferralRock, when marketers were asked about the best content marketing strategy (out of content creation, content repurposing, and updating old content) that delivered the best results, 46% pointed to content repurposing. But how do you start implementing this into your content plan? Join Wordsmith, as we take you through a step-by-step guide on how to successfully repurpose your content.
How To Approach Repurposing Content
When it comes to what content is best to repurpose, the answer is simple: every piece of content can be used multiple times across different platforms. So, if you have an old piece of content that feels like a winner, think about how you can stretch and roll out that small sliver of creative content into a social media campaign, a press release, a corporate internal deck, a thought-leadership white paper – the list is endless! The key to repurposing content is leveraging this momentum, while also getting creative on how you’re going to distribute the content to engaged audiences. Some pieces may need a change of tone from internal to external or an update on graphics and statistics to keep the content relevant and fresh, but quick modifications like these are a lot less time-consuming than recreating content from scratch, trust us.
1. Conduct a repurposing content audit
The first task is for your team to conduct a repurposing content audit. Very similar to a regular content audit, this is where your marketing team collates old content and keeps a record of key messages and successful brand stories you’ve created across all platforms including email campaigns, marketing publications, corporate decks and social media campaigns. Once you’ve collected these materials, you’ll start to see groups of content that align with your brand's core messaging pillars and value propositions, so it might be useful to categorise your old content into these folders, so can see at a glance what content you have ‘in the bank’ to repurpose. Taking the time to categorise this old content, will ensure that any pieces you choose to repurpose will be consistent with your branding and encourage stronger positioning in the long run.
Hannah Trivette, Managing Director of NUVEW Web Solutions, urges content marketers to “perform an audit at least every six months. Just collecting data isn’t enough — you need to actually analyse your content to draw a conclusion. An in-depth audit provides the big picture and allows you to easily identify what’s working and what isn’t, and most importantly, what can be repurposed later down the line.”
2. Map Out New Campaigns Around High-Performing Evergreen Content
Repurposing high-performing evergreen content is the secret weapon of successful content marketers. Rebekah Iliff, film producer and Founder of Free Dreaming Inc. explains, “Some of our content published years ago continues to drive traffic and leads to us. Since this is the case, we sometimes take top-performing content and rewrite it, making sure to include new tidbits of information that make it more relevant to today. Freshening up content in this way gives it longer legs. It's the owned-media equivalent of the long-tail effects of PR.”
The best content marketers, however, take it one step further and build full marketing campaigns out of them. The important thing when repurposing content is to think big. Take a look back at your high-performing evergreen content and see how it could become part of new bigger marketing campaigns. If you have a great blog, promote it, and weave it into an upcoming storytelling campaign or use the content for a new podcast series or social media campaign. High-performing evergreen content has infinite possibilities for repurposing and should never be overlooked when starting new content-heavy campaigns.
3. Turn Old Content Into Microlearning Opportunities Or Useful Guides
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, any content you create needs to do at least one of four things: entertain, engage, inspire or educate – and creating microlearning opportunities by repackaging existing content is a great way of engaging and teaching your audiences about your products and services. Over time, creating a consistent flow of educational content could also help consumers see you as a thought leader in your industry. Global Head of Marketing at Creative Virtual, Mandy Reed, agrees commenting that she, “repurposed a thought leadership white paper that incorporated expert tips from team members into a series of blog posts. Each tip was featured in its own blog post that related it to current trends, research or industry news, as well as linked back to the gated white paper. Those blog posts were shared across social media, including in the company newsletter, and republished as articles on LinkedIn.” Don’t underestimate the longevity of one piece of educational communication.
If you don’t want to slice up your old content and condense it into bite-sized, educational information, then why not group your top-of-funnel content and convert it into a useful guide instead? If you have a series of successful blog posts that cover a specific topic your audience wants to educate themselves on then create a how-to-guide, downloadable E-book or informational podcast series. Guides generally have more perceived value, so consumers are more willing to part with their contact details in order to gain access, which helps to push audiences further down the marketing funnel. Repurposing this type of content is a win-win for both brand and consumer. Nancy Marzouk, CEO and Founder of MediaWallah, encourages content marketers to repurpose their educational content for guides as, “it’s built for lead generation, and it is typically light on deeper product information. By repurposing it, marketers can more easily create content for sales and existing business teams to use for new business bookings, retention and expansion.”
Don’t leave your good, value-added content in the archives. Bundle your infographics and blog posts and package them as an E-book. Repurposing this content can go a long way toward establishing your brand’s industry credibility. Rafael Schwarz, Executive Director of Sales and Marketing at Territory Influence mentioned his success with creating an E-book, “We created one last year with seven tips for efficiently creating branded content. This year, we have started to create short videos with different team members speaking separately about each of these seven tips. Each of these short videos will be published on our blog and LinkedIn account and lead to the original e-book.”
4. Be Reactive and Tie Content To Current New Stories
Once your teams have done an audit, created new campaigns out of evergreen content and repurposed educational content the next step is to look at what existing content you could link to current news stories. Drawing connections between the two is a great way to deepen your readers’ understanding of a topic and your brand. It also shows that you’re a brand that has its finger on the pulse when it comes to current trends. When done well, combining your old storytelling with breaking news events can do wonders, such as upping your engagement, increasing brand awareness, improving your SEO and generating quality leads for your business – why? Because you’re creating relevant content – which is what Google algorithms and consumers crave. Robin Ganzert, President and CEO of American Humane stresses that it’s all about packaging. “Make sure it’s up-to-date and then link it in with the content calendar, the news cycle or even the changing seasons.” Any piece you repurpose has to have that hook of relevance.
5. Don’t forget to be smart with brand throwbacks and celebrate milestones
If it’s important to shout about – repurposing content with brand throwbacks, is another avenue that could be quite successful – especially if you’re targeting your loyal consumer fan base. Sharing brand milestones or throwbacks could reconnect consumers with your brand’s unique story. But the content doesn’t always have to be directly related to your brand – tech entrepreneur for Ironmonk, Amine Rahal, notes. “Periodically — say, once a year — I like to directly repost, Tweet or share an old blog article or piece of content with an interesting piece of new information added to the discussion in the caption. This way, something new is added to the conversation, and it builds a sense of continuity.”
One of the most successful ways of repurposing old content with throwbacks is by providing context through contemporary data. If you have a piece of existing content that can be useful to your consumers, take the time to research the topic on a quarterly basis and refresh the data or economic trends – and make sure to shout about it across your channels. Doing this ensures that you’re creating fresh, interesting content that will consistently engage your audiences. Tom Wozniak, Executive Director of Marketing from OPTIZMO Technologies, explains how he used old content to create useful throwbacks. “Each spring, we create an infographic of industry data from the prior year. We repurpose the infographic to create a presentation that we then deliver at a key industry conference. We also record the presentation and turn it into multiple videos that we distribute and promote across social channels and on our website. This year, we also plan on turning it into a webinar.”
It's important to remember, that just because you’re choosing to repurpose your content, it doesn’t permit you to be unoriginal. How you display and distribute existing content effectively requires creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. If anything, you need to be even more innovative when breathing originality into existing collateral – whether that’s through creative storytelling, contemporary data, or fully utilising the breadth of channels to get important content in front of potential consumers and loyal followers alike. When done correctly, repurposing your content is not only less time-consuming and resource-intensive than creating novel content from scratch, but it has the potential to help bolster your content marketing strategy by generating high-quality leads and increased conversions in a completely new way.