9 Remarkable Ways to Repurpose Your Content

You’ve written some incredible content. Some of the things you may have written or created might have gone viral for you. Eventually, however, even the best content will fade away. This is why repurposing content is so important. It breathes new life into the best content you’ve created since starting your online journey. Here are some easy ways to make this happen.

#1. Update Your Evergreen Content

Sometimes this might be called your “Pillar Content.” Whatever you happen to call it, this is the stuff that is the cornerstone of your online presence. What you wrote 6-12 months ago was incredibly relevant then. It is also relevant now, but only when you take these simple steps.

• Update the facts. Evergreen content doesn’t need to be rewritten. It just needs to be updated as the relevant facts stated in the content evolve over time. This saves you time when compared to creating brand new content.
• It keeps your link equity. Evergreen content has already received the SEO treatment. Instead of starting over with new content, you get to keep your existing link equity while showing the search engines that you’re making the content even more valuable.
• You keep high quality content. It’s already the best content on your site. Repurposing it to keep the facts relevant maintains that reputation.

Even great blog writers can only push out 3-4 pieces of quality content per hour when they’re at their best. Creating brand new content can kill your margins. Updating your evergreen content lets your existing content feel brand new again and that’s just as effective.

#2. Create a Sequel

If you’ve followed the TV show CSI over the years, then you’ve seen 3 different spinoffs from this main show: CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, and CSI: Cyber. Each show is different, yet still has similar qualities to the original which allows people to transition from one show to the other. You can do the same thing with your best content. Here’s how.

• List articles can become individual pieces of content. If you’ve got several evergreen list articles on your site, then each key point made in those lists can become its own piece of content. Then just link your new content to your evergreen content.
• Create summary posts. If you are part of the trend where posts of 250-400 words in length are being rapidly produced, then you can create summary content by combining several of those posts into long-form content.
• Add a sequel to the piece. If you’ve just finished writing “38 Ways to Write Great Content” and the content is succeeding beyond your wildest dreams, then take advantage of that success. Create a sequel: “38 More Ways to Write Great Content.”

Sometimes the sequel isn’t as good as the original. Sometimes it receives even more attention. Either way, when you repurpose content by creating sequels, summaries, or fleshed out versions of list pieces, you’re actually enhancing the value of your original content and that’s never a bad thing.

#3. Make an Infographic

You’ve got 5,000 words of the best content anyone in your industry has ever written. The only problem is that your average visitor isn’t going to spend 25 minutes on your site to read this incredible content. They see its length and bounce because it is so long. You might get a few bookmarks, but you can do better than that if you’ve got an infographic. Here’s why repurposing content into an infographic can really boost your traffic.

• It lets visitors see all of your key points immediately. Instead of wading through 5,000 words, often skimming past important paragraphs, visitors will receive the relevant facts from the content immediately with little effort.
• Visual content is easier to consume. People are visual by nature, so content that is easy to consume will be retained better by visitors. Your 5,000 words are great for the search engine. Your infographic is great for the visitor.
• You create value by bring out specific facts. Infographics let people find the specific facts they need to have from your content. It appeals to the desire for instant gratification.

As an added bonus, infographics are also very easy to share and embed into other sites. This lets your content reach farther while generating organic backlinks to your site. Your value expands, your expertise expands, and that can lead to higher overall ranks on your targeted keywords.

#4. Recycle Old Content

In the movie I Love Trouble, Nick Nolte plays a columnist. His editor catches him recycling his old content into new content for print. “I don’t print recycled columns,” his editor admonishes. When it comes to your older content that has fallen out of date, you must become Nick Nolte. Here are the advantages you’ll get from republishing with an update.

• You can update older posts to modern SEO expectations. A new headline, an image with an SEO friendly title, and other updates can make your brilliant, but keyword-packed content of old feel brand new.
• Modify your image for social networking. Twitter and Pinterest users benefit from having the headline of their content on the lead image. This simple update, along with fixing any other errors in the piece, can make something that seems valuable to become truly valuable.
• You keep the original value of the content. When you update the article within its original URL, then it keeps its original value. If you can change the publishing date, then visitors will see it as brand new content – even though it has been repurposed.

Most of the older content that has been published is easy to salvage. Just update the content to reflect modern white hat SEO values, eliminate high density keywords, and swap out clever headlines that don’t make sense. You’re not creating clickbait. You’re becoming Nick Nolte.

#5. Share It… And Share It Again

The Onion is the master of repurposing content in this fashion. They’ll post an initial article on Facebook just like most others do. Then a week later, they’ll post the content again with a comment like this: “Trending from last week…” You’ll find the content is repurposed numerous times in a week, month, and year. Here are some of the best ways you can benefit from this process.

• Time creates memory gaps. We just don’t remember all of the information we see every day. Posting multiple links to great content makes sure that it stays at the top of the mind of your visitors.
• It continues the engagement of the community. A repost can generate up to 75% of the engagement that the original post generated. A third attempt can generate up to 50% of the engagement.
• It’s effortless. You only have to put a link up on your page or feed for your followers to find. It takes maybe 5 seconds to make it happen.

If your content is great and doesn’t need an update, then don’t be afraid to share it again. Maybe some visitors didn’t see it the first time around. Maybe new visitors haven’t discovered it yet. Either way, you’re repurposing your content in one of the fastest and easiest ways possible on the internet today.

#6. Spread Your Expertise

Your content is incredible. The community reaction has been enormous. Everyone loves what you’ve created. This means it is time for this content to be spread to other sites. Specifically the answer websites like Quora where people want questions answered. Here’s why spreading your expertise is a great way to repurpose your content.

• You’re helping people. Your content is able to solve problems. This is a core component of any value proposition.
• You prove your expertise. The content you’ve already written becomes an example of the expertise you can provide within your industry, but to new visitors who may not know about who you are or what you do.
• You build a reputation. There are many jokes about karma, but having a solid online reputation isn’t something to joke about. When you do good things for people, you build a positive online reputation that translates over to the value of your content.
• You can become inspired. Many question and answer sessions can become their own blog post. Then you can use this expanded content to answer even more questions.

Your content doesn’t have to be relegated to a lonely URL on your site. Snippets of it can flood the internet, acting like breadcrumbs to bring visitors to you. Get involved on forums, answer sites, and other Q&A areas to repurpose your content and the value you receive in return will pay consistent dividends.

#7. Trim It Down

If you have great long-form content that isn’t getting much love, then this is your community telling you that they can’t digest it. If you can break it down into consumable chunks of content over time, however, it becomes a lot easier for visitors to manage. This is where your email list can become the perfect place to repurpose content that may be difficult for some.

• It creates a daily conversation. Instead of talking about the entire piece of content as a whole, you can create daily conversations about 150-250 words from that content to pull out its key points.
• It makes long-form content become relatable. People naturally skim over content that is difficult or intimidating to them. By changing the structure of your content, you make it more accessible and relatable.
• It extends the life of your content. If you have a 15-part series through email covering your content, then you have 15 days of extra life.

If your older long-form content isn’t performing, then consider this option. It reduces the time it takes for you to create emails for your list, breathes new life into older content that is underperforming, yet still feels fresh and new to the visitor.

#8. Become a Guest Blogger

Every site inevitably has content on it which doesn’t meet traffic expectations. It just kind of sits there, forgotten about, even though all of the other repurposing tips have been applied to it. The content isn’t bad or worthless. It just doesn’t receive any attention. That’s why turning this content into guest blogging content is such a great idea. Here’s why.

• Different visitor segments have different perspectives. Maybe the content just doesn’t convey its message in the right way to your primary visitor segments. Reaching out to a new market with a different perspective might be able to change that.
• You build organic links. Lifeless content isn’t doing anything on your site. Put it on another site with a backlink and you begin the organic link-building process. Maybe it doesn’t get much traffic, but at least you’ll have a network  – which is more than you had before.
• Referral traffic has a higher conversion rate. When people see guest content and follow the links that content contains, they’re more likely to convert on your site.
• It naturally forms relationships. Over time, you’ll have folks who want to create guest posts for you. That helps to ease the burden of creating new content to offer your visitors.

Even if you don’t have ignored content, you can summarize existing content with light key points as a guest post to gain these advantages. You might be giving others content to publish, but having a new spin on what you do and gaining access to a new market of visitors outweighs any risks you might be taking.

#9. Expand the Thought

You’ve written some great words. Now it is time to expand those words into different forms of content. Videos, graphics, and podcasts can help to make all of your content even more relevant. These additional forms of content can then be uploaded to sites like YouTube or a preferred social network for an expanded reach.

• You can discuss old content. Most visitors aren’t going to dig through your site to find content that is more than 1 year old. These additional forms of content can help you repurpose that older content and make it relevant to today’s visitor.
• You can create training tools. Your content is a natural script for training others in your industry. Turn your older content into seminars, webinars, training ebooks/PDFs, or other presentations that can help visitors improve their own skills.
• It allows people to access your content on their time. If your content is turned into an MP3, then visitors can download the file and listen to it whenever they wish.
• New content can be created from your repurposed content. If you’ve created a video that discusses your old content, then you can also create summaries and discussions of your video and turn them into brand new posts. You’re essentially repurposing your repurposed content.

Expanding the thought of your content can help people engage with it in a way that is more suitable to their preferences and needs. This expands the reach of the content and keeps it relevant for a much longer period of time.