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Content marketing plays a critical role in pretty much every business in every industry even more so today. If you’ve been in business for a while, you probably have a stockpile of content that you’ve created over the years.
As content ages, it starts to collect dust — it’s out of date, tactics change, it’s buried deep in the archives, and it’s not doing anything for your business. Not only can repurposed content increase your traffic 300%, but it’s an easy way to get more ROI out of what you already have.
If you want to save time on content creation and draw new traffic to your site, do these 7 things.
1. Add New Information to Evergreen Content
Some content never goes out of style. Many businesses have created foundational content that provides readers in-depth information on their industry, and this content can continue to be useful for years. But just like anything that’s getting up there in years, it sometimes needs a refresh to regain some of its old sparkle.
Take our content here, for example. We’ve written thousands of blog posts over the years on just about every digital marketing topic. Something like a foundational piece on SEO can remain relevant for a long time, but some of the specifics will need to be updated as search engines change their algorithms and best practices shift.
Refreshing content and republishing anew, with an acknowledgement that it’s been updated to reflect the latest on the given topic, is one of the quickest and easiest ways to repurpose your old content. This allows you to hang onto any goodwill that particular link has garnered in terms of ranking over the years, while introducing it to a whole new audience and allowing it to generate even better standing in search results.
2. Incorporate Media into Existing Posts
Blog posts can get boring after a while. Reading through one after the other demands a lot of focus from your audience, and today’s consumers are looking for new ways to engage with content.
Video has become hugely popular of late and can add a lot of visual interest to existing pages. Plus, if someone’s unable to read through an entire blog post, they may have the time to watch a quick video that provides a summary of the information in the post.
You can incorporate other forms of media, too. Infographics are a fun, eye-catching way to repurpose your content. Check out this article from Visme for some great tips on making an infographic.
Podcasts are another popular medium, with 62 million Americans tuning into their favorite shows each week. For simple steps to get a podcast up and running, check out this post on our blog.
Because you’re creating dynamic media to accompany the existing content, it’s easier to script out what you need and get it done. You can quickly distill the blog post down to a handful of bullet points and from there create a video that riffs on those key elements.
Again, this saves you time in the content creation process and allows you to attract a new audience to this content. While someone might not have wanted to read 1,000 words on the topic, that infographic that hits all the highlights might be just what they were looking for.
3. Turn Video Content into a Blog Post
Creating content takes a lot of time. You need to put together a thoughtful strategy and build your content calendar around that. Then there’s the process of actually making the content itself. Blogging involves research and revision; video and podcasting means you need to adopt production skills and be able to edit video and audio.
If you go through all the trouble of creating content in the first place, why not get as much mileage out of it as possible?
Let’s say you own a home remodeling business. A while back, you posted a video walking prospective clients through the ins and outs of the kitchen renovation process, from budgeting and planning to selecting materials to managing construction timelines. The video generates lots of views and drives traffic to your website. You know that the content is useful to your audience and helps win attention for your business.
Don’t just leave it at that video! Instead, get the video transcribed, so you can easily convert it into a blog post. (I love Rev for fast, accurate transcription services).
You can even take it a step further by using the audio from that video and transform it into a podcast episode. Suddenly, your one piece of content has multiplied into three. And that provides more opportunities for you to reach your audience through the medium that works best for them.
4. Create Social Media Friendly Content
Social media is a vital channel for businesses of all sizes. You can take content you already have, and repurpose it in different ways for social as long as it aligns with your overall social media strategy.
Your existing blog posts are packed with social media gold. Pulling snippets from your blog posts are a great way to quickly develop social media friendly content AND drive traffic back to your website. You can do things like:
- Make a twitter thread pulling important points from a blog post
- Create micro-blogs on Instagram by sharing snippets from in-depth blog posts
- Use insightful quotes from your podcast episode, videos, or blog posts to create eye catching graphics – here’s an article to help get you started on creating a quote graphic
5. Transcribe Your Podcast
Developing content, recording, and editing a podcast episode takes time. Instead of only utilizing the audio, why not transcribe your podcast episode and turn it into a SEO-rich blog post. People consume content differently. By offering a written version of your show, you’ll reach more people because you offer content that can suit multiple people’s preferences.
6. Assemble Hub Pages
Most businesses have their content scattered here, there, and everywhere. There are videos and podcast episodes on various pages on their website and hosted on external platforms. Their blog posts are so numerous they could rival the National Archives. But the content is scattered, so it’s not actually serving a purpose.
If you want to get the most out of this content, you need to organize it around hub pages. I’ve described hub pages as your own mini-Wikipedia on your website. You start by identifying a broad topic that’s of interest to your readers. For example, we work with a lot of local businesses, so we’ve created the Ultimate Guide to Local Marketing hub page on our site.
From there, we walk local businesses through everything they need to know to supercharge their marketing efforts. We cover the basics of Google My Business, paid search, SEO for local businesses, and reviews and competitive analysis. Under these broad topics, we’ve gathered together relevant content.
For local business owners, this repository of information is a gold mine. Rather than having to search through our thousands of pieces of content, the most relevant ones are organized nicely for them in the hub page’s table of contents. Suddenly, this page becomes a go-to resource. Visitors return again and again to go deeper in depth on the topic, and share the posts with their colleagues. Search engines take note of this behavior. They realize that the content is useful, and suddenly our hub page moves up the SERPs.
When done correctly, hub pages can get your local business ranking on the first page of results for relevant search terms. And you achieve that strong ranking by repurposing and reorganizing existing content, rather than having to start from scratch.
7. Compile Blog Posts into an e-Book
If you have a series of blog posts around the same topic, you can create a new piece of content by compiling them into an e-Book to use as a lead magnet. You can use each blog post as a chapter of your e-Book, make the content in each blog post a little meatier, and write an introduction and conclusion. Then, you can use a free tool like Canva to compile these posts together. This e-Book is a great way to help you build your email list and reach more people with the content you already have.
Creating content takes a lot of time and work. Repurposing your existing content allows you to get the greatest benefit from that investment. Not only does repurposing give it a new life and introduce it to a new audience, it can also help you boost your SEO standing and grow your reach even further.
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