As a tactic long employed by the top content marketing firms, repurposing content is an excellent way to give old work new life and expand its reach.

But what does it mean to repurpose content? And what are the rules for doing so?

Stay tuned as we go over ways that content can be repurposed, the benefits it can bring to your content creation strategy, and how to get started yourself. 

What is Content Repurposing?

Repurposing content is quite simple: you take all or part of an existing piece of content and reuse it in a way that expands its original scope and reach.

The most common way to repurpose content is by converting the content into a new medium. For example:

• Using an existing article as the base for a video script
• Converting a blog post into an infographic, slideshow, etc.
• Creating social media posts to promote the content
• Creating accompanying narration for an article so it can be listened to

For more ideas of ways to convert content, see Backlinko’s in depth review of different content types.

In addition to conversion, republishing and/or rewriting the content for new platforms is also a good way to repurpose it.

The latter is especially viable when you’re already thinking about doing major updates on the piece in question.

4 Benefits of Repurposed Content

If the idea of repurposing content is new to you, you may be wondering why you should bother. Well, believe it or not, there are actually a lot of benefits to repurposing your content. Here are our top 4:

1. It can significantly boost your audience. 

A blog post that is also converted into an accompanying video and gets a tweet promoting it is going to get more eyes on it than a post released by itself.  By the same principle, it can also give old content new life by putting it in front of fresh eyes. 

2. It provides a great opportunity to update your keywords.

Updating the keywords in previous content becomes more beneficial the longer it’s been since the original publishing date, as the SEO landscape will have inevitably changed. 

Post-published keyword refresh years down the line can help old content rank higher in search results again, which can breathe new life into the piece even if you don’t directly promote the update.

3. It provides your audience with multiple ways to consume and engage with your content.

Actively and passively consuming content is as different as night and day in terms of practicality and multitasking.

Active consumption, such as reading a book or article, requires the audience to put effort into absorbing the content out of its medium. Increasing their immersion in the content can lead to stronger retention, at the cost of excluding your focus from most other tasks.

Meanwhile, passive consumption, such as watching a video or listening to a podcast, delivers the content directly to the audience without them having to do anything besides hit play.

This decreases immersion and retention but frees them up to perform other activities while it plays in the background.

By providing both active and passive ways to consume the same content, you will naturally appeal to a wider swath of the audience than if you only published one or the other.

4. It’s easier to scale than creating new content wholesale. 

By recycling content, you save yourself a massive amount of work because a good chunk of your research and organization is already done.

You just need to present it in a different way than you already have.

This not only saves you valuable time but can also be a large money saver as well. After all, ass we all know, time is money.

Content Creation Strategy to Repurpose Your Content

Now that we have established the top reasons for repurposing content, let’s take a look at how to repurpose your content.

Focus on Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is content that’s optimized to stand the test of time, remaining relevant to readers even years after its initial publication.

Evergreen content typically takes the form of listicles, tips, “how to” guides and tutorials, product reviews, and certain types of videos. Needless to say, it forms the backbone of many a content creation strategy.

On the other end of the content spectrum, you have more perishable content such as news coverage, which typically lose their relevance in the online zeitgeist (read: SEO rankings) within a few weeks to months of initial publication.

The phrase “old news” exists for a reason; people stop caring as much about news coverage they’ve already seen, and it’s hard to get them to care again unless you introduce something new and substantial to the established narrative.

With all the above in mind, you’ll be using stronger content marketing tactics by prioritizing Evergreen content for repurposing.

The limited shelf life of perishable content dampens the long-term gains that repurposing provides, and overall will end up making more work for you.

If you aren’t already sure of your current content catalogue, you should do a full audit to figure out what’s still relevant and likely will be into the foreseeable future. From there you’ll have a list of works best suited for recycling. 

Don’t Be Lazy With Your Recycling

It might be tempting to think you can do the bare minimum to convert existing content into a new form and still reap the benefits for your content creation strategy.

Don’t. Because you won’t. 

Content that only has the bare minimum effort put into it is destined to turn out lackluster.

Sure, you can put an article to words and record yourself speaking said words aloud, and it will technically be a video. But unless you’re capable of stellar voice work, a video produced with these elements alone will probably put your audience to sleep.

And even if you are by some miracle capable of the stellar voicework to make it not boring, chances are you also have enough professional pride to not settle for the bare minimum.

Do Your Research! Figure Out the Best Practices for the Mediums You Recycle Into

Going off a similar principle to the above example: what works in one medium might not work well in the new one.

You should tweak and optimize your content to adhere to, if not exceed, the standards of what you’re converting it to.

Going the extra mile will help your repurposed content stand out from the pack.

Split Your Content up Into Smaller Chunks

Parceling out a larger piece of content in appropriately sized, platform specific chunks is a great way to repurpose it with relatively little work.

Rather than doing a medium conversion, you’re just reducing its presentation to the most strategic, attention-grabbing bits that will draw the audience in to engage with the full work.

Embrace Visual and Audio Presentation

Text works fine, sure, but putting in the effort to convert text content into visual and audio versions can pay off massively (see the passive vs active consumption argument in the benefits section). 

Articles can be converted to graphics and videos fairly easily with the help of contractors, if you lack the means to do it yourself.

Wrapping it Up

Armed with all the information above, you should be well prepared to begin your journey into content repurposing.

That said, it’s not just videos and graphics which you can get outside help for; if you’re still unsure of where to start or aren’t confident you can handle the additional workload, you should consider hiring a writing agency to help you repurpose your content.