Repurposing Content: Should Your Small Business Be Doing It?

 

 

We know the essential piece of growth for your small business: content marketing! And we’ve been talking a lot lately about the different types of content:

Created: Content creation is when a brand creates and distributes content that they’ve created themselves. Creating content is a valuable part of any content strategy and lets a brand show its stance as a thought leader as well as shows off personality and voice.

Curated: Content curation is the process of finding, organizing and sharing existing content from third-party sources. Curation is a key part of a content strategy too because it builds relationships with other brands, thought leaders and audiences and it saves time for content creators and small business owners.

Video: Video marketing is an element of content marketing that you don’t want to miss out on. Video lets your brand’s personality appear right in front of your audience and consumers feel like they can really connect with you (even over a screen). Plus, they love how quick and easy it is to get valuable information from a video.

Blogs: The typical thing that comes to mind when you think of content: blogging. The best way to create effective blog posts for your audience is to be authentic and have a strategy that you can stick to. Be consistent with your posts and tell a story you know your audience will care about.

Podcasts: Podcasting allows your brand to have a voice (literally). Listeners love how easy it is to absorb the information you’re giving them — all it takes is some ears for listening. Podcasts show your audience that your brand has legitimacy, a well-rounded marketing strategy and possesses an actual personality.

So, how about repurposing old content? Can you look back at old content and share it again? And is that a smart business decision?

 

 

Can You Repurpose Old Content?

Heck yes you can! And here’s why you should repurpose your old content:

1. It reminds you of the knowledge you already have. Filing through old content can spark some old insight you might’ve forgotten about. It can also remind you of old strategies you used to have in place and bring back the reasons why they were so effective in the first place.
2. It saves time and effort. Just like curating content, repurposing your own created content saves you time and effort. You don’t have to create something new every time you put content out for your audience to see. Look over your old stuff, make it better and share it again.
3. It gives you a chance to better old content. Comb back through old content to update old, outdated links and make sure what you’re saying is still relevant to your brand and your standards — if it’s not, update it. SEO rules change constantly too … is your content still up to snuff?
4. It improves your content messaging strategy. Going over old content and freshening it up on different channels widens your ability to talk about the same thing in different ways (messaging) and opens up new ways to create and share information in the first place (strategy). Maybe you weren’t aware that sharing content on a certain channel really resonates with your audience — make it part of your regular content strategy.
5. Repurposing allows you to reach different audiences. If you repurpose content using different mediums (video, social media, podcasts, eBooks, graphics) it allows you to expand from your typical audience (who might love long blog posts) to audiences who find your information valuable through different sources. By distributing content in a new way (the way that they want) you’re pulling them into a new audience group.
6. Repurposed content increases SEO.  Having a larger amount of content online (and on a greater number of pages) increases your SEO. Plus, if you’re constantly updating old content with the most valuable information, that helps out SEO too.

 

 

Repurpose Old Content That Performed Well

If you’ve taken the time to analyze your content (or have hired a digital content strategist to do it for you), you know what has performed well with your audience in the past. If your audience likes a certain topic, beef up the old content you have on that topic and share it again — it’ll do just as well as it did the first time.

It seems simple, but we want to make sure you’re doing it right. Here are some repurposed content tips:

• Switch up the title and adjust the content to your current audience.
• Update any old statistics, any changes in trends and any information that’s no longer applicable and make sure the content is as relevant now as it was when you first shared it.
• Incorporate a backlink to the original post and let your audience know that you’re updating old content
• Just because an article performed well with your audience doesn’t mean you should repurpose it immediately. Make sure to give Google enough time to value your original post. 6 months to a year is a good amount of time to wait before combing back through former content.

 

 

Republish Content During Relevant Times

Do you have content that’s specifically relevant to an annual event, a holiday or a certain type of client or situation? When that time makes its way around again this year, spice up that past content, update the little details, add what’s relevant about the topic this time around and put it out there again!

Example. Let’s say your brand hosts a charity event around Christmas each year and you promote the event through various types of content. If the event is similar to last year’s (and any previous years before that), share that year’s content with updated information. Change up the details, swop out the dates and refine the specifics.

Bareknuckle shared an old blog post on Facebook last week for Small Business Week about small businesses. The old content was relevant to the week and we knew our local small businesses would love to see some small business support from the team. We made some revisions where there needed a bit of updating and it was out for them to see.

 

Create Charts and Infographics

People revel in reading headlines, skimming words and looking at pictures … it’s appealing when they can get their information quick through infographics, charts and images rather than reading blog posts. Plus information in charts and infographics is faster to absorb, so you won’t lose their attention.

An infographic is 30x more likely to be read than a block of text with the same information. Take the stats, numbers and appropriate information from your content and create charts, graphs, infographics, and any other helpful visuals.

 

 

Turn Blog Posts Into Videos

You remember how much consumers love video, right? If you have content that would make a great minute-long film, repurpose it in video form. Content that’s goes in-depth, could use visuals, would be benefit from demonstrations or would be entertaining to watch all can make great videos. You can also add how-tos, demonstrations, action and additional stories to make the content more lively and fun to watch.

Example. If you’re a fitness apparel company and you shared a home workout blog post for your audience last year, turn it into a video. Demonstrate the different exercises and produce an energetic, interactive alternative to your original workout post.

 

 

Turn Comprehensive Content into Podcast Episodes

Similar to video, take your most popular posts and turn them into podcast episodes. Expand on the information, give it life and personality and make it exciting to listen to. You can also turn video content into podcasts too, just repurpose the audio. Once you’ve created your new podcast episode, link your original post in the podcast notes. And link the podcast in the original blog post or video too.

Example. Say you have a blog post about how brands can effectively communicate with designers. Find a designer to invite on your show, repurpose the original content on a podcast episode and interview the designer. Ask them questions about the dos and don’ts of designer communication, have them tell their own stories based on experiences and give the topic some additional credibility and personality.

 

 

Update Information

Chances are, things have changed a bit since you originally published a piece of content. Maybe it’s year-old stats that need some updating or 2017 trends that can be edited and repurposed to be relevant in 2019. You might even find content that talks about things that your small business doesn’t even practice anymore. Freshen things up to make content relevant to the time and in-line with what you’ve currently got going on.

Example. Your brand has a blog post from 2017 that shares the awesome way your brand networks with potential clients at a local networking event. While combing through your old content during this year’s content audit, you find this post and realize that in the past 2 years you’ve started your very own networking group and it’s been a huge success! Repurpose the old content with updates about your new networking group and invite potential attendees to come to your next event.

 

 

Reshape A Single Post Into a Series

Why keep it condensed in a single blog post when you can elaborate and expand on the information in a series? Divide information into sections and write a smaller post for each topic of the series. This will keep your audience wanting more and build up their anticipation for the next piece of valuable info you’ll be giving them. And, if a reader is coming across your content at a later time (after your series of posts have already been published), it keeps them on your site longer as they’re shuffling through each page to read the entire series.

Example. Expand your “5 Tips for Social Media” blog post into a series where you elaborate on each tip. Go into detail, give multiple examples and paint a crystal clear picture for your audience. Start with Tip #1, then move on to Tip #2 next week.

 

 

End the Year With a Roundup Post

At the end of the year (or quarter if you create enough content for this to make sense) collect the best content you’ve shared over that time period and write a roundup post. Supply your audience with the best of the best all in one. Doing so also gives them a refresher on the content you’ve created, and, if they joined your audience late or missed an article here or there,  it lets them know what you’ve been up to over the last year.

 

 

Turn Blog Posts Into Downloadables or eBooks

Expand on complex topics that you care about, and ones that your audience has shown interest in before, in an eBook or downloadable. Your readers can download the information and read it online or print it out and take it with them wherever they go.

By creating an eBook or downloadable, you’re staying with your audience for a longer period of time. They have more to read and more to learn, so they’ll be stuck on your content for longer than a typical blog post. You can also give them more information on a topic than you can in a single post so you’ll be top of mind when they think about that topic again in future.

 

 

 

Get to Repurposing

No need to make content more difficult than it needs to be. If you’ve been at this for a while you’ve probably already got some great content hidden away in the depths of your content archives that can be updated. You’re an awesome content creator, go find your worthy content, make some edits and share it in a new way. There’s no need to constantly create new content from scratch.

And if you need some content creation or repurposing help, we’ve got the best of the best digital content strategists in Reno. Buy us a beer, let’s see if we can help!