A huge mistake that I see clients make is that they are always trying to create new content with a strategy that is dated, ever-changing or likely non-existent. The Internet is massive and changes every second. And while this can be frustrating for your team, it is also a huge opportunity to integrate repurposing into your content marketing strategy. The idea is to maximize your content and audience reach by leveraging the value across multiple communication platforms—all while maintaining the integrity of your original content.
Why You Should Repurpose Content
Instead of trying to “keep up with the Joneses”, who have seemingly unlimited marketing budgets, create a system that allows you to repurpose your most popular existing content into new formats and distribute them into other channels. Every individual person has their own preference of learning style and absorbs information in different ways. I personally learn by seeing and doing, and much prefer a 10-slide deck over a 1,000-word article. I know I’m not alone. Other people learn best through an infographic, or a tutorial, or maybe a podcast. So one of the main benefits of this strategy is to attract interest from varying customers using multiple mediums.
Repurposing is good for SEO and also increases audience retention as you deliver your message in different ways at different points in time. You want to continue building and adding value to each stage of repurposing. It is important to be strategic in your efforts and focus on creating fewer, carefully crafted, in-depth pieces that provide value to the audience—as opposed to releasing a bunch of shallow content that likely will get treated like spam. Brian Dean, one of the thought leaders on SEO, has only published 53 posts in 5 years simply because he goes deep on the content and posts once a month.
Now it’s time to make a plan and make it happen. Take a look at some ways you can repurpose your existing content without much extra work.
Ways to Repurpose Old Content
#1 Repurpose the Existing High-Ranking Written Content
Start by checking into your metrics to see which posts brought in the most traffic over the last year. That will give you a good idea which content is worth repurposing. Recently, I had a client who was ranking #3 on Google for the keyword “leadership philosophy”. We helped her repurpose that into a long-form blog post—1,000 words or more with plenty of images—on her own blog. She will redistribute that to LinkedIn and Medium. So from one piece of content, we’ve already created three additional pieces of content.
#2 Repurpose into Long-Form LinkedIn and Facebook Status Updates
From this, we can also make long-form LinkedIn and Facebook Status Updates which will get more engagement than article posts.
How often do you post your articles or blogs on LinkedIn and Facebook only to see nothing happen with it?
#3 Repurpose into Long-Form LinkedIn and Facebook Status Updates
From this, we can also make long-form LinkedIn and Facebook Status Updates which will get more engagement than article posts. Create a 600 character version of your post and then use it in your status updates. One of my friends, Josh Fechter, is creating post updates that go viral daily, getting as much as 5+ million views on one post
#4 Create a SlideShare (LinkedIn) Deck
Slides can be a fun and powerful way to get a message conveyed through a well-defined text with obvious key takeaways. People that are visual learners love SlideShare. Long-form written content is the only thing Google cares about because it’s trying to discredit content written by bots, so you have to create long-form content to get noticed by Google
Don’t get overwhelmed that you have to create a deck. And while bold visuals can be an added bonus, it’s less important than having quality information formatted in a compelling, story like presentation. Google Slides is a user-friendly system that will help you create the deck so you don’t feel overwhelmed. Save your obsessive compulsive design needs for the infographic that you’ll create in a bit.
Jon Westenberg, the Founder of Creatomic, uses no frills with his deck and will literally add color to only the title slide and last slide, where his contact information and headshot appear. You can get a copy of Jon’s deck here.
#5 PDF That Deck!
Don’t leave Google Slides just yet. Before you quit it, you must PDF it! Get the most out of your SlideShare and convert the slides into a PDF document, which you can then use as a lead magnet for your email list or a touchpoint to share with your existing customers. Or you can make some cool GIFs with it.
#6 Infographic That Deck!
If you want to rank on the first page of Google for the word “infographic,” you will need about 427 backlinks to do so. Why? Because people love freaking infographics! There’s even an infographic on infographics. Infographics are shared and ‘liked” on social media three times more than all other content. They are intended to be concise and data-driven, but they can also be expensive in time and money. However, if you already have the data organized from the slide deck, then you can head over to a great service Venngage and create one for free.
#7 Repurpose and Distribute Your Podcast to the Network of Your Guest
You all have a star-studded network of guests, but because Google doesn’t rank for audio, it’s not being maximized. Use ahrefs to look at your top 10 podcasts by search volume and create a long-form blog post—1,000 words or more from it. A transcript is fine, but it lacks context for people that have never heard your podcast or find you from a random search.
Take, for example, a client I have who ranked highest for her podcast with Monique Mosley even though their podcast download data said that one of the other shows was most popular. They’re currently ranking #23 on Google for this episode with no SEO work. The long-form post that we created for them will likely get her onto the first page of Google for her podcast, but also for her guest’s name, which I’m sure Monique will be happy to distribute through her network.
Once you’ve repurposed your podcast, you should leverage your guest’s audience to maximize its potential.
You will now have at least six solid pieces of content from one post that Google will see as authoritative. Repurposing can be challenging, but in the end, you will save exponentially on resources and undoubtedly extend the reach of your audience.
This is a Contributor Post. Opinions expressed here are opinions of the Contributor. Influencive does not endorse or review brands mentioned; does not and cannot investigate relationships with brands, products, and people mentioned and is up to the Contributor to disclose. Contributors, amongst other accounts and articles may be professional fee-based.