How to Repurpose all of your Content

Today’s internet users demand an ever-increasing amount and quality of high-performing content.

To keep up with that insatiable demand, you have to invest large amounts of time, energy, and money. It’s a shame to let all the premium content you’ve created in the past sit there when you could easily use content repurposing for breathing new life into it. 

Repurposing Content

Most businesses have already created a tremendous amount of excellent material, but some think repurposing marketing content is lazy. Many others simply don’t know how to repurpose content efficiently.

Repurposing your content reengages your current audience while also attracting fresh consumers because everyone has different content consumption preferences. Some like reading articles, while others prefer watching videos, glancing through infographics, or listening to podcasts on the go.

What if you could revamp your existing content to satisfy those different types of content consumers and remove some of the pressure to create new material constantly?

You could keep your audience engaged and growing by taking old content and transforming it into a different medium. You present the same content differently.

What is the Difference Between Repurposing and Reusing Content?

Let’s take a quick look at how to repurpose content by transforming:

• Videos to articles
• Articles to videos
• Podcasts to articles
• Videos to social media series
• Whitepapers to infographics
• Checklists to guides

But first, we’ll discuss what repurposing and reusing content really are.

Repurposing and reusing content are similar in that they both use the same content again. But they are very different in how they present old content.

Reusing Content

Reusing content is taking old content and using it again just as it is. You could reach a new audience by taking an article on your blog and posting it on Facebook or LinkedIn without changing anything.

Or you could take a social post from Instagram and use it on your LinkedIn page. 

Reusing content is quick and easy. It lets you get the same content in front of different audiences without reworking it.

Repurposing Content

Repurposing is different. Repurposing uses a piece of content in a media form it has never been used in before. You could rework a blog post to turn it into a social post, podcast, webinar, or video. Or you could quickly turn a video or podcast into an article.

Repurposing content requires a little more effort than reusing. However, repurposing can delight the same audience again without completely reinventing the wheel by brainstorming and researching brand new material.

Constantly creating original content can be difficult, but when you start to repurpose, you free up the time and energy that you would have spent on content creation. You’ll be able to pursue other activities needing attention — activities like nurturing your leads or hiring a new employee.

What Repurposing is not:

• Repurposing is not reusing. Reusing is copying existing content to another platform. 
• Repurposing is not lazy. Repurposing does require some effort to produce motivational content in a different format. 
• Repurposing does not take as much time as you might think. You’ve already done the time-consuming steps of brainstorming, researching, and organizing the content.

What Repurposing is:

• Repurposing is a helpful time-saver.
• Repurposing is an excellent way to reach a bigger audience.
• Repurposing is an intelligent hack to create more high-quality content.

Both reusing and repurposing have a place in marketing, but repurposing is where you will start to see your content creation woes resolved quickly.

Why Repurposing Content Should be a Central Part of your Content Strategy

Your vision of content expands with new possibilities when you incorporate repurposing into your content creation process. You see how easily each original content piece can reach and delight entirely new audiences. 

The best place to begin your repurposing efforts is with pieces proven successful in their original forms. You’ll be able to:

• Start time-hacking the content creation process.
• Draw more attention to a specific topic for your readers and customers.
• Demonstrate that you stay up to date with the latest trends and developments.
• Go deeper into your core topics because some mediums work better than others for presenting information in a new way.

Change is accelerating everywhere. If new ideas have developed around an old piece of content, you can repurpose it with the intention of reeducating. Repurposing content naturally addresses Google’s requirement to update content often to keep or improve rankings because Google is aware of how fast change occurs.

And while it’s undoubtedly profitable to repurpose old content, it’s also highly beneficial to repurpose new content as you create it. Consider these facts:

• Your readers aren’t getting all their information from one medium. Spreading out your messaging reaches the broadest possible audience.
• Some consumers use only one or two mediums. People that don’t have time to read may enjoy listening to a podcast while driving.

Creating content with the thought of repurposing in mind will help you in the long run. You won’t need to figure out later how that piece of content can translate into another medium.

If you create a webinar on how to publish a blog to help SEO, you could also develop articles on why SEO matters and how to do SEO to build out a topic cluster. The next logical step is to turn the articles into podcasts and videos. You can also pull text from the articles to create social media series to promote the entire topic cluster.

How to Repurpose Different Content Types

To repurpose content into different types, you’ll need to be familiar with creating each medium. Here are some insights and tips that will help you.

Video to Blog Post

When repurposing a video into an article, it’s wise to have your video transcribed. You won’t have to listen word for word and write everything out yourself when you have a transcription to refer to. You’ll need to rewrite the video transcript in blog format.

Here are some services and freelancers that transcribe audio that we suggest: 

Otter.ai

Rev

Descript

Upwork

Fiverr

For images or additional info to include in the article, check with the video’s creator if they’re in-house to see if they have assets, notes, or a deck.

Blog Post to Video

Video is a great way to improve traffic and SEO. You can pull talking points from an article and create a video script to turn the piece into a video. Putting the script into a teleprompter app like PromptSmart will help you get the audio flow right.

If your video will be a webinar, your article has all the information needed to create a full, detailed deck to go with your script. You can pull definitions and key points from an article to reference in an informational video. The video outline is already done for you in the article. 

Client Examples:

BBSI is a business management solutions provider. This video was made from a blog based on understanding the difference between exempt and non-exempt employees.

Modento is a user-friendly patient engagement platform is an all-in-one solution to the everyday needs of dental practices of all sizes. This video was also made from a blog based on improving local SEO.

Podcast to Article

You’ll thank yourself for having a transcript when you repurpose a podcast into an article. The transcript makes it easy to pull the podcast’s issue, solution, and main takeaways to create a comprehensive blog article. 

Use SEO to get your article to rank on Google. Then searchers will have the choice of reading or listening.

Podcasts are increasing in popularity because busy people can use them to multitask. Here are five more podcast benefits.  

Video to Social Media Series

Transcribing your video makes it easy to pull quotes or text from it to use in a series of social media posts. You could also make a simple graphic from the video’s main point or even take a snippet and post it to a short form media channel.

Instagram Reels are incredibly popular. You can take a small blurb or thought from your video, pair it with a trending sound and some hashtags, and have a great social post!

Another great idea is to create a tweet about the video, asking your audience how they feel about the topic or if they have an opinion on it.

Whitepaper to Infographic

A whitepaper is a persuasive, authoritative, in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem and provides a solution. An infographic will condense the rich data in the white paper, making it accessible at a glance.

Whitepapers usually have charts, diagrams, maps, tables, and possibly infographics. So it’s easy to pull data from a whitepaper to use in an infographic. Penji is an excellent resource for creating graphics.

Checklist to guide

Build on each point in your checklist to flesh out the guide. You already have the info on the checklist. You need to elaborate on it so your audience understands better than they would have from reading only the list.

Best Practices for Repurposing Content

Repurposing your high-performing evergreen content will yield the best results as you begin converting old content into new formats. Content marketers use evergreen content widely because it's timeless with no expiration date. It's not seasonal or dependent on dates.

Evergreen content is also not:

• About current trends
• Newsy posts
• Statistics that go stale
• Product announcements

High-performing + evergreen = a great article to repurpose because if it has done well once, you can be confident that it will perform well reborn in a new format that reaches a fresh audience.

Six More Reasons to Repurpose Content

If you’re not sold yet, repurposing content helps you reinforce the knowledge that you have already accumulated in a form that potential viewers haven’t seen. You’ll be able to reach all viewers in your target audience using repurposing to create fresh content. It’s easy to produce short-form, long-form, and video to satisfy different platform requirements.

If you’re still questioning why you should be repurposing your content, we’ll leave you with six reasons you should start doing it ASAP.

You can:

1. Maximize your content creation efforts to free up resources for other critical activities.
2. Become a thought leader on a topic to build trust and authority.
3. Expand your reach to different audiences bringing in more consumers.
4. Improve SEO and backlink opportunities to increase rankings and organic traffic.
5. Revitalize content to make it more impactful than the original form was.
6. Expand your skillset by discovering new formats you may enjoy making content in.

We hope to see you repurposing all of your great content to crush your engagement and surpass your goals!

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