The Benefits of Repurposing Content and How You Should Do It

When you make a living out of publishing content online, one of the things you do not want to happen is a stagnant view and click count. It means that the same group of people are looking at your work. On one hand, it just shows that you were able to target the right market and they decided that you are relevant enough for them. On the other hand, this also means that you have failed in enticing new audiences.

Worse, eventually you will see that your view and click count will dip. It happens to all bloggers, but that does not mean you should not make an effort to change the way you publish your content. There are many reasons behind this stagnation or dip: changes in your niche/industry, preferred way to digest content, and the quality of the content.

Sometimes all it takes to improve those numbers and to curb the causes of view dips is to refurbish your content and give it a fresh look.

Why You Should Repurpose Content

One of the most common misconceptions about blogging is the idea that you have to churn out content every minute of every day. In fact, it is likely the reason why your total clicks per content is going down; your readers do not know which article to prioritise. By publishing more than 4 or 5 articles per day, you are not giving your readers time to understand what you have published before they need to digest another one.

No, churning countless content is not the answer. What you need to is make sure you are able to bring your content to more people. And that is exactly what repurposing content does. It takes your old content, updates it, and gives it a new look.

Let us explore the key benefits of repurposing content:

Get the attention of a new type of audience

There are users who are more inclined to look at graphics than articles, some may prefer videos, while there are others who would like to listen rather than read. Refurbishing your content so that it satisfies one or two different media preferences means that you will be able reach out to an audience that you would not have otherwise.

Giving your old content a second chance

The performance of any content is 80% optimisation and 20% luck. A lot can happen on the day that you publish an article: your audience may not be in the mood to read, more interesting news has come up, there might be Internet speed problems, or it just does not appear on everyone’s timelines. Which is why repurposing gives your content new life, a second chance at getting your efforts noticed and read. Think of it as an opportunity to promote your well-researched content again.

Unique way to emphasise a point

According to The Rule of Seven, an audience needs to see your message at least seven times before they decide to buy. This means that there should be repeated marketing of content before a reader decides to buy into your message. What repurposing allows you to do is reinforce the message of your old content and gives you various ways in which you can repackage it for different readers. It is the same authoritative, well-researched point, delivered in ways other than as an article.

Improved search visibility

Much of your site traffic still comes from organic search, according to a study made by BrightEdge. Repurposing your already optimised content in different formats gives you a boost in organic visibility especially for targeted search queries.

What content should be repurposed

Assuming you have been blogging for a long time now, you must have a long list of content all ready for repurposing.

The first thing you do is sort your content, from the most popular to the least. Then, check the engagement that your posts are getting, the number of views it got upon getting published, and when its views dipped. This will help you decide on a short list of content you may want to repurpose and which format to use for each one.

Of course, popularity is not the only criterion. You can also choose an evergreen article in your archive. A content is evergreen if it remains valuable and relevant overtime. This may cover topics like basic best practices in your marketing, fixed information from subjects like history or psychology, and so on.

You can also choose content that can be updated. This includes articles that use really old examples and scenarios like mentions of Hotmail or any jurassic Internet reference that is not relevant to the article. Repurpose this with new data, relevant examples, and include up-to-date trends.

Different ways to repurpose content

Now that you know how to determine which content should be repurposed, here are different ways you can do it.

Blog series into ultimate guides

You might have written about a specific topic a dozen times already. You can repackage that by collating all of those posts and turning it into an ultimate guide.

For instance, if you are a travel blogger who has written about Moroccan culture, food, customs, and travel destinations into separate posts, you can turn that into The Ultimate Guide to A Moroccan Holiday post.

A/B Test results to Case Studies

The best practice is to run an A/B test whenever you change more than one element of your website. When you run this test, collect your data and organise it so you can publish that as a case study. This is especially helpful if you are blogging about how the Internet works or about business.

An example would be transferring from one domain registration site to another. You can set a budget then list down all the perks you got from the two registration sites. You can check for speed, ease of use, and customer care.

Webinar to Video series

If you have hosted a webinar that is wildly successful, consider hosting a video tutorial too, for those who do not have the luxury of time to attend. What this does is allow your users a chance to study your material at their own pace, but also as a chance to drive new visitors to your website from Youtube.

Ultimate guides to ebook

Once you have collected a lot of ‘Ultimate Guide…’ posts, you can turn this into a downloadable book. You can offer this ebook as a free perk for new subscribers so you can show them the kind of quality content you churn out.

Blog posts to infographics

Some articles are best understood with visualisation. Turn a hard-to-digest content into an easy-to-understand infographic that audiences can digest in just a glance.

Blog posts to podcasts

Podcasts have become extremely popular recently, and for good reason. It allows audiences to take in new information even if they are commuting or working without the hassle of looking down on their phones to read or to watch.

What you can do is convert your blog post into a sort of script. Change the language so that it is more casual, find out which points you should elaborate, and figure out how you can explain graphs on audio.

Repurposing means that your efforts to deliver the best content will not be wasted on just one format. You can easily create variations to cater to different audiences and benefit from the added leverage. Soon, even if your website reaches plateau, you will have a go-to plan of action to improve your view count.