Ok, so you’ve put in the time and effort, invested your blood, sweat and tears into creating dynamic, captivating content. Looks great! People are reading it. Maybe even sharing it. So, now what? Do you have to keep churning out brand new stuff day after day, week after week to keep that traffic coming to your blog or website? Actually, no. While you do want to continuously produce fresh content, there is also a concept in the web marketing world known as repurposing. In other words, taking existing content and putting a fresh new spin on it to garner better SEO ranking and keep traffic coming.
Wait….what, exactly, is “repurposing”?
It’s important to note right off the bat that repurposing content is not the same as republishing it. That is, it’s not about simply taking your existing content and posting it, word for word, in other places around the web. You know Google? Well, big brother is watching, and he doesn’t like republished content. In fact, if you’re copying and pasting your content, you can expect a nice, shiny gift from Google in the form of a penalty. Do it enough and your blog or website could end up removed from the search engine results altogether.
What you want to do instead, is to tweak existing content in a way that doesn’t duplicate it, and then find creative ways to get that fresh content noticed. Here’s how.
Get it into inboxes…
Email still remains one of the most powerful marketing tools, mainly because it reaches people on a more personal level. Why not leverage this to get more attention for your content? Take existing articles and create abbreviated versions that serve as teasers to entice people to click through and read the whole article. The key is to capture the attention of readers using just a few compelling sentences. If you really want to get creative with email, you can even include a short blurb with a link to one of your top performing blog posts right in your email signature.
Expand your horizons…
You’ve already got the blog post, so why not take that content and switch it up to target a different medium altogether? For instance, use your written content as an outline to create a SlideShare presentation or YouTube video that you can then share as something fresh. Or, take your most popular concepts and turn them into images or memes that can be pinned on Pinterest and shared on other social networks.
Take ‘em to school…
One of the best ways to build your brand is to establish yourself as an expert in your field. People want to learn, and you are in the position to give them exactly what they want. Take some time to loo through your existing blog posts and categorize them by topic. Then, summarize and group them into an eBook or white paper. Add an interesting intro and conclusion and voila! You’ve got fresh new bait to draw traffic to your site. Need some inspiration? Try focusing on some FAQs that you get from your customers. That way you’ll be able to target topics that you know your audience will find interesting and useful.
The “eyes” have it…
Like it or not, a lot of people are just too busy to sit down and read an entire blog post. You can use your existing content to reach those prospects that are in a hurry by turning it into a fun, eye-catching and informative infographic. Visual content is becoming more and more popular, and it’s something that people love to share via social networks. Tap into this opportunity for your own business and gain some new traction on archived content at the same time. Not sure where to begin? Even if you don’t have resources like an in-house graphic designer, you can still create simple, visually appealing infographics using these or other free templates online.
So, you see, repurposing isn’t just about helping the environment. It can also help to grow your business. Even better, you don’t have to constantly come up with brand new topics to keep your content fresh and help boost your ranking on the search engines. Of course, there are dozens of other ways to do so aside from these four. The trick is to be creative, think outside the box and most importantly – have fun. It’ll come through to your readers and make your reinvented content that much more engaging and more likely to be shared.
