Having your old masterpieces sit there in the archives gathering dust can be such a shame. After re-reading it you may find that you still agree with your opinions just as much now as the day you wrote them.
However, times may have changed and certain ways you went about proving your point may not be relevant today, so do you just let that content go to waste? No! You repurpose it.
Below we have a comprehensive guide on how to help you make use of old winners.
What is repurposing?
The easiest way to put this is – Repurposing content is recycling old content and creating something new from it.
There are also a slew of benefits that may follow repurposed content including:
- Making the most of your initial efforts – Nothing goes to waste and you can reuse your creative ideas a few more times.
- Great content won’t be forgotten – Sometimes you just forget what a great job you did and you want to remind yourself (and the world) of your innovative views.
- Get more views/reads/clicks – You may reach a wider audience, or a completely new audience altogether, and reformatting your content can do just that.
- Become a greater authority – Once you tweak, enhance, or even further reinforce your views, you’re solidifying yourself as a greater authority on the subject.
- Boost your SEO – Of course, you can get higher rankings on Google and get more clicks than ever before by taking another stab at the right keywords and maybe even some backlink action.
How to repurpose content
Once you have found an ingenious piece that you feel like sharing with the Internet one more time, it’s time to rearrange, reshape, and repurpose it. Even companies such as Preply, an online language learning hub, repurpose content.
It’s not so much their own content as it is the feedback and testimonials from their students/customers that are repurposed into blog posts.
If you want to make the most out of your repurposed ideas, you need to reinvent content that increases (or keeps) its value and relevancy over time.
Making the most out of your content isn’t just about customer loyalty, but it’s about your views and what you put forth as well. One rule of thumb to keep in mind is to always add, enhance, and enrich the old content.
Examples of repurposing content
1. Create something new from the old
Popular blog posts are popular because they contain social triggers. Have you heard of a TV spinoff show? Such as the hit teen vampire show The Vampire Diaries and its spinoff The Originals and the recent Legacies.
If you haven’t heard of these shows that’s alright because we’ll bet money there are other spinoffs you have heard of. One really easy way to repurpose ideas and written content is to look for creative ways to present new information and elaborate on that.
One great example of this is to convert listicles into more detailed and thorough articles expanding on the point. That way you add something new (more detail) into the already existing content.
You can also go in the opposite direction and transform long-winded (but well written) articles into shorter listicles. Research shows readers don’t tend to like reading long articles and scaling down the content to a few main points could garner more attention.
2. Pictures, Infographics, or Instructographics
When applicable to your content, using more pictures, infographics (step by step outline of your entire post), instructographics (similar to the former except geared more towards “how to” articles), can really step up your old piece of writing.
Pinterest is a great platform to create the above in what we call Pinterest repurposing. Instead of having your readers scan through all the titles, have the outline and what is included in the content front and center for their convenience.
You can easily convert your old blog articles into comprehensive guides by using infographics and instructographics.
3. Change the platform
Who says a blog post needs to stay a blog post? Repurposing blog posts into podcasts, posts, and content for social media repurposing books into blog posts, and anything into webinars or YouTube videos could gain more viewers and readers.
Some people prefer listening and watching over reading, and podcasts are a great way to do that. People often play podcasts in the background when they’re doing chores, work, or just relaxing. The best part is they can be played on their own time.
Listeners are quite loyal to podcasters they like, and if done well, you’ll keep them coming back for more. In order to venture down the podcast route, try condensing your top posts into smaller topics and elaborate on them.
4. Use advice, feedback, reviews and testimonials
View the above as constructive criticism and turn these valued pieces of information into a “how-to” guide, or an advice eBook on what people need, like, want, etc.
Using Q & A’s as well as FAQ’s to gather information can help you clearly see what it is people value and want through their answers.
It’s easy to capitalize on those ideas and turn them into great advice books or posts of any kind. This is especially useful in stirring up conversation on forums and threads.
Or instead of compiling all of the answers into a whole entire eBook, give yourself room down the line to come up with multiple opportunities for posts by addressing one FAQ at a time in greater detail.
5. It’s as simple as adding and subtracting
It really is as easy as that. Sometimes all you need to do to repurpose your blog is to take out irrelevant information and update it with new ideas.
Your content isn’t fixed it is fluid. Feel free to add and take away as much or as little as you need to create another compelling piece of writing.
You’re recycling ideas but adding relevancy and bringing old and perhaps forgotten ideas to the forefront again.
Try tackling the same ideas with different views or arguments. Times change, you change, I change, we all change, and so should our ideas.
This is how you grow as a content creator, and how your content grows with you.
Conclusion
Take solace in knowing that piece you wrote X amount of years ago that you put so much time and effort into can still be used to this day. That is if it’s evergreen of course.
After you have determined your evergreen content, there are 101 ways to create new spinoffs that benefit you and your audience even more than before.
It’s also a chance to dabble in different forms of content creation, and who knows, you may even discover a new niche market, a long term hobby or hidden talent you didn’t know about.
Author: Connie is a chief content writer at WhenIPost, guest contributor, and enthusiastic blogger who helps B2B companies reach their audiences more effectively. With an emphasis on organic traffic and conversion, she takes big ideas and turns them into highly practical content that keeps readers hooked.
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