How to repurpose content


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And it lived happily ever after.

Thus ends the journey of a well-crafted piece of content.

Not quite.

As marketers, we already struggle with multiple demands on our time. And creating content needs time and efforts. A well-researched and written article could take a week [or more / less]. Not to mention distributing that content on an array of ever-multiplying channels. Phew!

Repurposing your content optimizes your content marketing efforts.

So what is content repurposing?
It’s a technique that maximizes your content marketing efforts by repackaging your content into as many formats across as many channels as possible.

Why should you think of repurposing your content?


  • Not all readers are equal – and neither are their content consumption habits. So repurposing your content helps you in reaching out to as wide an audience as possible.
  • Exposure: Your buyer personas may not be uniform in their preference for content channels. So by repurposing you are addressing exactly this – someone who has missed out your blog, may discover your content on Slideshare, or find an infographic on social media, or catch your video on YouTube.
  • Optimization: By repurposing your content, you are optimizing the research and development and time investment that goes into creating a piece of content.
  •  A well designed repurposing strategy can also help in attaining your conversion goals, your videos on YouTube, slide deck on SlideShare and blog posts can all point to your landing page which may be your strategic conversion area.


What to repurpose?
How to do it?
And when?

In case content repurposing is such a great idea, then why isn’t this marketing hygiene practice already?

1.    Awareness
There may be many early-stage marketers who perhaps have not realized the full-value of their content and this blog post aims to address exactly that. Once you are aware of the power of content repurposing, you will be able to deliver more value with lesser content.
2.    Fear
Many marketers fear being impacted by duplicate content penalty on search engines, which they feel could compromise their entire content marketing program. However, this aspect too is addressable. Your website will be penalized in case of excessive content manipulation only - and content repurposing is way beyond this. So we are well within search engine guidelines when it comes to this.  

What to repurpose?

You can choose to repurpose an existing piece of content that you are working upon right now [so as to increase visibility]. You can also choose to repurpose content published in the past that was received well.

In case you are wondering what to do about content that did not perform well, and might need some updates, that would count under revamping content. You can read more about that here in this fantastic article by 

So repurpose content that is evergreen, and lends to different formats.

How to do it?
To repurpose content, the prerequisite is it should be good content to begin with.
You cannot repurpose a hastily put together article in the hope that it will generate more traffic.

We can break down this bit into two topics
  •         Pre: In this we will look at content creation
  •          Post: Here we will look at building content momentum & content syndication


In pre-, we may want to include everything that we do before we actually write the content.

The journey to anything great in marketing typically begins with content, and we are looking to create 10X content ─ creating content that’s ten times better than anything that already exists. To do that you need to create something that’s unique, fresh and useful. For example, for a fresh piece of content, identify the content topic of your choice, then you may want to inspect the top ten results on that topic. You should then identify what is the coverage [depth and breadth] of the topic in those results: what is missing, what details need to be added, what supporting information those results could use. By doing this, you are creating value in a sea of also-rans. The web is full of duplicate and sub-standard content – differentiation by unique content will help you position yourself strongly in the flux of average, ordinary content.

Post

Once you've created a piece of content – you should now look at repackaging the content in as many formats and channels as possible - that is building content momentum.

This is easier said than done. You have got to remember that the content itself should render in omni-format. To do this, your original piece of content should preferably be long format [around 1500 - 3000 words] 

 You can cascade your content with the following variations:
  • Statistics: Any statistics in your long-form post can be displayed in infographics
  • Quotes: that can be used in images for social media promotions
  • Steps: that can designed for an instructographic
  • YouTube video: You can create a short video around your core topic
  • Slide deck: Create a short slide deck with the key topics of your post.
Use case # 1
Say you write a core piece of content: How to create a marketing plan for Small & Medium Businesses (SMBs). Here is a basic plan on how to repurpose your content.

 Your core content = Blog post of 1000 – 1500 words
       

You can create the following flanker content pieces

  1. An infographic for the entire blog post 
  2. Create separate article pieces for the entire blog = Perhaps around 10 topics [email marketing plan for SMBs, social media plan for SMBs and so on]
  3. Create an e-book by adding an introduction and more graphics 
  4. Creating slides for the entire blog posts 
  5. Creating a video out of the blogpost

So you've created 5 pieces [or more] of content from one primary content piece, enhancing your reach and visibility and optimizing your costs.


Use case # 2

 In case your primary piece of content is a video, you can do the following

  1. Core content = Video of 2 to 3 minutes
  2. Write a blog post around each of the ideas explained in the video
  3. Create infographics for the core ideas explained in the video
  4. In case you have received questions from your viewers, address the questions in a follow up video and create a blog post 


Content syndication
Content syndication is the process of publishing your content [blogpost, article, video] in other third-parties websites with attribution. Quality content syndication platforms offer large, established audiences and high domain authority.



Content syndication helps you with the most obvious things that a great piece of content needs: discoverability and scale. Content syndication offers many lucrative benefits such as traffic generation and generating quality backlinks.

To syndicate your content, you may want to explore free platforms like Medium, Slideshare, Inbound.org. Paid platforms include Outbrain and Taboola. You may also want to consider LinkedIn and Facebook Business. Social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious can offer quick ways to generate traffic.

You can read more about content syndication in this article by Neil Patel & Aaron Agius here and this article here.
Understandably, marketers fear being struck with duplicate content penalty on search engines through content syndication and there are few ways to deal with this as well. But more on that in my next post.

Putting it all together
Content repurposing is easier said than done – but we definitely realize the extra X-value generated by this technique. In case you are not doing content repurposing yet, you may want to start out now by using some of the methods mentioned above. If you are already adept at content repurposing, then it would be great to hear what is your top content repurposing tip?

References
  1. Does Repurposing Content Work? Here’s a Data Driven Answer, Neil Patel, https://neilpatel.com/blog/does-repurposing-content-work-heres-a-data-driven-answer/
  2. The Purpose of Repurposing Content, Niti Shah, https://goo.gl/f35Tre, @nitifromboston
  3. Does Repurposing Content Work? Here’s a Data Driven Answer, Neil Patel, https://goo.gl/bS2cKJ
  4. Sara Jantsch, How to Repurpose Content in a Clearly Useful Way, https://www.ducttapemarketing.com/repurpose-content/
  5. The complete guide to building your blog audience, Neil Patel & Aaron Agius, https://www.quicksprout.com/the-complete-guide-to-building-your-blog-audience-chapter-10/
  6. 11 Genius Ways to Repurpose Content, Megan Marrs, https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/02/03/repurposing-content
  7. What is content syndication and how do I get started? https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/08/03/what-is-content-syndication-and-how-do-i-get-started/
  8. 27 Awesome Ways of Repurposing Content, Cornelia Cozmiuc, https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/11813/ways-of-repurposing-content/
  9. 12 Great Examples That Prove the Power of Repurposing Content, @IAmAaronAgius, https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/examples-repurposing-content
  10. 11+1 Traffic Driving Content Syndication Tools For A Brilliant Content Marketing Strategy [Updated], Ruchika Sharma, https://blog.izooto.com/best-content-syndication-tools/
  11. 40 Ways to Repurpose Your Blog Content (And Why You Should), Mary Fernandez, https://optinmonster.com/40-ways-to-repurpose-blog-content/ 

 

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