A blank screen is a mortal enemy of a content marketer. You need to create new content to engage your audience, but the ideas just aren’t flowing. Reality check: Your next great idea might already be in your content collection. That’s the beauty of content repurposing.
Content repurposing makes it easy to get as much use out of the old content you already have. It gives new life to all the hard work you’ve already put into your B2B content marketing. When you can introduce the same ideas in a new format, you can expand your content’s reach and get in front of a bigger audience.
Here’s what repurposing looks like in a content strategy and examples of content repurposing done well.
Table of Contents:
Repurposing Content Definition
Why Spend Time Repurposing Content?
Best Practices for Repurposing Content
Best Content Repurposing Software
Content Repurposing Examples
Repurposing Content Definition
So, what is content repurposing, officially? We define content repurposing as the practice of turning one piece of content into a new format — for instance, making a TikTok video out of a blog post.
You can use some or all of the elements in an existing piece of content in your new content. If you’re repurposing a blog post on the top five places to travel this summer, you could easily turn the entire post into an infographic. Using that same blog post, you could create a TikTok video using the title and the names of the five locations as video captions – no other context needed!
Why Spend Time Repurposing Content?
Content marketers often get caught up in the idea they have to produce new content all the time. And that’s true — but “new” content isn’t always what you think.
When you repurpose a piece of high-quality content, you are creating new content. The difference is you’re not having to start from scratch. You’ve already done the hard work. Now, you’re turning all your ideas into a new content format.
A blog post can double as a lead magnet. Podcast episodes can easily be turned into a YouTube video series. Use your email list to drive traffic to all the different content you’re creating — that gives you plenty to talk about with your email audience, too!
Get inspired to create your next video with this list of 50 Delightfully Simple Video Content Ideas for Your Online Business.
Content repurposing allows you to scale your content marketing strategy much faster and more cost-effectively compared to creating all new content for all your channels. You can spend less time researching and brainstorming. Use that extra time tweaking your content for different channels.
That’s a huge advantage, given it takes anywhere from 1 to 6 hours to create just one piece of content. When you’re not busy reinventing the content wheel, you can engage more people and create more opportunities for ROI.
Best Practices for Repurposing Content
Now that you have a solid content repurposing meaning, what should you do with it? We suggest starting with these best practices when developing your strategy:
Focus on Evergreen Content
Evergreen content maintains a much longer shelf life than timely content. Stories around the iPhone 4S, the rise of Snapchat, the ice bucket challenge — that’s old’s news!
Repurposing evergreen content allows your content to remain relevant for longer. If you’re focusing on topics that are trending for the moment, they might be old news by the time you repurpose them into new formats. Choose topics that people are likely to be interested in no matter what else is happening in the world.
Not to be overly meta, but an article on repurposing content for social media works well in this case. It’s something content marketers will always be interested in.
Plus, this topic could work for a blog post, video content, guest post, e-book, email series, slide deck, webinar, instructographic, LinkedIn post, content upgrade, and even a case study!
Match the Content Format to the Channel
Repurposing marketing content doesn’t mean copying and pasting your content into different formats. To do it right, you’ll need to think about how and where you’re going to share it and who will be viewing it.
You wouldn’t want to read your old blog posts word for word in a YouTube video. It’s too wordy, which makes it harder for your audience to follow along.
But your blog content could give you a solid foundation for a video. Use the same ideas but present them in a visually appealing way. Take a conversational tone, like you’re talking to your viewers directly. Videos also have features that blogs don’t, such as sound effects, background music, transitions, and more.
When repurposing written content into video content, make sure you familiarize yourself with the file sizes and constraints of the different social media networks. Check out all of the video sizes in our Ultimate Guide to Social Media Video Sizes blog.
This goes for any type of content repurposing. Figure out what makes each format unique and take advantage of those differences.
Split Up Your Content
Long-form content is among the easiest to repurpose since you can split it up into lots of smaller pieces of content. For example, if you’re making multi-part online courses, you can write a blog post about various parts of the course. Use those blogs to drive traffic to your course landing page!
Or, let’s say you have a long-form how-to guide that covers a topic in depth. You can break up chapters or sections into smaller videos, blog content, and social media posts.
The goal is to split up larger content pieces into bite-sized pieces. You’ll end up with an endless supply of content across all your channels, all without having to come up with new ideas.
Think Outside Your Original Branded Content
Repurposing content doesn’t end with your own branded content. Marketers should look beyond their own content creation efforts and get help from user-generated content.
User-generated content (UGC) is content created by other people on your behalf. Unboxing videos, product reviews, testimonials, social media posts that tag your brand, and posts using your branded hashtags are all examples of UGC.
Reshare UGC on your social media channels. It gives the content new life while also getting it in front of a wider audience. It also allows you to build quick social proof. UGC shows how much other people care about your brand, giving you instant credibility.
You can also repurpose content in your guest post strategy. Think about the types of content you already have and can link to in a guest post. Use a topic you’ve already written about as a foundation for your guest post, then link back to your original work to support your new content. You’ll get in front of a new audience, plus you’ll have earned a backlink!
Best Content Repurposing Software
You can more easily make repurposed content part of your normal workflow with the right content repurposing software and tools. Here are our top picks to help you reuse more of your quality content.
Read more on the best content marketing tools in this blog.
Meltwater
Not to brag, but Meltwater comes in handy when creating repurposed content. Use Meltwater's social listening features to find trending topics on social media and beyond. Compare your findings to content you’ve already created to see what your audience will be most interested in. Then, put your repurposing efforts to work to stay part of essential conversations.
Meltwater can help you identify your high-performing posts, too. This is a good indication that your audience is intrigued by your content. Knowing this, you can test new formats to share this same information in different ways.
You can also use Meltwater's social media management suite to publish your repurposed content across multiple social accounts. Once you create your repurposed content, upload it to Meltwater for social media publishing. Make custom edits for each channel and fine-tune your content to fit each format.
Piktochart
Framing your content into new formats usually requires adding or enhancing visual elements. Piktochart was built for this role.
Similar to Canva, Piktochart features ready-to-use templates that you can customize to your liking. Quickly copy and paste your blog post stats into an attractive one-sheeter. Turn your X (formerly known as Twitter) polls into visual images that are ideal for resharing. Or transform your listicles into eye-catching infographics.
Designrr
Another purpose-built tool for content repurposing, Designrr does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. It can pull text-based content from a number of sources, such as a blog article or PDF. From there, you can choose a different content format and Designrr does most of the rest.
For example, you can choose the e-book option and easily add a cover page, page numbers, and images. Attractive visuals make your content instantly more shareable, which also helps you expand your reach.
Content Repurposing Examples
Need some inspiration to help you build a content repurposing workflow? These examples show the potential for using repurposed content in your strategy:
Turn Your Blogs into Videos (and Vice Versa!)
Studies show that 80% of people would prefer to watch a video rather than read a blog post. But there are also plenty of people that enjoy reading blogs. Cater to both sides of the same coin by repurposing blog content in your videos, and vice versa.
At Meltwater, we practice what we preach. Above is an example of how we converted our blog on How To Be Successful With Instagram Marketing into a YouTube video. They each touch on the same topics but offer slightly different information in their respective formats. Plus, the YouTube video link is right there on the blog article page, making it easy to enjoy the content in whatever format you prefer.
Use Customer Testimonials for Social Media Posts
Repurposing social media content has never been easier if you have customer reviews and testimonials. Just grab some feedback, turn it into a nice visual, and post it on your channel as an organic post or paid ad.
Boxed did exactly this and repurposed the same testimonial as a static ad and an animated GIF on Facebook.
Update Old Blog Posts with New Insights
Blog content can go stale, especially if you include stats, figures, and examples in your posts. Eventually, those stats will change, which will require more up-to-date research. You can also usually find better or more relevant examples to illustrate your points.
Updating your blogs and reports is a great way to repurpose your ideas. It gives you new reasons to share them. Promote the updates via your email list or on social media. Then, create other types of content using those new stats and examples.
This is also a good opportunity to update your call-to-actions. Make sure your CTAs are actionable and directed toward your target audience. A well-designed CTA can help you improve your click-through rate and take more users to the next step.
Bottom line: You don’t need a dedicated content repurposing service to take advantage of reused content. With the right tools and a little imagination, you can get more from every piece of content you create!
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