Grow Your Audience By Repurposing Your Best Content

One of my favorite memories from high school was going to live concerts. This was when bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Smashing Pumpkins were on tour (it seemed) all the time.

The concert environment was like nothing else. The energy, the people, and of course the band playing the music that I loved. If you’ve ever been to a concert, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The band comes out on stage with one of their most popular songs to a crowd that is totally pumped. As the set progresses, they transition into some of their lesser known songs or maybe a new song they want to introduce. Of course, the end is all about sending the crowd off on a high with more of their chart-topping hits.

Not every single song any band has ever written is a hit. Some of their songs are wildly popular while others are only heard by their most loyal fans. If they could, they would make every song a hit, but the truth is, they really don’t know what’s going to be a hit until they put it out there.

The same goes for the content you create as part of your content marketing strategy.

Videos or posts you put a ton of effort into almost guaranteeing them to be a success can flop and the one you created on a whim gets all the engagement and likes.

So, how do you get the most out of your content’s greatest hits?

How can you use content that was well received by your audience to open or close your concert?

The Benefits of Repurposing Your Best Content

Most businesses have a certain level of capacity for content marketing. It is important to spend time and money on content that will contribute to your overall content marketing goals. Before putting in the work of repurposing your best content, it’s important to understand the benefits you can see.

• Increase Traffic – Conduct research to see where your current traffic to this piece of content is coming from. Determine which keywords or phrases the content ranks well for and search for related keywords that you could also rank this piece of content with some additional substance. Ranking for more keywords will expand your reach and increase your traffic.
• Reach New Faces – Consider duplicating your content into a different medium. A popular blog post can become a helpful video available to different audiences on other platforms.
• Update Content to be Relevant – Review your content and see what’s changed in your industry since it was posted. There might be areas that need to be massaged to fit today. You want to make sure your best content is always up to date so it continues to be a relevant and engaging piece to your readers.

Making This Work

First, you need to identify your best content. This is where your website analytics and platform insights are going to be your best friend.

Start by looking at your most popular posts. Some of these posts might be popular because you shared just the right topic at just the right time. Those can be reworked to make them current, but that’s not the first place to go.

Your best content to repurpose should be “evergreen”. Evergreen content is relevant at the time it was first published as well as being relevant months or even years later. Timeliness is what makes evergreen content evergreen. When you see a post you shared months ago still reaching the top of your monthly stats half a year later, this content is evergreen. Once you find that evergreen topic, make sure that the writing and graphics are high quality. If the message is great but the writing isn’t, it won’t do as well. Look for old content that is both relevant and well-crafted. (Although if it isn’t well-crafted, this can be your chance to clean it up!)

Content Repurposing Tips

Simply pressing the publish button again on old content can give you a bit of a boost in visibility, but you can do so much more. Here are some simple tips to make that old content really work for you.

• Say More on the Topic – You had plenty to say the first time, but maybe you had some feedback, or you had clients ask you questions. This is your chance to refine and say exactly what you found your clients wanted.
• Convert a List into Individual Posts – List posts do well because they lay everything out in an easy-to-read format for your audience. Repurposing a list can take it further by expanding each item in the list into its own post. You can flesh out the details, add a tutorial, and share examples.
• Switch Up the Format – Turn a graphic into a long form blog post or a blog post into a graphic. Take a video tutorial that was a hit and write out a tutorial. Recap your blog post into slides that can be shared. Build an infographic that breaks down the data in the original post.
• Refresh and Republish – Sometimes you had a post that did well, but there is information that is no longer true or needs to be updated. This is your chance to take a piece that was already a winner and groom it to be more relevant, better written, and perhaps get some additional SEO exposure in the process. Rather than posting a new piece, refreshing and republishing allows you to leverage the continuous stream of visibility this content asset sees while giving readers an upgraded experience.
• Promote Related Content – Sometimes a great piece of content never really got traction for whatever reason. Use content assets that get a lot of eyeballs to posts or videos related to the topic. This will allow you to continue building value with the reader by positioning a deeper dive into the topic.
• Offer a Content Upgrade – Perhaps your post rocks and you cannot make it better. Consider offering a downloadable checklist, ebook, or cheat sheet to accompany your post and give the reader something actionable they can take away. You can make the decision to offer it gated or ungated.

Here are the Results You’ll See

It’s important to understand the payoff you’ll see from repurposing content. After all, why do anything if there’s no direct benefit? Below are some of the results you can realistically expect when repurposing your best content:

• An uptick in organic traffic from additional search engine exposure.
• Increased visibility across your social media channels.
• Time saved in content creation. Repurposing content is usually less time consuming than creating a fresh piece of content.
• A new audience for your post.
• Raised profile as an authority on your topic.
• A reinforced message for your potential and current clients.

Use Those Who Understand Content Marketing

By looking at your stats, you can figure out which pieces of content are your strongest. You can see who you reached and how they engaged. You can rework the content, breathe that new life in while reinforcing the message that hit home for so many, and get that same content to a new audience. This will save you time over creating new content, but it still takes some time. Since time is one of those limited resources, consider leveraging the services of a content marketing specialist to help you with this process.

A content marketing specialist can take this off your plate and do the work of conducting a content audit, find that evergreen and well-crafted content, and repurpose it. When you outsource your content marketing, you are allowing those who understand the intricacies of what works and what doesn’t to handle this for you. We know what customers are looking for, we know what content works, and we know which content will work well again. Rather than spending your valuable time second guessing yourself, look to the experts.

Efficiency is key, and when you repurpose content, you are getting the most value out of your content efforts. When you have multiple variations of your content, it gives you the opportunity to get your message out to the people you want to share it with. If you’re interested in repurposing some of your high value content, but you don’t know where to start, let us help!

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By Ken Franzen

President / Co-Founder of Neon Goldfish