Ready to repurpose your own content?

Before you update it all, stop and think. It’s not appropriate to repurpose every piece of content. Consider these points first.

Is Your Content Still Relevant?

All businesses change over time, so it’s possible that not everything you have is still helpful. If you work in a technology industry, chances are that the post you wrote seven years ago about the latest software is out of date.

Also, if you’ve written about products or services you no longer offer, or about sectors you no longer serve, there’s no benefit to trying to repurpose any of it. Be selective with your choices.

Choose Your Best-Performing Content

The easiest way to identify your most popular blog posts and other web content is with Google Analytics. It’s a free tool and is a handy way to track site visits, how long people spend on your site and where they come from, and which posts have been read most often.

Depending on how far back your archive goes, pick five, 10 or 15 posts you can repurpose and re-share. And make a note on your content audit tracker of what you did and when you’ll publish the updated content.

[ctt template=”3″ link=”lhEDe” via=”yes” ]Not all your content is suitable for repurposing. Be selective and choose the most helpful posts.[/ctt]

Will it Engage Your Audience?

Your most popular posts are obviously relevant to your audience, but make sure your current target market will find your repurposed content interesting.

For instance, if you’ve moved from IT consultants to helping members of the public with their computers, is a post about a new software release going to be useful and if so, is it pitched at the right level for them or is it too technical?

If you make a list post from a longer blog, choose five or six key, juicy points that show your readers that you know what you’re talking about. You can link back to the original post, or to other blogs on the same topic.

Look at Your Offline Marketing

You can repurpose any kind of valuable material, even if it’s not blog posts or articles. If you send out email newsletters, look at the open and click-through rates to find the highest numbers. See if there’s a topic that you could bring up to date or expand on.

If you use sales brochures or produce an inhouse staff magazine, these can also be repurposed and shared as fresh content online. An article about the HR department, for example, could be turned into a behind the scenes blog, Instagram story, Facebook Live or series of photos for Twitter or a Pinterest board.

Look at Your Frequently Asked Questions

Your Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) are brilliant inspiration for creating fresh content, and you know your customers are looking for the answers to them.

Answer one or two in video format: if you do this live, you enable people to ask your supplementary questions which you can make a note of and add to your FAQ list. Often, people will ask you things you hadn’t even thought of, so it’s a great way to gain some customer insight.

You can also write a blog post looking at one question in more detail, or break an answer up into a number of points. You can turn them into graphics, too.

Repurpose the questions in the same way you reuse your blog posts. And choose the methods your customers respond to.

Want help to pick the right content to repurpose? Get in touch!