Repurposing Content-Working Smarter, Not Harder for Content Strategy

Writing good content is a lot like making Thanksgiving dinner. It’s a lot of effort to prepare a good content “meal.” Then, just like that, it’s consumed by your guests in record time. Oh, and they’ll be hungry for more before you know it.

So, just like Thanksgiving leftovers, here are some tips to help get more life out of existing content by repurposing it into something new and delicious.

Determine What is Ripe for Repurposing

Not all content is created equally – at least in terms of its popularity with your target audience (just like Aunt Linda’s marshmallow fluff casserole is really only good one time a year.) To determine what content is appropriate to repurpose, look to your data. Generally speaking, your most popular evergreen blog posts are best-suited but digging into your Google Analytics can be enlightening. Look for trends around what content that generates the most interest. Also check out on which pages visitors spend the most time (and how that varies depending on the type of visitor). When you see which topics generate the most visits, time on page and engagement, you’ll have a better sense of what content to repurpose and how to shape it for a second time around. Then, double check to make sure the content is still relevant and up to date.

Translate for Social Media

Today, just publishing content on your website isn’t enough. You have to promote it to get the reach and enhance the number of impressions. A step beyond promoting your content is to leverage that content into multiple unique social media posts. Find the elements that can stand alone as social media posts and translate them appropriately for the platform and audience. Got a statistic to share? Twitter is perfect. Some amazing infographics or visual elements? Consider SlideShare or a Pinterest board. Don’t forget to include a link to the original content, too – that will drive traffic back to your site and hopefully increase your future marketing funnel.

Pitch to Third Parties

While great content on your site is valuable, getting that content published by a reliable third party gets it in front of a whole new audience with the added bonus of enhancing your brand awareness. Work to get your content shared on web hot spots for your audience or pitch topics to industry publications. Third party references build your reputation and improve your search engine rankings, too.

Transform into Something New

People consume information in different ways, so think of your content as ingredients and ask yourself how they can be transformed into different mediums. Would a blog make a good podcast? Could statistics be translated into graphics? Could a series of blogs be turned into an e-book or white paper? Simply transforming the content into a different medium can reinvent its potential.

Just like that Thanksgiving dinner turns into turkey sandwiches, turkey enchiladas and Thanksgiving casserole that feeds the family for days after the main event, you can get existing mileage out of your created content. All it takes is a little creativity and not much effort. Leftovers for the win!

Chartwell Agency specializes in integrated communications, so developing and making the most of meaningful content is our bread and butter. Learn more about some of our favorite integrated campaigns.