Creating content can be a daunting task. However, content is key when it comes to the buyer’s journey, and ultimately, the success of your marketing. An effective content strategy starts with knowing the purpose of your marketing, understanding your customers, and how they buy. Once you understand your buyers, the questions they’re asking and the type of information they’re looking for, you can begin to build out a list of topics and questions your content needs to answer. The next step is to plan how that content will take shape – that is – the format. Perhaps one of the best tips I can give you when it comes to creating content is start by creating one piece of content, and repurpose it in different ways.
Why You Should Be Repurposing Content
Social Triggers founder Derek Halpern once wrote in a post on why bloggers fail: “You don’t have to create content day in and day out. You just have to work on getting the content you already have in the hands of more people.” This perfectly underpins why repurposing content is something all business owners should be doing. It’s all about taking something you’ve already created, and breathing new life into it.
There are plenty of benefits to this, and not just the fact it saves you a lot of time and effort. Firstly, it helps you reach your audience in different ways. For example, you might create a blog post, but a big percentage of your audience doesn’t read blog posts and instead are much more into podcasts, or vice versa. Secondly, repurposing content also helps reinforce your message. After all, repetition is a key part of successful marketing. Thirdly, it helps improve your organic visibility. The more content you create, the more chance you’ll have of people finding your website when it comes to targeted search queries.
Repurposing Content: A Quick Cheat Sheet
So, how do you even begin to repurpose content? The first step is choosing the content you want to repurpose. How do you decide? Look at your data. Look at what has performed well in the past, and how it can be repurposed to deliver a fresh experience. Don’t hold back – dig deep into your archives! You never know what content or topic might have resonated most with your audience, even if it was a year or two back.
If the content was previously successful, and is still relevant, this is a good sign that if you were to repurpose that content, it would be valuable to your audience. Once you’ve selected content for repurposing, the next step is determining how to repurpose it and distribute it. Here are a few ideas.
Turn Your Blog Posts into Podcasts
According to Roy Morgan, podcasts are growing in popularity in Australia and over 1.6 million Australians now download audio or video podcasts in an average four weeks, up from under 1 million five years ago. So, turning blog posts into podcasts is an excellent and effective way to repurpose your content, and potentially reach new audiences, too. It could be one podcast episode, or a series of podcast episodes, allowing you to expand on the information and provide examples you’ve pulled from the blog post in a conversational way. Just be sure to update facts and figures if it’s an old blog post! When it comes to distributing the podcast, put it at the top of the existing blog post and promote it through social media and email.
Turn Webpage Content into Video
Another way to repurpose blogs or website content is by turning it into a short video. Just like podcasts, videos are engaging and entertaining, with the added layer of visuals, and not just audio. While some people enjoy learning via audio, others enjoy watching videos and learning visually. It doesn’t have to be fancy, and it doesn’t have to be long. It could even be an Instagram story, or, if you’re feeling bold, a TikTok video. Not across TikTok? Read this excellent explainer from HubSpot. Or, if you upload the video to YouTube, you can then embed the video into the original blog post or webpage.
Create an eBook
Creating an eBook is a great means of gathering all the content you have and pulling it into one big content offering. The best thing about eBooks is there are so many subjects you can cover, and publishing an eBook with information you already have, reduces the work for you, because most of the content is already written. All that’s left to do is organise the content, publish it and disseminate it!
Turn Testimonials Into Social Media Content
If you’re good at what you do, chances are you have some amazing testimonials about your business or products. While a testimonials page on your website is vital, why not push the word out further and include excellent reviews in your social media strategy? The content has already been created (and by someone else, no less). Adding testimonials in visible places draws customers in, who don’t typically buy from a business without reading a testimonial first. And, putting reviews or testimonials front and centre also lets customers know their voice matters to you and is being heard.
How Turn One Piece of Content into Four
If you really want to nail repurposing, a great idea is to create one piece of content with the goal of repurposing it in four different ways. For example, create a free guide or eBook. Then, video yourself talking about the eBook. That’s two pieces of content already. Then, use the video in a written blog post about the eBook (and link to the eBook in the blog post). Finally, for your fourth piece of content, you can pull out the key messages of the eBook for a social media post. You can then publish the blog, eBook and videos on social media separately for added bang for your buck.
