Every blogger knows the importance of creating engaging, updated, and valuable content.

We spend many hours researching ideas, writing, and finding the best way to promote them, but while we focus all our efforts on creating new content, we often don’t care what happens to all that old content left on the back burner in the archives. Those posts may not receive visits, but they could negatively affect the site’s performance.

A clever solution could be to turn old content into a current post. This activity is called “repurposing content.” It refers to a particular form of content marketing that consists of reinventing and repurposing old content, adapting it to channels and formats other than the original ones.

Why Is It Important To Repurpose Old Content?

There are several reasons. First of all, let’s think about how long it can take to write good content: read up, search for sources, images, write the text, correct it. We can talk for several hours, but not only. Creating quality and valuable content requires a lot of resources. For this reason, keeping it alive as much as possible, re-proposing it on multiple channels could be an excellent way to optimize spending.

Secondly, repurposing content can also help transmit targeted and tailored communications to more vertical and differentiated audiences, as long as you can adapt each message to the single-channel through which you intend to reach them. Basically, by doing a good job of re-proposing the content, you can help to reinforce the message contained in it and improve its reception by the public.

Furthermore, there are also significant advantages from an SEO perspective in repurposing content. Multiplying the number of contents regarding a cluster of themes increases the traffic to your pages and the probability of ranking well for a specific set of keywords. In addition, if you repurpose your content outside of the proprietary channels, it is easier to obtain qualified inbound links that make the site gain in terms of authority.

Finally, it is possible to improve credibility and brand reputation since people see the same brand repurposed on different platforms. Consequently, you will have the opportunity to be recognized as a reference point in the sector and experts on the subject.

Types of Content You Can Repurpose

Before you readjust your content for a new use, you should consider which material is most worth your time and work. The first step is to evaluate your current activities carefully: what content created in the past can you reuse?

• Evergreen contents. Those original, quality contents are always valid and relevant, regardless of the passage of time. For example, these are articles that deal with the basic concepts of a topic, or guides or how-tos;
• Contents that have generated greater engagement and interactions, in terms of traffic, shares, likes, conversions, etc. (depending on what are the benchmarks you are evaluating for your goals);
• Old contents that have not had the desired success. However, if adequately updated, modified, revised, and adapted to the new channels to which they are intended, they could obtain good performances.

Do Posts Need To Be Re-published Without Being Updated?

Of course not! Titles, internal links, and other details should be checked (and updated) to ensure that the re-published piece is current and curated. It is also advisable to include an editor’s note stating that this is an old but updated post.

Here are some ideas and examples.

1. Blog Post

Creating new blog articles starting from old posts is perhaps the simplest way to re-propose already existing content. You can mention old pieces or deepen single aspects, especially if the original content is given a guide or a how-to.

We create a complete, original, and optimized textual content characterized by an introduction, a body, and a conclusion enriched with images and examples. The title, of course, will have to be curious and impactful to entice the reader to learn more. Once our post is ready, we have several channels available for publication:

• Company blog
• Other blog posting platforms (e.g., LinkedIn, or Medium)
• Guest blogging

2. Visual slides or presentations

Creating slides is an excellent idea to summarize particularly long textual content or to highlight quotes or statistics that you have exclusively.

Formats like these, moreover, are better suited for sharing on channels and within your editorial calendar on social media. Infographics, in particular, turn out to be versatile and instead of performing content.

It is necessary to identify the critical concepts exposed in the various slides, together with images and examples. To create slides, you can use any program or platform for creating slides, such as SlideShare, Google Slide, or PowerPoint.

3. eBook

The textual content relating to the same topic could be collected within an eBook to be made available free of charge for the fulfillment of significant leads or a fee. It is possible to combine multiple blog posts on the same topic, but it is also suggested to flesh out the content with additional examples, images, and food for thought.

Where can an eBook be published?

We can make it in PDF format and make it available for download:

• from our resources (from the website, from a landing page, from a newsletter)
• from external resources (e.g., from the Kindle Store)

4. Post on social networks

Social networks are a powerful communication tool and a “megaphone” that allows us to spread and amplify a message or content. We can do this by using existing content (linking to a video or blog post, for example) or creating material ad hoc.

How? We can insert the key points of the content in a graphic context and add the typical elements of each social network (hashtag, mentions, etc.), adapting the graphic formats to the social platform on which it will be published. For example, on Instagram, we have to use square images. At the same time, on Facebook, the rectangular format is better, paying attention to the limitations on the amount of written text that can appear in an image in case you want to promote the post.

In this case, any image editing program can do for us, among the most famous we find Photoshop, Canva, and many others.

Audio-video contents are compelling tools: they are immediate, engaging, and can easily explain complex topics. According to statistics, they are appreciated by 85% of users.

For this, it can be helpful to create a video starting from already existing content. We can add images, clips from other videos, examples, interactive graphics, and music.

Creating a video can be frightening in terms of resources to invest in: however, nowadays, it is possible to make stunning videos by simply using your smartphone and a few more accessories. Once the video has been created, the platform par excellence to upload it is YouTube, creating a dedicated channel.

You can publish videos in different sections of a website: on the main pages, product pages, within landing pages, etc.

The visual material also works very well on social networks: it is better to upload the video file directly to the platform (and not simply share the YouTube link) because native videos are rewarded in terms of visibility on the various social media.

5. Newsletter

Thematic newsletters are also an excellent way to revive content already conveyed elsewhere in a different way. For example, you can send recap emails with the most read blog posts in the last quarter, semester, or last year.

The newsletter is a message that is delivered directly to users’ inboxes: we must therefore make sure that the email’s subject is interesting and encourage recipients to want to know more (thus opening the email).

Within the email, it is not necessary to dwell too much on the content: we can create a brief introduction in which we highlight the main passages of the message, and then insert a Call To Action that refers to the original content (blog post, video, ebook to download, etc.).

To send a newsletter, you can use one of the many email marketing services. One of the best known is MailChimp, but there are many (for example, Sendinblue or Sendgrid). Usually, these platforms are free up to a certain number of mailings and become paid once these thresholds are exceeded.

6. Webinars and Online Courses

If we have created a slide presentation, we can think of proposing the content in the form of a webinar, inserting additional examples and practical cases to be more helpful to those interested in the topic.

These online seminars, which can also be registered and repurposed later, are available on unique free platforms such as LiveWebinar.

If, on the other hand, we want to do something more structured and articulated, we can think of creating an authentic online course, further enriched with additional readings, practical exercises, etc. After preparing the material and recording the lessons, it is necessary to upload everything to a Learning Management System platform, such as Google Classroom, Docebo, Eduflow, etc.

7. Podcast

This format is not yet widely used. However, some realities have understood the potential of podcasts. Podcasts can be a platform to provide “heavy” content in a digestible way. Moreover, they are more practical and accessible, as they can be listened to while driving, running, or doing housework.

If we want to transform our content into an audio file, we must be careful to “compensate” with examples of what images cannot help us convey.

Once registered, we can upload a podcast to the company website or a particular landing page. Alternatively, we can upload it to dedicated platforms to be available to users at any time. The most popular tools for recording and uploading podcasts are Anchor and Spreaker.

8. Quizzes, surveys, and tests

We can use the fundamental concepts of the content we have created to create a quiz, a test, or a survey with different questions on the topic. Users can test their knowledge on the subject by actively interacting with the content and learning from its wrong answers.

There are various tools to create this type of content; the best known are:

• SurveyMonkey, (paid)
• Google Form or Microsoft Form (free)

How to disseminate this type of content? There are many ways to do this: publishing the link in a newsletter, social networks, or blog.

The Best Form Of Repurposing Content

There are no predefined ways to repurposing content. Indeed, originality and creativity are necessary to succeed in doing so recursively.

The first thing to do is to identify the channels through which we want to distribute the content we have produced and to know how to adapt that content to the different channels we have chosen. Why should content be “adapted”?

• Each platform has its peculiarities: they were created to share photos (Instagram), allowing you to publish only videos (TikTok). Still, others will enable you to catalog thematic collections (Pinterest), and so on.
• Each platform has its audience. Fewer and fewer young people, for example, spend their time on Facebook, which is instead discovered by a growing number of older people.
• Each platform has its language and rules. For example, Twitter hashtags are fundamental elements, essential also on LinkedIn. While on Facebook, they are used very little despite they exist.

In conclusion

Reusing content can be a great time saver for content creators, and it is also an activity that allows you to get the most in terms of visibility and usefulness.

When we want to adapt existing content, however, we must always keep in mind some fundamental things:

• you have to define your goals
• you have to choose the proper channels to preside over
• it is necessary to identify the contents to be proposed
• you have to create material that easily adapts to the single platform

Now, it’s over to you.

What do you think?

Do you repurpose content on your website?

Would you please share your experience in the comments below? Thanks!

About the Author

Erik Emanuelli is a ProBlogger since 2010. He’s sharing everything he has learned on his website.