You don’t have to create content from scratch every single time. Instead, repurpose it. Repurposing content means changing existing content to fit a new audience or purpose. Knowing how and when to do it will make it easier and faster to publish new content for your audience.

Why Should You Repurpose Content?

Putting out the best content on a regular basis can feel daunting. Repurposing content simplifies the process for your brand.

Scale Content

You can scale your popular content by repurposing it. This process lets you take control of your content’s fate by doing what it takes to get more eyes on it. You went to all that work creating content. Repurposing it helps you get the most value out of it.

Reach New Audiences

Different audiences spend time on different platforms absorbing different types of media. Cater to these unique audiences by publishing repurposed content where they’re at. Plus, repurposing helps you reach new audiences you may have otherwise ignored.

Improve Organic Ranking

More content makes Google a happy website. Repurposing puts you in the good graces of search engines. You’re doing yourself an SEO favor and improving your organic search ranking.

What Content Should You Repurpose?

There are two types of content you should repurpose: evergreen content and popular content.

Evergreen Content

Timeless, high-quality content is considered evergreen. You can share this type of content at any point over the course of months or years. Even if it requires updates or tweaking, it’s a great contender for repurposing.  

Popular Posts

What posts have performed especially well over the last few months or years? You’ll want to target your most popular posts for repurposing. By using popular posts to create fresh content, you can make adjustments based on timely changes.

How to Repurpose Content: 15 Different Ways

1. Reach Out to Other Contributors

Dedicate a few hours per week or month to ping other contributors who post content that is relevant to your blog. Alternatively, you can contact contributors on other blogs to see if they’d be willing to share or link to your content. On average, number one Google SERP results have 3.8 times more backlinks than those below them. While you’re at it, use social media to leverage these pieces of content. Include links to the original pieces in the posts, and remember, different content may be better suited for specific channels. For example, content about business, leadership and skills typically performs well on LinkedIn. Visual content or compelling stories typically do well on TikTok or Instagram. Articles and trending stories tend to perform better on Twitter and Facebook. These are just a few cases, but it gets the point across.

2. Local Businesses: Use GMB Posts to Share Content Updates

For local businesses, using Google My Business (GMB) posts to share content updates gets more eyes on your content and gives it a new life. Plus, this tactic helps gain SERP visibility for good content that GMB users may not see otherwise.   You can post GMB content updates using new or well-performing content. Google lets you post updates about COVID-19, offers, products, what’s new and events. You can also add an action button to each post. In the case of repurposing content, you might link to an article where people can learn more.

3. Create Images

Consider creating visual supporting elements for high-performing content to share on other sites. Take inspiration from the original content to help guide your illustrations, pictures, or other types of images. Whether it’s creating an infographic or another type of visual, you can condense the main points in an article and share them on platforms geared toward visual media. You can also add value to existing content by adding these visual elements in later on. Adding some creative media to a text-only post is a great way to add value to content that may be going a bit stale. It also opens the door to get added SEO value with backlinks and more. Written content combined with visual elements tends to perform better for organic SEO. This is because it makes the content more of a shareable resource than simply a text-only piece. (This isn’t always the case, but it’s a good rule of thumb.) Make sure your images:

• Can be embedded into your original content
• Make sense when used as part of social media posts

4. Create Social Media Posts from Blogs, Newsletters, or Other Content

Your medium- to long-form content can live more than one life. Perhaps the simplest way to revive this type of content is to repost it on social media. Repurposing content for social media posts is especially handy for evergreen content. You can incorporate it into your social media calendar at any point to fill in the gaps. So how do you repurpose content for social media? As part of your social media management strategy, incorporate existing content. This can stem from your blog, newsletter, or YouTube channel—just to name a few. You can repost links to entire pieces of content on your social media channels, or you can take specific bits of info from a piece of content.

5. Guest Star On a Podcast (Or Start Your Own)

Podcasts are increasingly popular, with audiences in 2021 growing 10.1% year-over-year. This type of audio media is especially relevant for audiences ages 44 and younger. In fact, 60% of US adults ages 18–34 listen to podcasts monthly, and many make it a much more frequent habit. With these stats, it’s obvious that repurposing your valuable content on a podcast is a smart idea. You can guest star as an expert on someone else’s established podcast. Alternatively, you can start a brand podcast (like Unwasted by Imperfect Foods).  

6. Use Customer Data to Create Case Studies

Case studies are a strong form of content that can produce tangible results. You can base your case studies on data that you collect about your clients. This will help solidify your authority in your industry. When a potential customer is in the early stages of the buyer’s journey (aka the top of the funnel), they’re still considering whether or not it’s worth it to purchase your product or service. Case studies can turn the tides and push people down the funnel.  

7. Create Videos

Images aren’t the only thing capturing people’s attention these days. Video content is increasingly captivating for audiences of all kinds. According to Small Biz Trends, “59% of executives agree that if both text and video are available on the same topic, they are more likely to choose video.” Plus, social videos get 12 times more shares than other forms of media like text and images. Everyone has their preference for how to consume information, but it’s a good idea to give people options. Create one-off videos or an entire video series from existing blogs, newsletters, e-books and even podcast episodes. Did you know? One-third of all online activity involves watching videos. That’s a huge chunk of the digital world you don’t want to miss!  

8. Update and Refresh Old Blogs

If you have a library of blog content and want to increase your organic reach, updating and refreshing is an easy, affordable way to reach your goal. This is especially helpful for brands that have been consistently blogging for a year or more.   To perform a blog refresh, go through the post and update facts and statistics to more recent data. Change any mention of past years and update it for the upcoming year if necessary. While you’re at it, optimize on-page and off-page SEO. Embed new media (like videos, images or social media posts that are timely and relevant). Once it’s updated, reshare the post on other digital marketing channels. Acquire some backlinks and bring that old blog to life!

9. Turn Data Into Social Media Fast Facts

In addition to creating a case study from your data repertoire, you can use those numbers to deliver digestible fast facts on social. Create image slides that tell a story using numbers and data. Add a caption that brings it all together. Don’t be afraid to repost old data-driven social media posts with a new lens. Algorithms and engagement patterns change, and you may have a bigger audience now than you used to. Reposting a social media post can rake in higher engagement than the original post. Still, only 34% of content marketers practice reposting their own content to help boost engagement.

10. Transform Webinars Into Quick Video Tutorials

In one study, nearly half (46.5%) of businesses said the COVID-19 pandemic brought an increase in webinar hosting. Webinars were already a popular way to engage audiences, especially in the B2B space. Once that popularity increased, brands were left with even more valuable content ready for repurposing. Webinars are lengthy, with most running about an hour long. That’s a big commitment, which is why it’s a good idea to transform webinars into quick video tutorials. These videos can vary in length depending on what platform you use, but keep them short. You can always create a series of videos off of the webinar content if you have a lot to unpack.

11. Create E-Book Guides from Existing Blogs

Use pillar and cluster posts to create a cohesive e-book that covers everything in one package. Offer this e-book as gated content (with at least a name and email required) to build your collection of first-party data and generate leads. When it comes to whether or not an e-book is right for you, it’s good to consider your audience. High earners tend to read more, including online (86% of people earning a salary of $75,000+ read books). However, the logistics largely depend on the type of content you publish and your overall value proposition. E-books are great because you can create them from limited content and data. You don’t need hundreds or thousands of pages of research like you would with a non-fiction novel.

12. Answer Quora Questions

Quora is often an undervalued tool in digital marketing. Real people ask questions, and you have the opportunity to answer. The first step is to take a blog post that provides a lot of value. If you feel like the blog needs a refresh, do that first. Then, find questions related to the blog post. Answer the questions thoughtfully and earnestly. Then, link to the blog post and tell the original poster they can view the blog for a more thorough answer. This tactic is interesting because it can garner attention from anyone who stumbled across the answer as well as the asker. Quora answers often show up in Google SERPs and can deliver awesome organic reach.  

13. Create a Roundup Newsletter or Post

At the end of the quarter, fiscal year, calendar year or any other time frame, gather your blogs or newsletters and find out which ones were the most popular or unique. Instead of time frame, you can also go by category of content. Then, create a new blog or newsletter that serves as a “round up” of these posts. This gets clicks on your new content and old content in one fell swoop. Look to “A roundup of Marketing Brew’s stories on cannabis advertising” from Marketing Brew as an example of repurposing content by creating a roundup post.

14. Become a Contributor on Blog Sites

Sign up to become a contributor on various blog sites, like Medium, Thrive Global and other easy-to-use platforms. The most important part of the process is to post rockstar content to these sites. However, that’s not all you’ll want to focus on. Since you’re repurposing content for a different audience, you’ll want to link back to the original content that inspired the piece. To do this, add canonical tags in the original content URL. As SEMRush puts it, “Canonical tags are a way of telling the search engines that a specified URL is the master copy of a page.” This tool allows you to avoid encountering issues with duplicate content. Since you’ve marked which page search engines should prefer, you’re in the clear. A canonical tag goes in the <head></head> section of your page’s HTML source code. It looks like this:

15. Write Guest Posts Based On Original Content

After developing a long-form blog, take parts of that blog and create new, shorter posts from them. You can use these posts to publish as a guest post contributor on another site. It’s best to decide which guest posting sites you want to target before you start writing those other blogs. Different platforms have different rules about length, backlinks, images and more. By deciding this first, you can save yourself from a strenuous editing round. Make sure this guest post is different enough from your original post that it can be considered a fully unique article.

FAQ About Repurposing Content

1. What does repurposing content mean?

Repurposing content means changing existing content to fit an updated time, audience, or purpose. You’re not simply reposting content in its original form. Rather, you’re doctoring the content to deliver value as needed.

1. What are some examples of repurposing content?

Alexandra Fasulo is a millionaire freelancer who repurposes content by creating Instagram Reels out of existing blogs, e-books or podcasts. Ignite Visibility creates weekly Ignite Friday videos that provide a digital marketing news roundup for the week. Then, Ignite creates blog posts for additional content. The San Francisco Chronicle and other news organizations create Twitter threads explaining the gist of news articles.

1. Does repurposing content help with SEO?

If your brand offers multiple content pieces around a target keyword, you’re more likely to rank for that keyword. Additionally, you can increase your backlink profile organically and by developing a cross-content linking strategy that you control.

1. Can you repurpose content across channels?

You don’t have to stick within the same platform to repurpose content. Blogs can become videos and social media posts. Internal studies can become public-facing data. The list goes on, but the point is that you can get creative by repurposing content across channels.

1. Can you repurpose content on the same social media platform?

As long as you change the content, you can repurpose it within the same platform. For example, you may take an older Instagram post and repurpose it for a new, updated post that reflects the day.

Bottom Line

Upping your content output doesn’t have to bury you. Learning how to repurpose content will save you endless time and energy down the line. Start with a few of these tricks and you’ll have a well-oiled content repurposing strategy in no time.   About the author: Brenda S. Elazab is a Senior SEO Specialist at Ignite Visibility. She has over five years of experience in SEO, particularly in agencies driving innovative campaign strategies and qualified organic leads for a wide range of industries, including legal, medical, finance, formalwear and more. She is committed to her client-focused approach and is dedicated to driving positive impacts on her client’s businesses. Brenda obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Marketing from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and attended courses at UCSC and UCSD throughout her undergrad career. While in college, she completed an International Business program in Barcelona, Spain and is fluent in Spanish & English. After graduating, Brenda taught English in Spain for three years and worked in customer service before stepping into SEO. In her spare time, she loves to travel, paddleboard, go camping or be anywhere by the beach. If not outdoors, Brenda is likely listening to podcasts or watching scandal reruns.