Effective Ways In Repurposing Content To Increase Your Website Traffic
Have you written something that you think is really valuable? If so, it would be a waste to let it sit there and wait for someone to find it.
For you to get the most out of your content and extend its shelf life, you need to know how to repurpose it.
Repurposing content is using your original content/blog and modifying them into different forms to be used in different ways than the original content/blog was intended to be.
Repurposing content is also an effective strategy to extend the shelf life of your content and promote it in different ways and platforms.
Benefits of repurposing content
Here are more reasons why repurposing content is a must strategy for your digital marketing plan.
1. It helps boost your SEO.
Creating different content from the same topic can help you maximise the use of your targetted keywords. Moreover, since you are creating different forms of content from your original content and spreading it on different platforms outside your website, then you are increasing your SEO appeal.
2. Reach new audience
Repurposed content helps your brand to be known in different platforms thus increasing your chances of reaching a new set of audiences. People don’t just use Google Search to look for the things they want. They also use social media like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Some are also in YouTube and other video sharing site. Which means that if you repurpose your content based on the requirements of these platforms, you are tapping audiences who are in these places.
3. Emphasize your message
If your audience keep on seeing your content on different places and in different forms, then it would be easy for your message to get through to your audience. In fact, according to Buffer’s Marketing Rule Of 7, buyers need to hear a message seven times before they decide to make a purchase. And repurposing content is a good way to seal this deal.
4. Be an expert
Aside from reinforcing messages to get to your customers, repurposing is also a great way to establish your authority. If your content is seen in different places, it is easy for people to see you as an expert on that topic. Your repurposed content can be a cross-check info from the other content you have in other places.
Now that we know the benefits that we can get with repurposing content, I know you are now excited to do it. But before that, you should be aware of what type or kind of content you should repurpose.
What content should you repurpose
To repurpose content, start with your blog archives. Assess and review the blogs that you published. If you’ve been blogging for a long time, you would be looking for hundreds of blogs. This can take time. That is why you need to filter the blogs with these considerations in mind.
1. Evergreen content
Evergreen content refers to those that are timeless. Meaning, even though your blog was written months or years ago, it still stays relevant up until today. Like for example this blog, it was created last May 2017 on LinkedIn and we reblog it on our website this October 2019 because it is still relevant and people still keep on reading it.
2. Popular posts
Another factor you should keep your eye on is the most popular content. If you are using Google Analytics, it would be easy for you to check the blog with the most traffic. Just go to the Behavior tab on your dashboard, select Overview and the top 10 most visited pages will show. Just set the date for a whole month’s report.
When looking for a popular post, look after those who were written in the past but still gaining traffic in the present.
Take for example this report generated on 1 to 31 July 2020, the one on the top spot is Best Time and Day To Post On Facebook In The Philippines. This blog was written last 8 January 2020 but is still on the number 1 spot. It even has a lot of visits as compared to our home page.
3. Look for improvement
Another factor you should consider when looking for content to repurpose is to look for content that can still be improved on. Perhaps the content needs a bit of updating since it was published or you’ve learned additional information since you’ve written it.
Like for example this old blog, about creating titles that people will click. We’ve updated this blog since we’ve discovered more techniques that would further improve your conversion rate using great headlines.
Different ways of repurposing content
Now that we know what content to repurpose, it is now time to get to the main event of different ways on how you can repurpose or give longer life to your content. Keep in mind that repurposing is not using old content again and again. We repurpose content in a way that we make it fresh and more appealing to a new audience.
Got it?
Okay let’s go.
1. Create new blog posts or articles
A single blog post can actually produce new topics for another blog post. This usually happens when your blog is a listicle. With a listicle article, you just simply break out each item on the list and create separate topics for them. You can insert additional information, tutorial, or provide examples to expand the item on the list to make it into one whole new blog.
For example, this blog is a list of different digital marketing tools that business owners can use. From this blog post, we can create separate blogs discussing each tool with their description, advantages and disadvantages, best practices, examples, or a video tutorial on how to use it.
Aside from taking out bits and pieces from one blog, you can also create a summary blog combining blogs that have the same topics. Like for example, we have a lot of blogs on the topic of website development. We can actually create a blog about Website Development Best Practices with our previous blogs as its content:
- Benefits of Coding and Using Template
- Creating Website That Ranks
- Website Maintenance Checklist
- SEO ranking factors for your website
2. Create a presentation
Another way that you can repurpose your content is by turning it into a presentation. Just pick out the most important points on your blog and put it in a presentation. Canva has a lot of presentation templates that you can use and get started with.
Once you are done, you can upload it to a social site like SlideShare. By uploading it here, you are increasing your contents engagements.
Here is an example of a SlideShare presentation we use from one of our blogs.
3. Create an Infographic
An infographic is a good way to provide a complete summary of your content. If you have a lot of data in your content, using infographic will be an effective strategy so your readers can easily digest the information. You can use Canva and their readily available templates to help you produce stunning infographics that you can upload on your social media pages like Pinterest or on your own website.
This one is an example of a great infographic from a recruitment and consulting firm in Brisbane.
4. Update old blog post
If you have evergreen content that you want to repurpose, one way to do that is to change the banner or blog image you use. Choose a more engaging and updated image that is more relevant to your readers today.
Second, make sure to rename your photo with the right name and not just a bunch of numbers and letters. Changing the name of your images can greatly affect your SEO. You can also put the title on your blog image. We, at Digital Strategists, do it all the time.
With these simple techniques, you are giving your old content a new makeover to make it more appealing.
5. Repost and reshare it on social media
One of the easiest ways to repurpose your content is simply sharing it on social media from time to time. We, at Digital Strategists, create 10 to 15 tweets from our blogs and put it in our content bank. When we create social media plans, we refer back to our content bank and include these tweets. This way, our previous blogs get shared every month.
It may look ineffective to share the same content to the same audience. But according to Buffer, with this strategy, you are actually reaching people in different time zones and reaching new customers. To backed this up, Tom Tunguz’s research showed that reposting can bring in 75 per cent engagement of the original share.
6. Use quora
Quora is a great platform to promote your content. This is by answering questions that are related to your content or by publishing blog content on the platform. However, just make sure you are not spamming your answers with your blog links as this is against Quora’s policy.
7. Create an email series
An email series is sending a daily email about a certain topic to your email list or subscribers. For example, this blog on how to repurpose content is a great start. We can send one tip a day to our subscribers until we finished the whole list in the blog. This way you are promoting your blog to your subscribers every single day increasing your blog traffic.
For this, you can use Mailchimp to create your campaign as well as track the performances of your emails.
8. Turn it into an ebook
If you’ve been creating a lot of blogs on a particular topic, you can compile all of that and make it into one comprehensive ebook. And this ebook can be used as a lead magnet that your website visitors can download in exchange for their email address. It can be a bit challenging to do, but once you have the material, you’ll be surprised by the traffic and engagement that your content and website will receive.
9. Turn it into a video or podcast
Another good material that you can repurpose your content into is by turning them into videos or podcasts. This way you are surely tapping audiences in these two platforms.
I know not all of us can create stunning videos to repurpose our content. But with the help of video editing tools like Biteable and Wevideo, it is easy to turn our blog content into engaging videos that we can upload on YouTube and other video sharing sites.
If video is not your thing, you can record your content and turn it into a podcast and upload it on Spotify or other podcasts channels.
Wrap Up
There are so many ways that you can extend the life of your blog. The key here is to be creative in repurposing your content. You also need to know the requirements of the platform you plan to submit your content to.
Repurposing content may not be easy for everyone. But with the help of the above tips as well as the free tools out there, you can promote your content effectively and make the most out of it.
If you need help when it comes to creating or repurposing content (blogs, articles, ebooks, presentations, infographics, etc.) we, at Digital Strategists have expert content writers to help you.
Just shoot a message at dgstrategists@gmail.com or via Facebook messenger button below.
Keep writing and repurposing!
May you have more clients to come,
The Digital Strategists
About the Author
Crisel Blenda Fernandez is a digital marketing strategist specialising in content marketing and social media management. She loves writing, experimenting, researching, and discovering new things in the digital marketing world. She is a Hubspot Content Writing Certified and a coffee lover. If not writing, she is busy playing with her daughter (singing Finger Family and I’m a little teapot) or binge-eating with her husband.