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Content marketing can be an effective way to generate engagement with your brand, but content creation isn’t always easy. Maintaining a steady flow of fresh ideas takes hard work. And as any content creator will tell you, the process takes up a lot of time as well. Content recycling can help busy content creators get the most out of every piece of content.
What is Content Recycling?
Content recycling is the act of repurposing old content by presenting it in a new way. In general, the purpose of recycling content is to extend its lifespan. This enables it to reach new audiences and continue to benefit your brand.
Sometimes, content recycling might just involve updating content. Other times, it could involve more extensive reformatting. Either way, repurposed content leverages existing content to create new marketing opportunities.
Content recycling is not the same thing as reusing old content as-is. If you publish the exact same content multiple times with minimal changes, you will probably just appear lazy. Plus, with the ever-changing landscape of SEO, it might not perform as well the second or third time around. Recycling blogs and other content capitalizes on high-performing pieces by repackaging them in new ways.
Why Should I Repurpose Content?
There are a few different reasons to repurpose content. If you are going to put in the time and effort to make high-performing content, it’s imperative that you get the most use out of it possible. If you have old content that has already performed well, there is little need to create new content with the same message. Simply presenting it in a new format may be enough to keep it alive and encourage lead generation.
Aside from saving you time and effort, repurposing content can help expand your brand’s reach. You may be able to improve search engine performance by publishing updated versions of old blog posts, for example. Publishing multiple pieces of content that use the same keywords can improve the odds of search engine algorithms recognizing your content as a relevant source of information.
Repurposing content for a different demographic is another way to use recycled content to extend your brand’s influence. Doing so could allow it to reach new viewers who fall outside of the piece’s original target audiences.
Choosing the Content to Repurpose
Not all of your existing content can or should be repurposed. One of the best types of content to repurpose is your evergreen content. This is the content that will always be relevant, no matter how much time has passed since it was originally created. Any piece of content that heavily references current events or contains time-sensitive information is not evergreen content.
High-performing blog posts are also a good choice for repurposing. You already have confirmation that people want to read them. Paying attention to the number of views, shares, or likes your content is getting can help you determine which pieces of content are your most popular. You can also use more advanced KPI tools to track performance metrics. By recycling a popular blog post, you can extend the life of the content that performs well.
Evergreen content that was successful the first time around is likely your strongest content, so these pieces usually make the best candidates for repurposing.
Examples of How to Repurpose Blog Content
The best way to repurpose content is to translate existing content to a new medium. For example, you could repurpose a blog post into video content by turning the blog post into a video script. Or, you could reformat an article full of statistics into an easily-digestible chart or infographic.
Social media channels make great platforms for recycled content because they can support so many different types of content. Almost any kind of content can easily be turned into content on social media.
You can extract the most significant or memorable snippets from blog posts and republish them as social media posts. Or, turn an important moment from a video into a GIF. You can even repost user-generated content. This is also a good way to engage with your audience and build relationships with customers.
Sometimes all you need to do to breathe new life into a piece of content is update it. If you have evergreen content that is no longer getting much attention, it might be easiest to refurbish and repromote it rather than repurpose it into an additional piece of content. Seasonal content that can simply be updated for the new year is a good example of this.
Conclusion
Recycling content doesn’t mean you’ll never need to come up with any content ideas ever again. Without new content, you wouldn’t have any content to recycle in the first place. Repurposing old content allows you to continue to see results from your content long after you publish it, ensuring you get the most mileage out of your best ideas.
