How do marketers make the most of the content they produce?
Sure, there’s promotion, which most of us probably aren’t doing well enough.
Or attribution and measurement, to make sure we know how our content is contributing to the bottom line.
But the content assets in and of themselves are more valuable than many of us realize. With strategic repurposing, each new piece we create can become twenty – each contributing to helping us meet our goals.
We think a lot about repurposing here at SnapApp, but I was curious how marketers in the Inbound.org community approached the topic. A few months ago, I polled the community for their favorite repurposing tactics – and got some powerful responses.
As I read through the responses, an overarching theme emerged: almost anything can be repurposed into almost anything else. It all starts with the repurposing mindset. Are you looking at the content you create with a repurposing eye? Are you noting which blog posts could be rolled together into an ebook, or which webinar decks would make great SlideShare presentations?
Once you’ve adopted the repurposing mindset, you’ll see new content opportunities everywhere. As contributor Christopher Hawkins noted, “Not having to start from scratch every time is a huge force-multiplier.”
The community came up with a few repurposing techniques I thought were worth highlighting – take a look and then share your favorite approaches in the comments!
1. The Skyscraper Technique
Commenter Erik John, an SEO strategist at envisionit, brought up this fan favorite technique pioneered by Brian Dean of Backlinko.
Here’s how Brian describes this technique:
Recommended for You Webcast, August 25th: Leveraging Your Existing Customers For Growth
Brian’s article walks you through the strategy for creating your own skyscraper content, so I’ll let you head over there for the full story.
What I find so interesting about this technique is that you’re repurposing someone else’s content – taking inspiration from their idea and making it better. It still takes an incredible amount of work to produce this pillar piece of content, but by building on a topic that you already know is successful ensures all that work will be really worth it.
2. The Heart of the Content
I loved this comment from Britt Schwartz:
“Use the heart of the content.” We too often forget that each piece we write has a kernel at its core that inspires the whole thing. For this piece, the heart is this collection of expert ideas from Inbound.org. Ann Handley might call this the Big Idea – the concept we want our audience to come away from the piece with, if nothing else.
The right core idea lends itself to innumerable reimaginings. What’s at the heart of your content?
Pinpointing the core topic, the core insight of your work can help distinguish the subject away from the medium you’re using, say a blog. Once you’ve identified it, re-imagining the subject into a variety of different formats becomes easier, and buyers want a variety of format options.
3. Rinse and Repeat
Taking a core content idea and reforging it into a new format is just one way to repurpose. Several of the Inbound.org commenters recommended taking the full form of older content and republishing it or presenting it to a new audience.
“Your audience may have grown,” Christopher Hawkins noted, advocating the “If they haven’t seen it yet, it counts as new” approach.
Chris Windsor points out that “most people are professional scanners,” so rehashing the same points gives you a greater chance of breaking through to people only half paying attention.
Google may give extra points for publishing fresh content, but your existing content can continue to add value. Michael Bergen advocates updating that evergreen content and republishing it.
“Chances are if a helpful topic has been covered in the past, new audiences will continue to find it valuable,” Michael wrote.
Plan for Repurposing
Repurposing takes enough thought that it’s difficult to do off the cuff. To make sure you’re working as efficiently as possible, plan for your content to be repurposed from the get-go.
As SEO expert AJ Ghergich put it, “Most people fail with repurposing because they try and do it with content that was never the right fit for it in the first place.”
You can save yourself a lot of headache if you set up your content calendar to optimize for repurposing. For example:
- Plan a series of blog posts around the same topic that can be zipped together into an ebook;
- Record interviews with customers and influencers to fuel a podcast;
- Develop ebook chapters that can be separated into email courses;
- Design blog header images to double as social sharing thumbnails
The world is your oyster when it comes to repurposing. Did you find something in this roundup that inspired you to rework, reshape, or reimagine your content? Share it in the comments!
3 Ways Clever Marketers Repurpose Content
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