Just Because Your Content is Dated, Doesn’t Mean It’s Dead.

In my time as a content writer, I’ve built a pretty extensive archive of blog posts–but I can pinpoint my top performing posts with closed eyes. The best part about having a brag-worthy archive of useful blog posts is that they always come in handy when creating new ones. I don’t believe in abandoning a quality post just because it’s “old”. In fact, a solid blog post or article can make a comeback at any time, as long as it continues to provide value to your content marketing strategy.

Don’t believe that’s possible? Think again. Even the most dated blog posts carry marketing potential long after they’ve stopped generating traffic and conversions–and you can make this happen by repurposing your content. Breathing life into older content is easy and, most importantly, essential to your online marketing campaign. Here are some tips to help you successfully repurpose your content on your website.

Why Repurpose Content?

Derek Halpern at Social Triggers said it best when he broke down the benefits of the infamous 80/20 rule of content marketing, which suggests that writers spend 80% of their time promoting their content, and 20% actually creating it. After all, you put so much hard work into putting quality, share-worthy facts together, so why not work with what you have? It’s important to maintain a continuous flow of published content, but it’s equally important to get the most out of what has already yielded positive feedback. Some of the reasons for repurposing your content include:

First, choose content you want to repurpose

Take a look at your site analytics to determine which posts have been gaining the most attention. Then, look for information within your content that can continuously provide value to your audience, such as:

• In-depth statistics
• Interactive, visual content (infographics, charts, etc)
• Straight-forward advice that viewers can absorb at-a-glance

Evergreen content

This is a huge way to make the most of your content marketing efforts. Evergreen content is basically an article that you read today and think “wow, this is really helpful!” and then come back to it a year later and still feel the same about it. It includes facts and advice that is relevant no matter when you read it. For this reason, evergreen content yields consistent site traffic and conversions over time–after all, a piece of content with consistently valid, valuable information will never go out of style. The key to using the evergreen content strategy is to update the content over time. Google takes fresh content into account for ranking purposes, so you’ll be doing your SEO efforts a huge favor by doing this.

Here’s a trick: link your evergreen content within new, related content. Not only does it improve your internal linking strategy (an important factor in your SEO), but it provides useful information that your audience can benefit from.

Identify how you want to repurpose your content

Evergreen content is an excellent strategy, but you can also mix it up by creating an infographic or video with the content you want to reuse. This can help reintroduce your existing content to your audience in a fresh, new light. Choosing a different form of content also depends on your level of expertise.

Creating a video, for instance, is a perfectly doable task for even the most novice designer or business person. However, this strategy goes far beyond simply creating the video. There are strategies involved in getting your video to circulate efficiently and, most importantly, rank on search engines to bring the most traffic to your website. For a simpler strategy, try your hand at creating an infographic or banner. Canva is a user-friendly tool to create your own graphics.

All in all, unless you’re up for the challenge of creating a form of content you’re not familiar with (or know of a professional who can easily do it for you), stick to what you know and build off of that.

Choose where you’ll distribute your content

You should already know where your largest presence is, and that plays a major role in where/how you’ll repurpose content. Choosing a distribution platform where you’ve established a significant following will help you reach people faster and easier.

It’s also important to choose the right distribution platform based on the type of content you want to publish. For example, smaller, more straightforward snippets of repurposed content (like statistics and notable quotes) work well on Twitter. Interactive videos can attract viewers on Facebook and Youtube, while B2B driven content can be posted on LinkedIn to drive engagement.

Create your content and post away

Once you’ve decided which content you want to repurpose and how you want to repurpose it, it’s time to pull the trigger. Before hitting ‘post’, always remember to play your strengths when integrating existing content back into the online world. This means choosing the right form of content based on your level of expertise and comfort (traditional blogs, videos, graphics, etc) and the most fitting social platform for it.

I’m also a huge fan of social media scheduling tools, like Hootsuite and Buffer, which can do wonders for your content marketing campaign by automating your social media updates. One social media tool in particular, called Edgar, actually takes it a step further and creates a never-ending rotation of updates for posts within any given category. It also won’t post an additional update until all other updates within that category have been posted, so you’ll have a balanced posting pattern. While other sites simply post based on the date/time of your choice (which is totally fine), you can keep repurposed content circulating for as long as you’d like.

Content is Precious. Use Yours Wisely.

It takes a great deal of time to create content, which is why you should never let quality posts go to waste. By following the above mentioned steps and insight, you’ll be well on your way to establishing your voice as an expert in your field. This can lead to greater conversions and growth opportunities for your website and overall business. Want to learn additional content writing tips to help you get there faster? Subscribe to our blog for free weekly insight.