5 Effective Ways to Repurpose Old Content for New Traffic
Fresh content is the lifeblood of the Internet, or at least, of the search engines.
Posting new content helps people stumble upon you, spreads the word about your brand, and gets people interested in what you have to say and what you have to offer.
By "content," we are referring to all of your material -- from blog posts and Web pages to emails, newsletters, and white papers. Your content says everything about you in a professional voice.
But how can you be expected to crank out new content day after day and month after month with no respite?
You can’t! After all, you still have a business to run, and you can't spend more time blogging about your business than running it. Many others before you have tried that -- and failed.
What's a small business owner to do?
The answer is simple: repurpose your current blog material and turn it into fresh, new material that will bring in more traffic and higher conversion rates. That is, if you do it wisely.
1. Change the Format
This is the oldest trick in the book for content marketers, so keep it under your hat. You take a favorite blog post and turn it into a video or podcast.
Or you can take a series of posts you've written on the same topic and turn them into a longer white paper. This allows you to create "new" material in minutes instead of hours (or days), but it also "tricks" the search engines into processing your old blogs as new content.
You already know you can't reuse text that you've posted before because there are penalties for duplicate content violations, but you can repurpose that exact same material by turning it into another format like audio or video.
In that case, the material is no longer subject to duplicate content scrutiny because there is no duplicate text. Just by re-framing and re-formatting your existing blogs, you can instantly double your content and your presence on the Internet.
Other clever ways to re-use material are utilizing your cache of offline content like old speeches and presentations and turning boring old statistics into eye-catching infographics.
2. Breathe New Life into Your Old Material
No one knows your blog archives like you. You also know which blog posts and Web topics got the best results, so it's time to go with the tried and true.
You can breathe new life into your most successful blogs by updating them with up-to-date revisions or by adding new material. You already know the subject matter will be a hit with your readership, so just make sure the updated version packs the same punch as the original.
Two things are essential, though. First, you must actually re-write the material in order to refresh it, rather than just re-paste it. This should be easy for a talented writer like you.
Second, you have to steer clear of repurposing current-events-type material. No matter how much great feedback you received on your blog posts about the Malaysian Airlines catastrophe, it is old news.
Stick to recycling "evergreen" articles that are always in season. This refers to things like tutorials, tips, and "list" posts. People enjoy revisiting their favorite topics, especially if the writing is strong.
3. Blogging by Numbers
People love lists -- like "5 Ways To..." or "10 Things You Didn't Know About..." -- and you can use this to repurpose some valuable information into bite-sized morsels by combining several blogs into a fascinating list.
Gather together five or six posts on the same subject, and see if you can't weave them into a meaningful list. What an easy way to "borrow" some content from existing blog posts and making it new again!
Then again, you could go the opposite direction and turn one "list" post into a number of specific in-depth looks at the same subject matter. All you have to do is expand upon each of the points on the list and flesh them out to blog length.
It's easier and quicker than you think because you've already laid the groundwork, so the expanded version will just write itself. Of course, you'll still have to edit.
4. Hub and Spoke Networking
The "hub" is a major prize-worthy blog post you are particularly proud of, and the "spokes" are updates, follow-ups, and summaries that you post on other sites and link back to your main piece for reference.
This gives extended life to your key posts and keeps them in circulation. It also lets you create fresh "spokes" in no time because you're already well versed on the subject. Consequently, it improves your marketing SEO because links to high-quality, relevant content is always welcome on the Web.
5. Strike While the Iron Is Hot
Few bloggers know exactly which posts will ignite a fire within the online community and which ones will just sit there taking up valuable space on the Web; that's one of the most exciting aspects of blogging.
You write your heart out, and hope for the best.
So don't be afraid to "milk" your content if your blog post garners lots of attention and comments, seemingly growing legs of its own.
Keep the momentum going by writing plenty of follow-ups and maybe even complementary pieces that explore different angles of the same picture. Why not write a separate post about all the comments your masterpiece inspired?
In conclusion, you should never be hesitant about repeating yourself, so long as you don't duplicate yourself. By this we mean it's perfectly acceptable to repeat your ideas and your opinions because people remember things that are recapitulated.
Daily newspapers repeat themselves three times in order to get through to the average reader. You too can use each blog post at least three times, as long as you put a fresh spin on it each time.
