A while ago you wrote some great content or blog posts for your website. Since then, Google's algorithm has had a shake up, you've added an SEO plugin to your blog and then got distracted by something more pressing. 

Sound familiar? No need to fret.

Repurposing blog content is a thing. It's also fairly well regarded in the eyes (or spiders) of search engines. 

What are the benefits of repurposing old content?

1. resurface your most popular content

2. gain greater traction with your audience on your expert topic

3. reach new audiences

For longstanding visitors to your website or fans of your social media profiles, your most popular blog posts might already be well known. But what about new website visitors and new customer prospects? How would they find your best / most expert / most useful tips and advice without searching long and hard for it? (NB the average internet is not going to do that). 

Resurfacing your best performing (attracts most traffic from search engines or drives most bookings) will help reassert your brand's expertise on a topic, which in turn leads to greater traction with your target audience and a way to hook new customers.

How to repurpose blog content

There are myriad ways to take existing blog content and inject new life into it and/or generate fresh content from existing content on the same topic. Here's a starter for ten on doing just that so that your approach is both varied and interesting while adding value to your audience and your search rankings.

Take a listicle and create individual posts about each point

Turn your list into cornerstone content for a series of posts on an area of expertise. Cornerstone content is a search engine optimisation term for the primary piece of content on a topic. From there you can create sub-content (also known as 'child' pieces to your 'mother' content). These are often more detailed specifics while the original listicle acts as a summary or overview of a topic.

Create a summary post for a group of related posts

Flipping the previous idea on its head, if you've got a bank of detailed pieces, create a summary post for your audience to start from. Consider your content a funnel that your reader journeys through to understand more. Most web users start by skimming and only linger when they find what they're looking for, so starting with an overview article that links to the more detailed posts as well as to pages of your site where they can book/purchase/enquire it a more positive user experience.

Create a video using blog content

If your blog content has strong visuals, graphics or even video snippets already in it, creating a video version of that content is straightforward because many of the components already exist. Create a brief storyboard for the flow of the video (your blog post subheadings might be the prompts for each section of the board), craft a script (for voiceover and/or subtitles), select a licence-free soundtrack and choose your software. We're currently fans of Lumen5.

Create a slideshare

Longstanding slideshare software is freely available online for quick and easy conversion of your existing content and graphics into a digital slide deck. It's a bit old school in some respects but still prevalent as a B2B marketing tactic and for effective delivery of 'how to' content.

Create an infographic

With free tools like Canva, you don't need to be an expert graphic designer to whip up quick graphics and infographics. It'll doubtless take you longer than a skilled graphic designer - they're worth their weight if you can afford one. But if you can prevent yourself from getting distracted by the plethora of templates, fonts and colours, you'll discover a great way to deliver your existing content in a succinct and easy-on-the-eye format. Infographics also act as a download for new visitors to your website and are often used as a tool of data capture. 

Create a Pinterest ‘instructographic’

Not unlike an infographic, but specifically designed in Pinterest format (Canva can help with this too) and with a Pinterest audience in mind. Pinterest has even produce a how to video of its own to help users create these.

Start afresh acknowledging the original

If things have moved on a fair amount since you first wrote about a particular topic, it's probably best to write a brand new blog post on the subject. Publish a new, more current article on the same topic with a note about the post’s origins. If you want to demonstrate the longevity of your expertise, perhaps keep the original live and linked to from the new one (obviously clearly marked as 'once upon a time').

Create an email series

Where you've got a blog post that's a listicle or a series of posts on a single topic, would these be useful pointers for your email marketing database to know about? Blog content served up via email often acts as perfect nurture content, i.e. a way to communicate with your customer base in a non-salesy, value added fashion. 

You could create a daily/weekly email series using one point from each post or list as the brief email. This is particularly good for tip/advice sharing when a person is new to your list. Alternatively, add an information only email to your newsletter plan and give your readers a break from the upsell once in a while.

Write that ebook/pdf download

Always dream of authoring a title? Self-publishing is prolific these days, but what we're talking about here is taking that blog post series and turning it into a pdf. In a totally quick and dirty fashion, do that, add in some relevant non-copyrighted images, calls to action, a front cover and publishing details and then get your web guys to create a url for it. This is a much used data capture tactic whereby a user provides their email address in return for access to the download. Don't forget to ask them if they want to opt in to future marketing emails from you or risk getting your wrists slapped. 

Record a podcast

Generally speaking you're either an aural or a visual absorber of information. Yet in content terms, with the exception of audio books, those who prefer to listen and learn tend to get forgotten. Not everyone wants to read stuff. Tap in to that aural audience by turning your blog content into a podcast or series of podcasts.

Film your content

Whether it's you or someone else in your business who's more comfortable in front of the camera, express your knowledge personally through the medium of film. These days, it really doesn't take much more than a smart phone on a stable selfie stick stand and a well lit room to provide your studio setting. If your audience is heavy in its usage of social media channels, you might want to consider launching your film content through a device such as Facebook Live. If you keep the videos brief (30-60 seconds) you'll improve audience engagement and also create content perfect for your social media channels (and their algorithms love video right now, so you'll probably benefit from increased reach compared to your static posts too).

Turn individual tips and stats into individual social posts

This is either a light bulb or a no s*** Sherlock moment. Your blog content is natural content for you to be sharing on your social media channels, but stop a second a look at the specifics of the content. Take a bullet point, stat or opinion and use it as your actual social media post content, and add a relevant image to pack a punch. Not all social media posts need to nor should include a link, some should simply nurture your audience by reinforcing you know what you're talking about and know what it is they want to hear.

Link to blog posts from your customer newsletters

Your blog audience won't necessarily be the same as your email newsletter audience. In fact never assume that your audience is all in one place or marketing channel. Even if your promotional emails include a reference to your blog it will alert your email recipients to the existence of this content on your site. They might look at it now, or it might remind them when you send that nurture newsletter in a few weeks time.

If you're a hotel, restaurant, holiday company or group of hospitality venues and like the ideal of this but don't have the time or resource to execute it, let's chat.