Repurpose Your Blog Content Like a Boss

Have you ever felt like repurposing content was kind of like…cheating?

As new bloggers, we have this idea that everything we post needs to be 100% original or it “doesn’t count.” We think people will call us for rehashing old ideas. We worry people are scrutinizing every word we write, scanning line by line to see if what we’re writing is something we’ve already written before (“Wait a minute… I’ve read this line before!

This was in a blog post from three years ago! So unoriginal.”).

But here’s the truth of the matter — no one (and I mean no one) is paying that much attention. I promise.

Isn’t that liberating?

And even if they were paying attention that closely, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with repurposing content! Think about it this way — when you go to a concert to hear your favorite band, do you think, “Oh man, I hope they don’t play any of those old songs I’ve already heard before”? No! Of course not!

Speakers recycle ideas in their speeches. Writers recycle ideas in their writing. And magazines?! Forget about it! I’ve subscribed to Martha Stewart for over 15 years (LOVE her!), and I swear, she publishes the same articles and photos over and over again. And guess what? I don’t care (and apparently neither does anyone else).

It’s the same thing with content. When the content we’re delivering is of high quality, our audience will have no problem hearing it more than once. And repurposing content can actually work to their benefit — if we’re sharing something important, sometimes it can take a while to sink in, so by repurposing it and allowing our audience to read it over a few times, we’re helping them better absorb the information.

But, just like anything else, there’s a right way to repurpose content — a way that will get the best results for us and our audience.

WHEN YOU SHOULD REPURPOSE CONTENT

The first question about repurposing content is, when is it a good idea?

And the answer is — it’s always a good idea to repurpose content when we can use it in a different medium.

For example, let’s say we write an email newsletter every week that’s full of super helpful content. We can then take that content and repurpose it in the form of a blog post.

Or let’s say we wanted to write an ebook! Instead of writing it from scratch, we could repurpose the content from some of our best or most popular blog posts. This is a super popular strategy… A good chunk of the ebooks we read are just repurposed blog content!

The point is, there are a lot of different places where we can publish content. And taking content from one place and repurposing it in the other is a great strategy to keep the flow of content coming — rather than burning ourselves out trying to come up with new content ideas.

It is always a good idea to repurpose content when we can use it in a different medium.

It is always a good idea to repurpose content when we can use it in a different medium. Click to Tweet

STRATEGIES FOR REPURPOSING BLOG CONTENT LIKE A BOSS

Now that we know when we should repurpose our content, let’s talk about some of the hows. What are some actual strategies for repurposing our content like a boss?

I already mentioned a few (turning emails into blog posts and blog posts into ebooks), but let’s look at a few other ways we can repurpose our content:

TURN AN e-BOOK INTO A BLOG POST SERIES

We already talked about turning blog posts into an ebook, but the opposite works just as well! If we’ve written an awesome ebook, we can take that content and break it down into a series of posts to share on our blog.

SHARE SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT ACROSS CHANNELS

I don’t have to tell you that there are a LOT of social media platforms these days. But there’s no reason to create 100% unique content for each of them! We can repurpose our social media content across all the channels! Keep in mind that we might need to make minor tweaks to suit each platform (like keeping our content under the Twitter character max), but the ideas can stay the same.

TURN YOUR CONTENT INTO A COURSE

If we’ve got a lot of great content on a particular subject — whether that’s in the form of blog posts, email newsletters, ebooks, or anything else — a great way to repurpose and reorganize that content is to turn it into a course. This is also a great way to monetize our content!

UPDATE AND REPUBLISH OLD CONTENT

Every blogger wants to get on Google’s good side. And a great way to do that? Updating and republishing old content. Google wants to see that we’re not just forgetting about our old content and leaving it to waste away in our blog archives, so freshening it up with new copy and photos and republishing it can be a great way to boost our SEO.

TURN IT INTO A PODCAST/VIDEO CONTENT

As bloggers, most of the content we create is written. Which is why it’s great to repurpose it into audio or video. Taking our written content and turning it into podcast or video scripts is an awesome way to deliver our ideas to our audience in a totally new and different format.

STANDARDS FOR REPURPOSING CONTENT

Now, obviously I’m a big fan of repurposing content. But not everything should be repurposed.

Repurposing every single thing we write isn’t a solid strategy (not to mention it sounds kind of exhausting!). If we want to get the best results from repurposing content, we need to repurpose the content that has the best results. 

The kind of content that begs to be repurposed is the content that drives killer results. Is there a specific blog post that had a crazy number of responses and comments from our audience? Is there a particular email that drove a ton of engagement? Is there a social media post we created that went viral? Those are the types of content we want to repurpose. When we repurpose content that’s already been successful, chances are, it will be successful again. But if we repurpose content that launched to crickets the first time around? Well… you get the picture.

Repurposing content can be a great way to breathe new life into our ideas, stretch our content’s life cycle, and save ourselves from having to come up with new topics every five minutes. Click to Tweet

Repurposing content can be a great way to breathe new life into our ideas, stretch our content’s life cycle, and save ourselves from having to come up with new topics every five minutes.

Now that you know how to repurpose content like a boss, it’s time to get out there and find new ways to use the amazing content you already have!