Creating enough content to support each stage of the buying cycle is an overwhelming task. You have limited time, budget, and access to subject matter expertise. One of the efficient ways to feed your content beast is to repurpose existing material into new content items.
You put extraordinary effort into your last white paper. And, it was golden. Why should it start collecting dust now?
Repurposing is similar to recycling: new aluminum cans can be produced from old aluminum cans with less energy and waste than from scratch. For content’s sake (and our sanity), we shouldn’t throw it out after we publish or syndicate it. We want to rework existing content as much as possible.
I didn’t just write the first two lines of this article. They were taken verbatim from a product overview video we published four months ago! The content is different. The purpose is different.
Repurposing content can:
- Save you time and money (and frustration)
- Streamline your content production process
- Improve your return-on-effort
- Help you reach more audiences
We mixed and mashed existing pieces of Wriber content to create a brand new article (this one). Here’s how you can do it too:
1. Refresh the messaging.
Messages are the key thoughts you want your audience to remember after reading your content. As your marketing mix changes over time, your content will be run under new themes and campaigns with a contrasting set of messages.
You can replace the main points of existing content with the updated messaging of your current content strategy to form new items. Similarly, we can also retain relevant parts of existing content to include in new items.
We took ideas from our Messages are more important than keywords article to write this section.
2. Adjust the context.
Your existing content items were written for a reason. You might have newsjacked a story, released a new product, or wanted to move prospects through your marketing funnel. Providing your ideas in another context helps extend their longevity.
If we pay attention to the news or look at what’s trending, we can see how our existing content could apply to it. There may also be existing ideas that can help achieve new marketing objectives. You can rework the appropriate ideas into a fresh piece.
We took ideas from our Does your content have context? article to write this section.
3. Target other audiences.
Every individual piece of your existing content is targeted towards a clear-cut audience with a specific persona. Your content strategy will have to serve multiple buyers and market segments with differing demographics, behaviours, and values.
The appropriate messaging, tone, and readability level of existing content can be tweaked for other audiences.
We took ideas from the Wriber platform to write this section. Request a demo to see the platform!
4. Change the medium.
We all consume content differently. Content can and should take many forms: text, audio, video, and images. Some mediums work better than others for each stage in the buying cycle.
You can break larger content items up into short catchy pieces for blog posts, podcasts, SlideShare presentations, YouTube clips, and infographics. Similarly, you can aggregate their shorter content into longer informative material such as webinars, white papers, and e-books. We know a company that turns every 10 blog posts into a single white paper!
It’s time to dust off that old white paper and bring it back to life with new messaging and context for your other audiences and mediums!
John is the Founder & CEO of Wriber. He’s passionate about entrepreneurship, high-tech startups, thought leadership, content marketing, and artificial intelligence. John frequently volunteers his time at the University of Waterloo to help young entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground. He’s also a faithful Toronto Maple Leafs fan, frequent Redditor, and lifelong learner.