Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
What is content repurposing?
Content repurposing means turning your content into different formats for different audiences. This is good for SEO because it allows you to increase your visibility on different websites, which can give you more placement in search results. It also gives you the chance to reach more people with your content, which can lead to more website traffic and more return visits.
Benefits of content repurposing
Repurposing means turning your content into different formats for different audiences. It allows you to:
- Reach more people: People like to absorb content in different formats.
- Get more content: Repurposing a piece of content into another format extends the life of that content.
- Grow your visibility: You are more visible, because you are pushing out content in different ways and on different platforms.
- Cater to different learning styles: Having content in different formats increases your ability to cater to different learning styles.
Ways to repurpose content
Here are some ways that you can repurpose content:
- Audio: Turn written content into an audio version that users can listen to instead of read.
- Podcast: This is an audio file that could be uploaded into iTunes as a podcast. You could also take a long piece of content and develop a discussion for a podcast covering the topic. Conversely, you can take a podcast and transcribe it into a blog post.
- Video: Just like podcasts, videos work both ways – they can either be transcribed or can be used to further describe a piece of written content. They can also be turned into audio-only versions that people can listen to on the go.
- Webinar: Webinars can be turned into blog posts, podcasts, and infographics. These pieces of content can also inspire a webinar, if there are a lot of questions or you want community participation.
- Presentation: Turn infographics or the main points of blog posts, podcasts, and webinars into a slide presentation you can upload onto SlideShare. This shows users a summary of your points and then you can link to the longer content that’s hosted on your website.
- Social media: Like the presentation method, take the main points of your content and turn it into visual images that quickly show a takeaway from your content that you can share on social media. Link to the full content to get more interest and drive traffic.
- Infographic: This allows you to summarize your content in a visual format that can also be used in a blog post or on social media (Pinterest and SlideShare are best for infographic formats). You can also take the data shown in infographics and elaborate on it in a blog post, white paper, or case study.
Example: Marketing Nerds
Repurposing means turning your content into different formats for different audiences. For example, Search Engine Journal’s Marketing Nerds podcast episodes are transcribed into written text, which is then edited to make a 700 to 2,000-plus word blog post. The questions asked in the podcast are used as headers in the post.
Methods
There are a number of methods you can use to repurpose your content:
- Combine multiple types of content into one blog post in order to appeal to all types of learners and allow people to consume the information in the way they like best. This lets them learn from your content easily, and will help hold their interest and keep them coming back for more content from you. Examples are video explainers or presentations embedded into a written blog post.
- Include an infographic and a shareable image that shows key takeaways from a related written blog post or video. These help explain the main points and give readers a ‘bird’s eye view’ of what to take away from the content.
You might figure out different formats that work best together. So keep experimenting! Experimenting is always a good thing when it comes to repurposing. And because you’ve created the original content already, it takes less manpower and fewer resources to repurpose it than to create something new from scratch.
Example: video embedded into a blog post
A video interview was filmed at a conference for Search Engine Journal. Once the video was edited and uploaded, a blog post was created that explained the key takeaways from the video, as well as where to learn more about the topic and where to reach the interviewee.
Recommended tools
Here are some tools that can be used for repurposing content:
- Canva: This helps you create images easily with text, frames, and other graphics.
- Pablo by Buffer: This makes it easy to overlay quotes or phrases on photos and then share on Buffer or other social networks.
- Quotes Cover: An alternative to Pablo by Buffer.
- Photoshop: A more advanced graphic creator that lets you edit image properties, such as color or red-eye, and also allows you to combine images, overlay tints, and more.
- PicMonkey: An alternative to Canva.
- Gif Creator: This makes it easy to create gifs from a series of images or videos. You can cut a video down into a repeating gif.
- Boomerang: This app shoots a few seconds of video that then loops (replays) over and over once the user hits play on Instagram.
Example: visual repurposing
Here is an example of visual repurposing (see slide ‘Visual repurposing example’).
In this case, it’s an example of a company sharing takeaways from a blog post in an Instagram post. The blog post (on the left) was condensed into an Instagram-sized image that had three key takeaways from the post.
Back to TopKelsey Jones
Digital Marketing Consultant and Writer
- 9 years’ experience in SEO and writing for the web
- 17 years’ experience in HTML
- Experience writing content for small and large brands
- US Search Awards Judge 2014, 2015, 2016
- The Drum US Search Awards Judge 2017
- Former Executive Editor, Search Engine Journal, 2014-2017
