7 Unexpected Ways to Repurpose Your Old Content

Of course, the age-old trick is to repurpose your blog posts into a new ebook to convert viewers into leads. It seems to be a tried method for doing this, and nobody will argue that it’s a decent way to capture contact info from website visitors. But, it’s not the only way to give new life to your old ideas. Here are some methods you can use to fluff up old content, that I will bet you haven’t thought of yet.

Turn Old Blog Posts Into Tips

You can find an old blog post and break it down into a series of “tips.” Share them on your website, in your social media accounts, in your email newsletter — wherever you like. Number 6, below, explains how to use Canva for social media posts. You can use it to generate your tips too. Your website theme should have a widget for web content. If not, you can upload images; just be sure to optimize them for SEO, since Google won’t be reading the text on a JPEG or PNG (they only read ALT text).

If you choose to use your tips for a social media campaign, CoSchedule provides one of the best content calendars available, helping you keep track of when you’re going to schedule what, and helping you keep track of the best times for engagement.

What if you want to schedule on Pinterest?

Try out Tailwindapp. This is an absolutely genius piece of technology that will help you schedule your posts into the future, and you can integrate it into your Hootsuite account (just check out the Add-Ons in your HS dashboard). You can try it for free, but if you decide to start using it long term, you’ll pay a small monthly fee.

Update the Information in an Article to Serve as a Newsletter

This is a pretty common lead workflow technique — using your newsletter to promote your blog. But, if it’s an old post that you aren’t necessarily directing traffic to, just rewrite the subject matter and upload it into your email hosting service. Then, you’re ready to send it out. Do this when you’re in a pinch for time or when you had a really amazing post that you want to revive in a new format.

HubSpot can teach you to write an email newsletter that people will actually read, if this helps.

• Evaluate
• Choose Your Format
• Balance Your Content (90% Educational, 10% Promotional)
• Set Expectations for Recipients
• Be Creative With Subject Lines
• Choose One Primary CTA
• Keep Design & Copy Minimal
• Make Sure Images Have Alt Text
• Make Unsubscribe Easy
• Test Before You Send

By following these rules, you’re sure to create the best possible email, and the beauty of repurposing is that you don’t have to spend hours coming up with the content — it’s already resting away in your blog.
Wanna know more about how to ensure your newsletter gets opened? Check Magemail’s Ultimate Guide to Newsletters that get opened!

Take a Blog Series and Turn it into a Podcast

If you want to re-write a blog series for use in a Podcast, there is no reason why you can’t. If you haven’t done this before, and you find yourself intimidated, stop worrying, you can take a free course on the topic to get you started. Stitcher has a highly rated free podcast course on their website, and they’re not the only ones. Take this course now, or do a quick Google search to look for another.

Basically it’s going to entail screenwriting based on your existing content, some audio recording, and giving your information a new name. That’s it — a brand new podcast without any daunting work.

Find an Old Quora Answer, and repurpose it Into a Blog Post

Blogging and Quora aren’t all that much different in structure. They basically differ mostly in audience. It seems like the most viewed Quora answers include links, images, and formatting, while the same is true for blog posts.

Still, you can certainly increase your reach by re-writing one of your own answers to share in your blog. When you do this, keep in mind that Google doesn’t love duplicate content, so you should re-word your answer before publishing your content, but since it’s your content, there’s no reason not to. Especially if you’re seeing a ton of Upvotes on Quora, the chances that your own audience will find it helpful as well are high.

If you’re interested in truly automating the work, try this Article Rewriter tool from Small SEO Tools. As you can see, you will have to do some of the work manually, but it will help make sure your content isn’t duplicated, and your message is seen by search engines.

Transform Internal Data into a Case Study

Been doing A/B testing, and seeing results? Do you have any before and after screenshots? Take your analytics data, and turn this recipe into a case study to help your followers with their own content. This is a great tactic for B2B business, but isn’t well targeted to B2C. If you are fortunate to have a fanbase of other businesses, you should be doing everything you can to help them, and sharing a case study is one of the best ways to do this.

Here’s an example of a great traffic generation case study from SEO Nick:

Revisit an Old Email Workflow, and Polish it Up for a Social Media Campaign

Some email marketing campaigns are more successful than others. The chances that your best performing newsletter has already been seen by your entire set of email contacts or it’s now outdated are high. But that doesn’t mean you have to lay it to rest. This is how you can reuse the content in your retired newsletter for a brand new social media campaign.

The first thing you’re going to want to do is lay out the old content, so that you can look at it from a  new perspective, and harvest the very best content to re-target. Your social media followers are likely engaged by different context than email, so pull out only the most relevant information.

Once you have an outline of 6-8 pieces of content that you are going to use, get yourself set up in Canva. Here’ you are going to create a set of visual posts that will blow your followers away, and send them on a sharing frenzy. Canva is pretty user-friendly, so if you have the slightest hint of design skills, you will be able to maneuver this platform pretty easily.

Here’s an example that tool less than 3 minutes to finish inside the platform:

Create 6-8 new text photos containing tips or helpful quotes from your old email workflow, and… Ta da! You have almost two months worth of new posts to share each week.

Take a Top Performing Tweet, and Build Upon the Content for a New Whitepaper

A whitepaper is persuasive, it is authoritative, and it is a great way to explain and promote. If you want to create a whitepaper to engage, the best way to choose a topic is to see what’s already popular with your audience. You can find a top performing Tweet, Facebook post, or Pin, and go from there. This is going to be like an ebook, but it’s NOT a product promotion. It should be helpful and educational for your audience.

If you’ve never done this before, it can seem intimidating, since these are the academic papers of the internet. You’re explaining to your customers in-depth, how to solve a problem, so you have to do your research. The beauty of this is that it will place you in the seat of authority, and you can simultaneously use it as a lead generation tool.

Knowledgestorm has shared some steps for creating a great whitepaper:

• • Use a linear, logical approach.
  • Your Title is the Key to Success of Your Paper.
  • Follow the 3-30-3 Rule: Capture interest in the first 3 seconds, use the 30 seconds you’ve just been granted to explain to the audience why to keep reading, and then make your point in 3 minutes.
  • Write in the language of your reader.
  • Be knowledgeable and principled.
  • Graphics are content too.
  • Have a Writer Write Your Paper.
  • Keep the Branding Subtle.

Final Thoughts

Turning a blog post series into an ebook isn’t the only way to repurpose old content; you can turn a single article into a series of tips or a newsletter, while you can turn your blog series into a podcast. Revamp an old Quora answer for your website readers to view in your blog, and double the traffic for that information. You can recreate analytics data for the purpose of a case study to share with readers or dig up and old newsletter and create a series of social media posts. The possibilities are really endless — a Tweet could even be embellished upon as you use it to establish a topic for a whitepaper. When you run out of content, start recycling the old stuff — it’s sure to make your web presence sustainable.

Marry McAleavey is a content writer and marketing manager at the essay service. Discovering new ways of creating and promoting content is what she is passionate about.

This article was orginally Published in Aug, 2016