JILLYN: Hi, I’m Jillyn, Founder and Executive Director of Technology Aloha, and I’m here today with our content manager Kelli to talk about repurposing blog content. Our podcast today will be broken into three sections. What is repurposing content and why you should do it, how to select content to repurpose and the different ways to repurpose that content. Let’s jump right in. Kelli, what is repurposing content and why is it a good idea?
What is repurposing content? Why do it?
KELLI: Repurposing content is using content you’ve already written in a new way. It’s very helpful because it lightens your load when it comes to publishing quality content. Instead of starting from scratch, you get to start with something great. You can help people in new ways when you present your content differently. Not everyone likes to read blogs. So, if you can show information you’ve written about in a new way, you can reach a wider audience and help those that learn differently.
JILLYN: That’s an excellent point. Would repurposing content just have you, you know, reposting and writing the same thing over and over?
KELLI: Not exactly. Repurposing content lets you refresh content you’ve already created and allows you to use it in a new way. You’re not just reposting it as is. It’s making something old, new again.
JILLYN: I can see how that would be an efficient way to handle them.
What Content Should I Repurpose?
KELLI: Mm-hmm. Jillyn, how do I know what content I want to repurpose?
JILLYN: So, when you’re looking at repurposing content, you should start by looking at your content analytics. Anything else is just a guess. Using data to drive that and make content decisions ensures that you’re producing more of what your current audience wants and less of what they don’t. If you don’t have Google Analytics set up on your site, do that right away. Even if you’re not sure what to do with the data collected. Seriously, pause this podcast, and go do that now. If you’re not familiar with content analytics, our podcast from August 20 of 2020, How to measure the success of your blog, is a great place to start. There’s a link to that in the episode notes.
KELLI: It really is great to start from content analytics because you’ll learn what’s most popular on your site and then you can take what’s most popular and present it in a way that other people might enjoy.
JILLYN: Absolutely.
Use Your Analytics
KELLI: With that, is there a way to know what content people want to see more of?
JILLYN: Again, you’re still going to go to your content analytics for that. However, it’s worth noting that your content analytics will only tell you what your current audience wants to see. If your objective is to increase your audience, you need to reach a little further. One of the very best ways to make content decisions to increase your audience is through keyword research. That might not sound like a good topic to discuss in a podcast about repurposing content. However, in many cases, you can spruce up your current content with new keyword terms and reach a whole different audience or demographic. We won’t go into depth on keyword research now, but our podcast from April 16 of 2020, How to come up with topics to write about, has a great section on keyword research and good tools to you. There’s a link to that transcript in this episode’s notes as well.
KELLI: Yeah, a lot of this particular podcast really relies heavily on understanding some of the things that we’ve talked about before. It’s kind of a culmination of starting a blog and writing a blog, analyzing your blog, and now repurposing it.
JILLYN: It is a progression and a process.
KELLI: Mm-hmm.
How to Repurpose Content
JILLYN: All right. So, I want to repurpose my content. How do I do that? What kinds of things can I do that will present my content in a new way?
Make a Podcast
KELLI: There are many things you can do to repurpose content. My favorite is taking our blog posts and recording them so I can post them as a podcast episode. I absolutely love doing the podcast because some people learn better when they listen and some learn best when they read along while listening to our podcast. I also really, really love that having a podcast adds a level of accessibility to our blog. Those with visual impairments can now listen to our content outside of using a screen reader.
JILLYN: I agree with that. Accessibility is such an important feature these days and we love that we’re able to make all of our content available to anyone who’s interested.
Create Infographics
KELLI: Exactly. There are also many other things you can do to repurpose your content. Some of them include creating infographics. If you post a numbers heavy article, an infographic is a great way to quickly and visually share that information instead of just explaining it in text.
JILLYN: It also helps ensure that a lot more people will understand the numbers that you’re putting in these posts. The psychological and mental exercise of understanding numbers in a post versus seeing them in an infographic is very different and your overall comprehension is going to be significantly better with an infographic.
KELLI: That’s why pie charts and other charts are so popular. It’s just easier to see the numbers when they’re broken up visually.
JILLYN: Absolutely.
Share to Social Media
KELLI: Another thing you can do is share your posts to social media, especially content that’s considered evergreen content. You can share those posts over weeks and sometimes months after creating it, and those who didn’t see it the first time may get a chance to see it now.
JILLYN: One of the things that a lot of people don’t realize is that only a tiny fraction of your following on social media sees a post. So, reposting may seem repetitive, but it’s really not because chances are a completely different set of human beings will see that second post.
KELLI: Exactly. And when things pop up over time, if something goes viral that you’ve got a post about that you’ve already written, you could repost that and kind of share in that you understand something that is currently very, very popular.
JILLYN: Absolutely. Trending topics are a big deal.
Create How-To Videos
KELLI: Yep. If you use how-to posts to tell people how to use a product, you can also use those as a script for a video that shows people instead.
JILLYN: We all know there are a ton of how-to’s on YouTube, right?
KELLI: How-to’s cover YouTube. They also are getting popular in IGTV, which is another new social media platform that you could be using to gather your target audience into seeing your post.
JILLYN: Very good point.
“Write” an E-book
KELLI: And then something that I think will be very beneficial to a lot of people is to make an e-book. E-books are a great way to combine many of your posts into something visually appealing and easily downloaded so that customers can have access to a great resource of information that showcases you as a reliable source of great information in your niche.
JILLYN: And this is just expanding the overall market view of you as an expert and showcasing your expertise.
KELLI: Exactly. Having a downloaded source for someone whenever they’re struggling with a particular subject if you’re the one that put out that e-book, or that blog post or that repurposed blog post as a podcast, they’ll have a resource and they’ll know you as the authority in your area. And then one last benefit of repurposing content is that it lets you delve deeper into subjects you’ve talked about that will give you ideas on what you can write about in the future. Basically, what that lets you do is if you’ve got a very popular blog post, you can repurpose it and make it longer, turn it into something that is really great standalone content, pillar content for your website, and just delve really deeply into that topic.
Expand on Popular Posts
JILLYN: List posts are a really excellent option for this particular type of repurposing because, for the most part, every single item and a list post could be expanded upon substantially. So, if you have a list post that’s on your site that’s doing really well, all of the things in there will make great extension posts, extension social media posts, podcasts, etc.
KELLI: It’s very true list posts are a really, really, really great launching point when it comes to repurposing content. And if you already have a lot of great content, repurposing it lets you take a break from creating new content and gives you a chance to really showcase what you already have.
Take a Break from Full Content Creation
JILLYN: Also, taking a break is a really healthy thing to do. The fact of the matter is that producing content, no matter how good your process is, no matter what kind of a formula that you are following, it’s a creative endeavor. And when you’re exhausted, creativity is just not there. So, taking a break every once in a while is a really, really great thing to do.
KELLI: And that’s why you want to have those analytics before you start repurposing so that you can focus on the stuff that has already done well, and then you can repurpose those items that did really well while taking a break from the creative process of starting from scratch.
JILLYN: Exactly. Well, that’s all the time we have for today. We’ve included links in this episode description to several of our past episodes and our blog posts that cover the topic we discussed today. I’m Jillyn…
KELLI: And I’m Kelli. If you have questions about repurposing blog content or have other topics you want to hear on our podcast, please reach out on social media or contact us at TechnologyAloha.com. Thank you for listening to Into the Inbound with Technology Aloha. We hope we’ve added a little aloha to your day.
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