Repurposing content: Should you post the same content to multiple places?

Is reposting content to different websites and social media channels a good idea? We recommend repurposing content instead.

Congratulations! So you’ve published a value-packed podcast episode or an insightful thought piece on your blog that you know your target audience will benefit from. You pushed it out to your social media channels using a social media scheduling tool, and you might have even sent it out to your moderately sized list via your email newsletter.

Pretty good effort, but there’s only one problem…

You review your Google Analytics data a week or two after you initially hit publish, and you’re rather disappointed by what you see…

Your content was not as successful as you’d hoped it to be.

This is a pretty common scenario, and we see business owners struggle with getting traction with their content all the time.

If you publish, they will not automatically come.

via GIPHY

So what went wrong?

Well, either you’re lacking a content strategy or you haven’t answered two critical questions about your content marketing.

There are a couple of things you’ll need to check to ensure that your content publishing activities are actually doing what you intend it to do. Let’s get into it, shall we?

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1. Is your content actually as good as you think?

Blog content is prolific and Worldometers tells us that (at time of print) there are over 3 million blog posts being published per day.

The truth is, the majority of content being posted online is average – not engaging, not worth consuming and definitely not worth sharing around.

So what makes your content stand out?

You need to be creating 10X content!

Say what?

If you’re new to the concept of 10X content, here’s how Rand Fishkin at Moz explains it:

“… this is the idea that, because of content saturation, content overload, the idea that there’s just so much in our streams and standing out is so hard, we can’t just say, “Hey, I want to be as good as the top 10 people in the search results for this particular keyword term or phrase.” We have to say, “How can I create something 10 times better than what any of these folks are currently doing?” That’s how we stand out.”

Incidentally, you’ll want your 10X content to be your pillar or cornerstone content.

Here’s how Marieke van de Rakt explained cornerstone content on Yoast.com:

Think of four or five pages you would like someone to read if they first visit your website. These articles should be the cornerstones of your site. Which articles are most precious to you? Which articles are the most complete and authoritative? You should write cornerstone articles about the keywords you definitely want to rank for.

How to create 10X content

Here’s a handy video of Rand sharing his tips on how to create 10X content:

While we’re on the topic, I highly recommend you read 10x Marketing Formula: Your Blueprint for Creating ‘Competition-Free Content’ That Stands Out and Gets Results. This will change the way you look at content marketing in general (You can download the first chapter free here).

Now assuming that you’re creating high value i.e. 10X content, you can move onto the next question.

2. Are you promoting your content enough times, and in enough places?

This is an important question to answer because oftentimes we’ve seen business owners put a lot of emphasis on creating and publishing content, but not enough effort on promoting their best content.

Considering all the time, money and effort it takes to create great content – wouldn’t it make sense that you invest a good deal of effort into getting that content in front of as many potential readers/listeners as possible?

Yes, we sure think so!

Is it enough to simply copy and paste the same blog post to different channels eg. Linkedin?

Well that’s a start, because it means that you’re exposing your Linkedin followers to the content that they otherwise would be missing out on if they’re not actively visiting your site, following you on social, or subscribed to your newsletter.

Adding to that, we recommend you repurpose your content to better leverage all the great work you’re doing to produce high quality content.

Erin Everhart defines repurposing content as:

“repacking one piece of content across many different media. Each time, you’re adding to it (or taking away from it), and making it unique for the source, the medium and the user who’ll be reading it.”

[bctt tweet=”Considering all the time, money and effort it takes to create great content – wouldn’t it make sense to get that content in front of as many potential readers/listeners as possible? #content #marketing” username=”anferneec”]

Does repurposing content work?

Yes, yes it does. Here’s a data driven answer from Neil Patel.

Repurposing content for SEO

Here’s an interesting point raised on a post about repurposing content on SEM Rush:

There are many factors to consider when ranking for a keyword with your content: page quality, competition, the age of the post, backlink profile, and others.

Therefore, content quality is just one of the many factors that you have to meet so you can fully reap the benefits of your SEO efforts.

What most marketers fail to realize is that SEO is not the only game in town!

Since users share content across different platforms, it can also be re-made into something better and more interesting for your audience.

With enough research and ingenuity, you can come up with new strategies that let you recreate your old posts into a different format to boost your online reach and remove yourself from depending too much on SEO.

How good is that?

Alright, we’ve spoken about the benefits of repurposing content but how do you actually do it?

Great question!

Let’s look at how you can repurpose podcast and blog content.

[bctt tweet=”Want to repurpose your podcast content and better leverage the great content you’re creating? Follow these 7 steps. #podcasting #content #marketing” username=”anferneec”]

How to repurpose podcast content in 7 steps

1. Publish your podcast episode to iTunes.

2. Use repurpose.io to automatically turn the audio into video format and push the podcast to youtube and facebook.

3. Embed the podcast audio onto your blog, with shownotes and full text transcription of the audio (you can use a service like Rev.com to get a text transcription overnight)

4. Hire a writer to pull out 1 or 2 key lessons from the podcast episode, add their own research, and turn it into a blog post. (This is something that we do for our clients)

1. Create an email autoresponder series

You could break your epic 10X content into a multi-part email course/series that people can opt in to.

Alternatively, if you’ve yet to create your 10X content, you could take a bunch of your best blog posts and turn those into an email course.

2. Make it visual with an infographic

4. Slideshare it!

You could take the key ideas or concepts in your content and then created a presentation slide deck, and upload it to slideshare for easy distribution.

Here’s an example (shout out to my awesome graphic designer Colleen Keith who made this look professional!):

The nice thing about doing this is that you could then use it for an actual presentation, which leads to our next tip…

5. Turn it into a live talk or webinar

Obviously this is going to require more work, but there’s nothing like the feeling of getting your content in front of an engaged audience – be it in person or online.

6. Video-ize it

Saving (possibly) the best for last… turn your content into video.

Did you know that 79% of Internet traffic will be video content by 2018? (source: marketing profs). 

So you’d be missing out big time if you’re not putting video into your content marketing mix.

Here’s an example of how our client Paul Higgins of Build Live Give took his content and repurposed it as a short 3-minute video for Linkedin.

As you can see from the screenshot below, the video got 3,229 views – which far exceeded the reach the original blog content got when it was shared to Linkedin via a social media scheduling tool.

If you’re interested, you can watch Paul’s video here.

You can use a tool like Loom to record simple “talking head” videos (like Paul’s above).

Now what if you don’t want to do a talking head video like Paul did as you prefer to stay behind the camera?

All good!

You can also use Loom to record  “over the shoulder” instructional-type videos where your screen is being recorded whilst you walk your viewer through a tool or process.

Just like I did here:

But wait, there’s still more…

If you’ve got “listicle” type content (you know, something like “The 10 Worst Marketing Mistakes” post we did), you could also create some fun and engaging videos like this:

The above video was created using an awesome and easy-to-use tool called Rocketium (it’s a lot like the “Canva” for video, worth checking it out).

Still want some more ways to repurpose blog content? Read this post on ProBlogger.

By the way, don’t forget the importance of doing link building outreach for blog posts too (refer to step 7 above in the repurposing podcast content section). 

Additional Resources

Want more help with your content strategy? Here are some cool resources published by a few of our peers that we’ve found helpful.

• A Content Creation Plan for your business by Kate Erickson
• How To Create a Dangerously Effective Automated Sales Funnel by Jill Stanton

Final Thoughts

Some companies just don’t have the time, money, and resources to continually create new content or come up with new content ideas all the time.

Actually, they shouldn’t need to.

In content marketing, a great idea that’s engaging and helps people is much more important than a specific content type, or where it’s published. It’s about taking that powerful idea and sharing it far and wide.

So how do you solve the lack of resources problem, and at the same time get your great ideas in front of as many people as possible?

Answer: Repurpose your existing content!