Repurposing might be the most underused tactic in content marketing. Generally speaking, brands would rather create something ‘new’ each time than reuse existing content.
But repurposing is more than just ‘rehashing’ old content. It’s taking quality and relevant content from the archives, and finding ways to add new value and relevance.
That might be as simple as presenting it in a new format. Or it could be something a little more heavyweight such as turning a survey into a graphic-filled e-book.
In this blog, we’re going to cover the process of repurposing – from working out what is ripe for repurposing to what needs to be spiked.
Where to start?
The only place to start when executing any content marketing plan and strategy is with a content audit.
A content audit is something that should be done on a semi-regular basis. From systematically analysing all your existing content, you’ll find inspiration from both your previous successes and ‘failures’.
But before we start picking apart your archived content, you need to think about why you’re doing it in the first place, i.e., what do you want to achieve from repurposing?
Is it to improve your SEO results? Or increase audience engagement (so you’ll need to be analysing everything from your tone of voice to your promotion strategies)?
With the goals of your repurposing project clearly defined, you can start matching them with the relevant metrics:
· SEO metrics: Organic traffic, backlinks, keyword rankings, dwell time.
· User behaviour metrics: Pageviews, average session duration, bounce rate.
· Engagement metrics: Likes, shares, comments, mentions, etc; and
· Sales metrics: Number of leads, conversion rates, ROI, etc.
Only then can you get well and truly stuck into your content audit.
Inventory and analysis
Two words which aren’t exactly going to get the pulse racing. But while the process can take some time and effort, the outcome is a satisfying spreadsheet of URLs and metrics.
Plus, there are plenty of handy tools out there these days which can do half the job for you. For example, Semrush Content Audit will quickly audit your content based on your sitemap data, and provide you with a list of URLs and their associated metrics.
Categories might include:
- Buyer’s journey stage
- Content type
- Content format
- Number of words
- Date of publication or last modification
- Author
Semrush Content Audit will extract various data, such as social shares, backlinks, metadata, content authors, and word count. But to give yourself a complete picture of all your content, you’ll need to complement it with your Google Analytics and Google Search Console data.
This will bring key metrics like average session duration, pageviews, average time on page, bounce rate, and search queries into view.
It’s up to you how much data you want to capture – it depends on what you will find useful, the time you have available and your skills of interpretation.
Assessing and planning
It’s nice when you get to that point where all your data has been extracted and is sat in your spreadsheet for you to assess and plan your next steps.
At this point, it’s a matter of deciding what content you want to keep, update and delete. Not all old, poorly performing content will need to be spiked; not all popular content should be repurposed.
Take each piece of content on its own merits – assessing it against the metrics which matter most to your objectives. So, for example, if your goal is to improve your site’s search ranking, you might want to concentrate on the content that’s not as geared up for SEO.
If you’ve got hundreds of pages of content, you’ll need to be ruthless. If you’ve got a ton of content around an old, out-of-date campaign, it might be best to delete it – it might be impossible to make it relevant to your audience today.
With all your content, think about ways you can bring it in line with the way your audience likes to consume it – a white paper might become a more succinct video, or you might extract all the data from the paper and turn it into a standalone infographic.
And with the rise of different types of content being consumed, the format that might have resonated with your audience a few years back may not work as well now.
The goal? To be left with a site where every piece of content has some value and relevance right now – and is helping towards your objectives. Having this in mind should make planning what you’re going to do with content that bit easier.
Let’s get repurposing
There’s no rulebook on repurposing. But it requires you to be able to collect and understand your data – and then come up with ways you can get more out of your existing content.
Sometimes it helps to get an objective eye in there. They might see the potential for turning internal data into a series of case studies, for example, or spinning a webinar into a video (with some neat editing).
The Q Content way
Here at Q Content, we’re a dab hand at auditing and repurposing. From pulling data together to reformatting, we see existing content for what it is – and then make it better for your business and audience.
It all starts with an initial chat where we talk to you about your existing content, your audience and your goals. If you’d like to go ahead, we’ll conduct a complete audit of your long-form content and present our recommendations and costs for how it can be repurposed.
Once a quote and timelines are agreed, we’ll brief our in-house designers, animators and copywriters to work their magic. And voila, you and your audience are wowed by this engaging new content!
Please contact me today using the form below – I’d be really happy to set up a meeting to talk through next steps.
Contact
Telephone +44(0)1225720099 | Email: info@qcontent.co.uk