Content. It’s a big deal. It can make or break your online presence and it contributes massively to your search engine optimization (SEO). So, putting the effort into it is vital. That said, offering valuable content to your audience is no joke. It takes a lot of time and thought, and commitment. And, hey, it’s hard to be super entertaining when it’s 8 a.m., and you’ve only had four cups of coffee, but you still have to meet that deadline.
Well, we’ve got some good news for you. Your content creation is about to get easier. We’re gonna tell you how to take that one awesome blog post and turn it into several pieces of awesome content. The hard part is over, now, just repurpose with some slight tweaks, and you’ll make your audience, Google, and your brand happy.
Is Blogging Important?
We get this question a lot: do I really need to blog? And whether you’re a chiropractor, dentist, dog groomer, or retail chain, we say yes. It is.
When you blog the right way, you:
- Maximize your website visitors’ user experience
- Get more website traffic from your target audience
- Pull in new users and keep them coming back
- Show Google you’re relevant and trustworthy
- Perform better on the SERPs (search engine results pages)
- Generate more business
- And, don’t forget about the likes, shares, and comments
- And, there are many more reasons
Blogging is crucial these days because your blog isn’t only informative, but it gives your users a look into your brand, your personality, your voice- and that connection provides so much insight, education, information, and entertainment, that you just gotta do it.
Besides all that great stuff, blogging allows for numerous other opportunities for content creation. If blogging isn’t part of your marketing plan, you’ll want to amend that. And soon.
How Do I Know What to Repurpose?
Okay, so we’ve convinced you to be smart about your content and give repurposing a try. But, you may be wondering how you’re supposed to do it? Where do you start? Welp, the first step is figuring what’s worth putting out there again.
You’ll want to ask yourself some question to get the juices flowing:
- What blog post got a good reaction in the past (likes, shares, comments, backlinks)?
- Can I combine a few blog posts that were very successful?
- Who do I want to engage with when I create this new piece of content?
- What’s happening in my industry now?
- What’s happening within my company now?
- Can I add more updated information to a blog post that did well in the past?
- Is the content still true, meaningful, relevant, evergreen (stands the test of time)?
- What kind of content have you not tried but fits into your brand?
Your intended audience and relevant topics are the most influential details when it comes to repurposing. You need to know what your people love and what they need to hear from you (they may not always know what they need to hear from you, so it’s your job to get that intel in their ears).
Repurposing Winners
Below are several ways in which you can maximize your content as you maximize your time.
Update a blog post
If you wrote a blog post covering the best perfumes of 2020 and the crowd went wild for it, how about a little update, huh? Turn that 2020 into 2021 and keep the best of last year’s smells but add in your new favorites. You already know that your audience enjoys “best of” posts so give ‘em what they want.
Updating posts are quick and painless and an absolute no-brainer. This process is a swift win when it comes to improving your SEO so Google will notice.
Turn a blog post into a video
Use that successful post as a script for your video and post that video on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, any place that makes sense for your brand. Keep in mind that depending on the platform, some videos will need to be short (we’re talking under 30 seconds). Also, keep in mind your user’s attention span.
Feel free to make a short intro video about your post that leads the user into reading it, or maybe make a short video about the most informative piece of information from your post, or how about a video that’s a super entertaining snippet from your post? All solid wins.
Whether live video or webinar or a vlog, videos are sticking around. It’s plain, old-fashioned, resourceful, shrewd, and brilliant to start creating some.
Don’t stress about getting them perfect; stay consistent with your brand, but if you can be funny, go for it. If you mess up, your human, that’s relatable. Let your audience see who you are. It inspires confidence in working with you.
Turn a blog post into a podcast
Use that script we spoke about above but keep the video off and the audio on, and you have yourself a podcast. Get a colleague on board and have some fun with it. Everyone enjoys a little banter. (Again, only if appropriate for your brand and audience.) Feeling feisty? Take callers and questions, and you could find yourself mastering a whole new market.
Live stream
Facebook Live is the perfect platform for live streaming something cool, like one of your blog posts. Give your audience a little taste of what they can expect and provide a link to the post. Don’t forget that live streaming always offers a sense of urgency and no one wants to miss out on anything these days, so doing this automatically gives the user a VIP feel.
Turn your blog post into a social media post
Don’t ever undervalue the importance of social media. Use your social media platforms (you should be on all that your target audience is on) and give a sneak peek at your blog post right there where your users are. Give them something enticing so they follow the link to read what you have to say and make sure every blog post is easy to like and share!
Create a class with your blog post
If your business provides educational information, why not create a short online course using the material from your posts? People love to learn, and a free course that provides a better, more substantial outline than the traditional blog format may come in really handy to your audience.
You can exchange valuable details with the user by asking for an email address in order to access your class. This can be great for advertising more courses in the future and expanding your audience.
Add some flair with quiz questions or games and make it fun and engaging for your students. They’ll come back to learn more, promise.
Create customer education resources from your blog posts
Turning some of your blog posts into educational resources can get you a fast uptick in visitors. When you become a valuable asset to a user, they’ll not only come back to learn more from you but they’re likely to tell others about your website.
Be sure your resources are simple to understand and read. Readability is always important, so using headers, lists, bullet points, and the like is a tried and true way of allowing your user to find what they need quickly.
Examples are a FAQs page, Pro Tips and Tricks page, Sources page, etc.
Create an infographic with your blog post
Yes! All the smart images combined with all the smart copy, I mean, who doesn’t love these things? A good infographic can save the day and get you a customer or follower for life. Infographics can make even the hardest to process information simple to process.
That post on aeronautics and how to design flight-capable machines just got way easier to understand. Your audience thanks you. And, so does your SEO campaign because infographics lead to more traffic, link building, and relevancy, all of which Google notices.
Use your blog post to create some relevant visuals
Visuals, like videos, are really popular among users. Everyone loves to see something with ease rather than reading through a bunch of copy to find a fact. I mean, no offense to the recipe bloggers, but dang, we just wanna know how much garlic to use, not about Aunt Edna’s cat (just kidding, we always wanna know everything about cats- any cat).
Visuals come in handy:
- Charts and graphs
- Statistics
- GIFs and memes
- FAQs (and don’t forget to answer them)
- Photos
- Bullet points
Take out the most important details of your blog post and turn them into quickly accessed and understood visuals that contribute to your SEO strategy, benefiting your traffic and often your link building. Be sure to make your visuals easily sharable so people can spread your information around the web.
Write that e-book or whitepaper using your blog posts
It’s not as difficult as you may think. If you have a specific topic you write about often, use a few blog posts to combine information. Again, e-books or whitepapers are an excellent way of garnering email addresses as you expand your content, leading to future contact.
Blog posts usually have considerably more personality in them than an e-book or whitepaper, which are generally intended to inform and educate, so by removing the entertainment portions of your posts, you’ll get a more streamlined piece of content that gets straight to the point.
Use a blog post topic to aid in an interview
This is a fantastic way to engage with your audience. Your interview can be with a colleague, an influencer, a customer, your mom, whoever. Just ask some relevant questions and get some real answers from real people. Users like this, it’s proof of life; there are people behind the brand.
Create an email newsletter from your blog post
Newsletters are great for getting people interested in your blog. Capitalizing on your email audience, add something to your newsletter from your post (that you know they’d love) with the link to the post, and voila! You have more traffic, more readers, and more chances of engagement.
Create a guest post using your blog post
Guest posts can give you excellent backlinks and help you reach a more substantial audience. Switch up your post a bit (Google doesn’t like exact-match copy and will penalize you for it), and then send your post to those in your industry and ask them to post it. You get the byline, and doing this opens you up to way more visitors because you have a link to your website on the guest post.
Create a downloadable checklist from your blog post
Who doesn’t just adore a checklist? I mean, what’s not to love? You got quick readability, easy problem-solving, immediate gratification, little boxes that demand checkmarks- we’ll take these handy guys all day long.
Whether you’re detailing how to pack a suitcase, walk your ferret on a leash, or exercise from your office, a checklist is the way to go.
PLUS! It’s yet another way to snag yourself an email address.
Make your blog post into a game or a challenge (with a free giveaway to the winner)
Games are the answer, people. We go crazy for games. Everybody does because… life. It’s stressful. A little fun can go a big, long way, and users eat ‘em up.
Maybe you’re a veterinarian clinic, and you wrote a post about the best way to entertain your dog while you’re at work. Maybe your users have better ways that they’d like to share with you and send pictures of. All you gotta do is ask.
Give the dog owner with the best entertainment strategy some fancy dog food for free, and guess who will tell their friends all about their experience? That’s right. The winner.
What a cool way to engage, get shares and visitors and reach more people.
Create a PDF of your blog post
We don’t mean to just take the copy from your post and turn it into a PDF, but it’s almost as easy. Take the most illuminating parts of your post, break them down into straightforward, readable content and give your user an educational PDF that they can print out and put on their desk for future use.
Here are some examples:
- How to stylize your home on the cheap
- How to set up your at-home workstation
- The best things to do in YOUR CITY this holiday season
You get the idea.
Content Creation For All, Even the Busy
You see? No matter how busy you are, these creative ideas can pay off big time, utilizing minimal time and thought. We know you have a business to run, but this part of your marketing strategy should not be overlooked.
There are so many avenues to go down when it comes to repurposing valuable content. If you need further guidance, our team at Propel would love to help. Give us a call and learn more about using the fantastic content you’ve already delivered to get you more visitors and more business.