Gary Vaynerchuk recently wrote an article about content that appeared on Medium. That article was just a republished post from his personal blog. That post was actually repurposed from a video he made earlier. That video was created during the writing of another post. And that post was created from another video.
I’ll give you a minute to read that paragraph again.
Done? Let me break it down for you. What Gary did was repurpose content over and over again, from video to blog post to video and back to blog post again. Content on content on content.
The beauty of it is each time he repurposed it, he got new views, new shares and new traffic. He didn’t have to create new content each time, which is a time-consuming process. It’s the same piece of content redistributed multiple times. Higher returns for lower investment.
That’s the power of repurposing content. Instead of going for quantity and sacrificing quality, you can focus on creating one really good piece of content and then repurpose it to extend its reach.
One epic blog post repurposed seven times is better than seven average blog posts. So look for those posts on your blog that have done really well (or create one if you don’t have any) and repurpose them into the following formats:
1. More posts
If you look at Gary’s Medium article and compare it to the one he wrote on his blog, you’ll find that they’re the same. In fact, many Medium articles are actually republished blog posts from somewhere else. James Altucher does the same thing.
In fact, you can go one step further and re-post your blog to LinkedIn, Quora, the aforementioned Medium and many other places. Some major publications republish existing posts as well (for example, Huffington Post, Salon and Business Insider sometimes do it).
There’s just one thing to watch out for if you’re using this strategy: Make sure you use a rel=canonical tag on republished posts, so you don’t get penalized by search engines for duplicate content.
You might also want to consider changing the post if a site doesn’t accept existing content. Most blog posts — especially list posts — can be broken up into multiple other posts. Just pull out each sub-header and expand on it, et voilà, you’ve got yourself a whole bunch of new posts. These can now go out as guest posts on another site.
2. Videos
YouTube has more than 1 billion users and keeps growing. The best part is many of these users are engaged. Average watch time keeps going up, and on mobile, it’s over 40 minutes. When was the last time someone spent 40 minutes on your blog? And not only is YouTube a huge source of traffic, it enables you to tap into international audiences.
With today’s technology, you can create high-quality videos on your phone. Just look at the popularity of Snapchat for proof. Marketers are starting to use Snapchat to repurpose their content into multiple 10-second snap storms.
And then there’s Facebook Live, again aimed at mobile video content. And Periscope. Clearly, something is going on in video these days.
All those amazing blog posts you’ve been writing can be repurposed into video too. Sit in front of your laptop or whip out your phone and start shooting. You don’t even need to create new content. You can simply read your blog posts (make some minor tweaks, so you don’t sound like a robot), and you’ve got great video content. Go ahead, try reading this section out loud. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
This is the strategy that Gary Vaynerchuk uses. His original blog content gets repurposed into videos, and his original video content gets repurposed into blog posts.
3. Podcasts
Podcasts have made a comeback. In America alone, there are 57 million monthly listeners, according to research from Edison Research and Triton Digital. Regular listeners consume five shows per week on average.
That’s another untapped audience for you. Fortunately, you don’t need to create new podcast content from scratch because, you guessed it, you already have content.
Remember those videos you started repurposing your blog content into? Strip out the audio and you’ve got great podcast content. Add a standardized intro and outro, throw it up on iTunes, and start reaching this new audience of podcast listeners.
You can record audio content using your phone or computer, but if you want to get better sound, try microphones like Blue Yeti or Blue Snowball.
4. Slideshows
With 70 million monthly visitors, SlideShare is another traffic goldmine. Like YouTube, slideshows on SlideShare can easily be embedded into other sites, making them highly shareable.
You can convert your lists posts into slideshows pretty easily. Each subhead becomes one new slide and the main points of that section form the content of that slide.
You can download presentation templates or even hire a designer from Fiverr or Upwork to make your slideshow look good. When you post it to Slideshare, add a CTA with a link back to your site at the end, so you start getting traffic from it.
Barry Feldman recently published a post on his site listing his favorite marketing podcasts. He then repurposed it into a single slide and put it up on Slideshow to get an additional 1,000 views.
Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote are popular tools to quickly create slideshows.
5. Infographics
Infographics have skyrocketed in popularity, and there are numerous tools available to create them.
Creating an infographic is like creating a slideshow. Pull out the salient points in your post and put it together using visuals. Posts with data make great infographics because of all the pretty graphs you can add.
The best part about infographics are the backlinks you get when they’re shared. While it’s easy to embed Slideshows and videos into other sites, you don’t get that direct backlink juice. With infographics, anytime someone embeds it on their site, you get a direct backlink.
Venngage, one such software that allows you to create your own infographic, has nailed the art of converting posts into infographics. The resulting infographics have been featured on popular sites like Huffington Post, giving them an invaluable backlink and SEO boost.
6. Ebooks
If you have multiple related posts, combine them into an ebook. This can then be used as a lead magnet to attract more email subscribers.
I created one about A/B testing for e-commerce stores that still brings in subscribers in significant numbers every month. The book was really just a compilation of blog posts that were already published on the blog. Throw in some nice design using Adobe InDesign or similar software, and you’ve got yourself a really good-looking book. If you don’t want to use InDesign, Beacon is a pretty cool tool that converts your blog posts into PDFs and ebooks.
7. Courses
Email courses are a growing content trend. Most email software allows you to create an autoresponder, or drip sequence, for subscribers. Just drip out each blog post over a few days or weeks and you’ve got yourself another lead magnet. You can also break up one epic post into multiple emails and drip those out as an email course.
If you want to take it a step further, put all your repurposed videos together into one video course. Free online courses are powerful lead magnets and also double up as training tools to help your customers succeed and stay with you longer.
Hootsuite has an entire Academy to train people on social media marketing, and many of their courses pull from existing blog posts or other content pieces they’ve already created. There are many platforms to create online courses and training sites, but naturally, I’m partial to Thinkific.
Start repurposing already
If you think repurposing content is cheating, think again. People have different learning styles. Some prefer text, but others prefer visuals, audio, video or another format. By repurposing your content, you’re enabling these audiences to learn from you.
Use the tools mentioned in this post to start repurposing your content, and watch your traffic and email subscribers multiply.
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