What is Content Repurposing & Does it Work?

What is Content Repurposing?

Content repurposing (sometimes called “content recycling” or “content reuse”) is the act of reusing content for a purpose different from its original intent. 

This can range from turning videos into blog posts, webinars into online courses or reports into infographics. With so many content formats available, the scope of opportunities is endless, which is great news for marketers. 

Transforming existing content into new formats isn’t just about saving time and increasing output (although those are big advantages). It’s also a great way to reach broader audiences by distributing via more channels and tailoring content to suit the preferences of different audience segments. 

Importance of Content Repurposing

Content repurposing is crucial to modern marketing success. Audiences are hungry content, but it’s harder than ever to get it in front of them. Increasing content production isn’t the only solution; you also need to diversify distribution.

Realistically, no one has the time or the budget to create endless content from scratch — and there’s also no need to. When you’ve poured hours into creating a high-quality blog post or webinar series it makes sense to ensure that as many people as possible can get value from it. 

Content repurposing isn’t about cutting corners or increasing output while letting quality take a hit. It’s about optimizing content production and broadening audience reach to increase engagement, extend content lifespan and strengthen online visibility.

Long-form content includes things like:

• • e-books
  • whitepapers
  • blog posts over 1,200–2,000 words
  • videos over 5–10 minutes 

Exact definitions of which word count or video length constitute long-form content can vary. However, what all long-form content has in common is that it isn’t designed to be consumed quickly; instead, it offers a deeper dive into a specific topic or theme.

Repurposing long-form content is especially popular among marketers because of the sheer amount of information contained in one whitepaper or 5,000-word article. From one existing asset, you can create multiple new ones and supercharge your content strategy with minimal work required.  

One useful technique for repurposing long-form content is to break it down into a series of highly focused content relating to an overarching topic. Examples of how to do this include creating a:

• • webinar series
  • newsletter series
  • series of social media posts

Let’s take a look at some other effective ways to repurpose long-form content.

Blog posts

High-performing blog posts can be transformed into visual and audio mediums to reach audiences across different platforms. By using the copy as a basic script or series of prompts, you can create an informative podcast episode, “how-to” YouTube video or short-form video content for social. 

e-books

e-books are often used to attract potential leads by offering valuable insights and thought leadership content in exchange for contact information. But why limit their potential pull by confining the content to one format? 

The information contained in an e-book can form the basis of a webinar, workshop or online course, allowing you to reach new audience segments. Key insights can also be transformed into infographics that can be shared on social or added to relevant blog posts. 

Whitepapers

Whitepapers are packed full of valuable information that can be split up and used elsewhere. You could break down key findings into a series of targeted emails or snappy LinkedIn carousel posts. Dividing the whitepaper into several smaller blog posts can help to capture niche organic traffic by targeting long-tail keywords.

Text formats are the backbone of content marketing but visual formats are becoming increasingly popular, due in large part to their natural ability to engage. By turning your text-based content into visual formats, you can capitalize on this quality without having to build an entire strategy from the ground up. 

Repurposing content like blog posts, articles and guides into new visual assets can also help to grow online visibility. Visual content has higher shareability than text-based content, and it can expand search visibility by ranking for Google image or video results.

When brainstorming ways to turn your text-based content into engaging visual formats, consider the following techniques. 

Infographics

Content that’s full of statistics or complex information can be broken down into a more digestible format by producing an infographic. The process for doing this is simple:

1. Pick out important data or ideas from your text-based content 
2. Analyze the information to check that points are related to each other and statistics are up to date
3. Organize the information into a logical flow 
4. Rewrite the text into concise bullet points  
5. Design engaging elements, converting numerical data into digestible charts and icons
6. Incorporate all elements into a visually appealing infographic
7. Make final tweaks to ensure the messaging and visuals are aligned
8. Share across your chosen platforms

Videos

Video is one of the most captivating content formats. Many people prefer to learn information this way, which is why every marketer should recycle blog posts and other text-based content into new videos. 

As with creating infographics, the process is relatively simple:

1. Decide whether your video will be filmed, animated or a mixture of both.
2. Adapt the existing text into a script, focusing on making it verbally engaging.
3. Create a visual storyboard and any required assets like graphics. 
4. Create the animation or record the video. 
5. Edit in line with your storyboard to create a cohesive finished product.
6. Add captions to improve accessibility.

Your video can then be integrated into the original text content, uploaded to YouTube, shared on social, or added to an onsite video hub.

Slide presentations

One of the most straightforward ways to repurpose text-based content is to turn it into a visual slide presentation. This requires very little work but can have a drastic impact on audience reach if you submit it to a content sharing site like SlideShare. 

All you need to do is break the content down into per-slide sections and condense lengthy sentences where necessary. If your text content already has a solid heading and subheading structure, this part is even easier. You can then add graphics and visual effects to jazz it up and make it more format-friendly.

You don’t have to be a marketing expert to know that video content is huge right now and has been for some time. The same can increasingly be said for podcasts and other audio formats. However, despite their many advantages, certain types of video and audio content aren’t necessarily the best fit for every use case.

Text-based content is easier to scan for relevant information, can be accessed anywhere with no headphones required, and is still the dominant format on search engine results pages (SERPs). Repurposing audio and video content into text-based formats will ensure you’re still able to serve these audiences. 

Sometimes the simplest solution is to create short-form videos or audio snippets from longer video or audio content. This offers more flexibility in how you can use the content and can provide a wealth of assets to draw from for social posts.

Here are some ideas on how to repurpose popular types of audio and visual content.

Webinars

Webinars offer an in-depth look at a specific topic and are packed with insights from industry experts. They’re a treasure trove of valuable content, which is why some of the most common ways to repurpose webinar content include:

• • Blog posts
  • Articles
  • e-books 

As webinars are usually around an hour long, slicing them up into digestible segments can also help to maximize value. The AI-powered ON24 Analytics and Content Engine automatically identifies key moments within your webinar based on audience engagement data and turns these into short-form video clips to fuel nurture post-webinar.

Podcasts

Podcasts are one of the more casual forms of content and their human appeal makes them ideal for pulling out quotes for social media. These can be used as accompanying audio, captions, or text-based images. 

The often unscripted nature of podcasts means that conversations can take surprising turns and interesting opinions can be revealed. Because of this, they’re perfect for repurposing as thought leadership content. 

Video content

Video content can be time-intensive to make, so it’s important to make sure it’s reaching its potential. Content repurposing is one of the ways to do this and it’s a lot easier than you might think. 

By taking the video transcript and making some simple changes, you can create a brand new blog post that can rank for relevant keywords and reach a bigger audience. 

Other options include taking short-form snippets to share on social, or repurposing the video as a podcast by simply cleaning up the audio file and removing references to any visual elements.

Repurposing content can improve search engine optimization (SEO) and increase online visibility. Some of the ways in which it can improve SEO performance include:

• • expanding keyword coverage by creating more targeted blog posts
  • signaling topic authority by having a greater amount of content around the same theme
  • uploading fresh content to increase indexing

When it comes to increasing online visibility, SEO performance plays a part but there are other reasons why content repurposing is beneficial. Producing short-form content from longer pieces can increase shareability, especially when it’s video-based and get more eyes on your content. 

Diversifying your content distribution across different platforms leads to greater overall visibility. And by better serving user needs and preferences, you can increase engagement across these platforms which increases the likelihood of algorithms favoring your content. 

Cost and Time Efficiency

Content repurposing is not a cop-out to avoid doing work, but it does make the process of scaling up content production easier. By maximizing the use of existing content, you can save time and resources while improving user experience and overall content performance. 

Creating new material from scratch takes time, and if you’re trying to rapidly grow your visibility online, it usually requires either a reduction in quality or a large injection of precious business resources. Repurposing content means you don’t have to do either of these things. 

Instead of continually brainstorming, researching, drafting and editing, you can focus on refining and adapting existing content, freeing up time to be spent on other growth strategies.

Audience Engagement and Reach

People learn in different ways and use different platforms, which means you’re missing out if you’re not diversifying your content distribution. Each platform and channel has a unique user base, which you can reach by repurposing your content into suitable formats. 

Doing so improves the user experience and creates more share-worthy content, leading to higher levels of engagement. You can also improve engagement by turning drier content like research reports into engaging infographics and interactive features. 

Some of the most common challenges you might face when repurposing content include: 

• • Maintaining quality – as you convert content to new formats, the quality is at risk of being affected

• • Weak messaging – the original messaging can become diluted as you adapt content  

• • Oversaturation – without a solid strategy, content repurposing can become repetitive 
  • Duplicate content – content that’s too similar can have harmful effects on SEO performance

Best Practices

Fortunately, by coming to grips with best practices, you can find ways around the challenges associated with content repurposing. The most important tips to follow are:

SEO optimization

Ensure that all content, including both original and repurposed materials, have unique keyword and intent targeting strategies to avoid content duplication.

Content adaption

Maintain quality in adapted content by focusing on updating and refreshing for a new audience. Don’t just take a high-performing evergreen blog post and use it as a script for a webinar – before you do that, check that all facts and statistics are up to date and find a new angle that makes the content valuable and relevant to your webinar audience.  

Audience targeting

Don’t repurpose everything, everywhere. Think about context – what works for one audience might not work for another. This is the entire philosophy of content repurposing and it’s important to bear in mind constantly if you want to maximize results.