Cracking your knuckles and cranking out brand-new content can be time- and resource-intensive—not to mention the creativity it takes to craft a compelling post.

If you want to drive a new tide of traffic to your business’ website, there’s no need to hamstring your team’s marketing budget. Instead, your existing marketing collateral might just need a little TLC and self-care. We could all use a wardrobe refresh and a spa day every now and then, right? 

The same applies to your content. 

When executed with dexterity, refurbishing, repurposing, and optimizing your existing content can spark traffic surges and drive results. But what’s the most effective methodology when it comes to repurposing content? What approach yields the highest efficacy? 

Let’s break down how to repurpose content and the five key tenets to uphold.

#1 Choose Your Content Wisely

Before you strap on your editorial helmet and tackle your entire blog, it’s paramount that you identify which pieces are ripe for picking. 

What does that mean, exactly? Essentially, you’ll want to review each piece for the following metrics: 

• New traffic: Are these pieces still in the “buzz?”
• Recurrent traffic: Are these pieces retaining authority? 
• Time spent on content: What’s the bounce rate? 
• Click-through rates: How appealing, at a glance, is the content? 
• Conversion rates: Is the content performing as intended? 

Not only does the popularity of a post tell you which subjects your customers want to know more about—it also indicates how your angle or position cuts across your industry, delivering irreplaceable value that your competitors just can’t match. 

More so, consider the fact that you might have a blog or landing page that’s garnering tons of traffic, yet it’s failing to convert. This can indicate that, despite the SEO performing, the narrative needs tweaking. The inverse also applies—if there’s content with low traffic yet a high conversion rate, you should focus on optimizing it for traffic.  

By aggregating the right data, you can channel your efforts with intention. 

#2 Match SEO Trends

In a perfect world, all content would emerge from the creative crucible SEO-optimized (wouldn’t that be lovely?). But until the robot coup (not yet, Schwarzenegger), priming content for search value still has to be executed with a warm, human touch.

Fortunately, repurposing old content is a tremendous opportunity to instill the most current, sophisticated SEO practices into your archival posts. 

To that end, here are two effective refurbishments to incorporate in your revamp: 

• Embrace the FAQ – You’re not the only one typing questions like “attachment style what is” into Google at 2am on a Tuesday. 42% of search engine users have used voice searches in the past month, and consumer fluency with tech is causing Google searches to resemble colloquial speech. If you can integrate “Question? Answer.” syntax into your extant content, it may reach new eyes roaming the search engines at the witching hour.

• Mobile legibility – In the US, 63% of organic search engines are made by phone, and over 50% of global web traffic has gone mobile. If your content hasn’t been mobile-optimized, breaking up written content for easy reading may drive more traffic to your posts—no extra output necessary. When in doubt, ensure all video, audio, and text content is digestible, with no extra hoops for your audience to jump through to reach your core message.

#3 Try New Media Formats

The meteoric rise of podcasts as an entertainment form is recreating how many brands share their content. In other words, audio is back, baby.

Thankfully, you don’t have to engineer a branded podcast series to reach new consumers—but you can adapt existing content to audio to leverage a new reader experience. Not everyone is inclined to read a lengthy article, and audio formats give access to people with different processing profiles and abilities. 

Moreover, some statistics suggest that many consumers may be more receptive to acting on branded content they encounter by ear than by eye. 

If your company has a microphone, camera, or a recording device on hand, reading your content aloud or using it to guide a brief video is easy to record, edit, and upload on a dime (and a tight budget). 

#4 Credentials, Credentials. Support Your Content with Authoritative Pillars

Catchy, engrossing content may hook your readers initially, but it’s crucial to establish your credibility to gain user trust. In which case, you can shore up your credentials and revive published content by:

• Using authoritative data – When you run your content audit, ensure each piece cites research or statistics from reliable databases, institutions, or online research libraries (Google values this). Once you’ve checked your sources, update any facts and figures with the most up-to-date data to demonstrate relevancy. Considering all the content that came out during the pandemic, perhaps it’s time to go evergreen? 

• Matching benchmarks in your industry – For certain sectors—like healthcare or tech—it’s critical to vet existing content and replace any fishy-looking sourcing with impeccable, trustworthy data. In some cases, this may also require you to change your vernacular. If any industry terms have changed since you published, condition your language to reflect the latest trends.

When you refresh your content and support your arguments with updated claims and value propositions, you keep that show-worthy shine, no fingers crossed behind your back. 

#5 Compile Your Best Posts

Ebooks remain a massively popular online content marketing technique, providing site visitors with value they can covet and peruse at their leisure (and a community list you can garner through lead generation). 

Compile and spiff up your most popular blogs and articles to furnish users with value pro bono, and offer a snapshot of who your company is as a personality. Alternatively, you can hybridize old and new content by creating a master blog post that collects your “Greatest Hits” of content (selected per your data) to summon recurring and new traffic. 

When done right, a Best of Content post can drive customers further into your platform, provide a glimpse of what’s on the horizon for your business, and encourage them to stay tuned for whatever content—repurposed or in the pipeline—is coming next.

Refresh The Old, Sparkle Like New with Digital Position

The merits of repurposing content are myriad, but it’s not a job you can do without careful analysis, intentional positioning, and a holistic strategy in place. 

If you’re unsure how to accomplish this feat and drive the results you’re looking for, we can help. Here at Digital Position, we work with businesses to ensure their digital presence speaks to their ethos, represents their core values, and boosts traffic. 

And sometimes, the best writers’ work blossoms when they return to a manuscript they shelved years ago. For you, that means looking at all your existing assets and rekindling their spirit. 

Feel free to peruse our handiwork in PPC, SEO, and Content Generation Services on our website, or contact us today to learn more about our methodologies on content repurposing.

Sources: 

Statista. Mobile search – Statistics & Facts. https://www.statista.com/topics/2479/mobile-search/#dossierKeyfigures

Statista. Mobile share of organic search engine visits in the United States from 3rd quarter 2013 to 4th quarter 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/297137/mobile-share-of-us-organic-search-engine-visits/

Oberlo. 10 Mobile Usage Statistics. https://www.oberlo.com/blog/mobile-usage-statistics
Fast Company. Branded Podcasts Are The Ads People Actually Want To Listen To. https://www.fastcompany.com/40533210/branded-podcasts-are-the-ads-people-actually-want-to-listen-to

Fast Company. Branded Podcasts Are The Ads People Actually Want To Listen To. https://www.fastcompany.com/40533210/branded-podcasts-are-the-ads-people-actually-want-to-listen-to