Repurposing Content – How to Get the Most Out of Your Hard Work
Last Updated on February 1, 2020 by candidcashflow
Content creation is time-consuming work. Repurposing content can help you get the most out of the time and hard work you put in.
As a content creator, I want to make high-quality material for my readers, listeners, and followers. It’s a daunting task at times. Producing my podcast takes a lot of time and involves a ton of steps takes less time than it used to, but it still takes a few hours a week.
Naturally, part of my job and desire is to stretch the reach of my content as far as possible. I want each content idea to generate multiple pieces of content.
Actually, podcasting or video is the best way to end up with tons of content from one idea. However, even if you’re a blogger, you can still turn those blog posts into social media content.
A robust content marketing strategy is going to include implementing unique content marketing ideas, upgrading old content, and turning your ideas for repurposing content into reality.
I’ve heard the term “content marketing” thrown around a lot, and I sort of knew what it was, but not really. To me, it was just a term that meant to share your content everywhere, but it’s so much more than that.
Content marketing is actually a strategy for promoting your content as in having a general plan in place with steps that you follow each time you create a new piece or revive old content.
Why Revive Old Content?
The benefits are numerous, but before we get to the list, most of us create content so that we can monetize it, right?
Sure, we want to help people and share our knowledge first and foremost, but if we can make a little cash on the back end then that’s a WIN-WIN.
Each piece of content that you have created is an asset. Each asset is a passive income stream…or it should be.
The best-case scenario is to create content that is evergreen in nature. If you’re unfamiliar with the term “evergreen content”, this is content that is relevant over a long period of time. This is the best kind of content to create because it can continue to generate passive income for years to come.
Be sure to grab the show notes to get all the links and goodies at HeyYoAva.com/Episode31! I’ll be including a detailed content marketing plan you can’t get from the blog, so don’t miss it!
I’m going to share with you 7 reasons why repurposing your content and reviving old content should be part of your ongoing content marketing plan.
- It allows you to reach a new audience. – When I began this podcast, I was able to expand my online presence to many audio-centric websites that I would never have otherwise been a part of like iTunes, iHeartRADIO, and even Spotify…just to name a few.
- You can upgrade and revive old content. – It’s important to keep track of the content you’ve created and to have some kind of analytics in place so you know how each piece is performing. This allows you the insight to deliver what your audience is hungry for and to revive content that may not be performing as well as you’d like.
- You can maximize the effort you are putting into creating content. – No one wants to spend hours creating a piece of content just for it to fall flat when you publish it. Implementing a content marketing plan will give your content a longer life.
- It creates additional income streams. – Who wouldn’t want that? I don’t know anyone who says “no” to their content creating income.
- It generates better SEO and backlinks. – SEO is the heartbeat of your organic traffic. Organic traffic is any traffic you didn’t pay for through an ads service of some kind. The more organic traffic you generate, the better your profit margins will be.
- You have a better chance of being seen. – This is just logic. The more places you put your content, the higher the chance of you catching those small pockets of your target audience that are everywhere.
- You build authority and credibility for you and your brand. – This one is huge because without credibility, no one will buy your products and services whether they are yours or ones you are promoting from others.
Is that enough why for you? I hope so!
When you think about the content you are creating, do you kind of have in mind who it’s for? I know I do, and I also have an idea of how I want it to help my audience. All of that is taken to an exponential level though when I look at these 7 reasons why.
Do you have any to add to the list? Drop me a comment, and I will add them!
Now that we know why, how in the heck do we get this off the ground?
20+ Methods for Repurposing Content
I’ve got a list that I’ve created here of more than 20 ways to revive old content and repurpose it to go back to work for you.
As a general rule, when I research for my podcast episodes, I read several articles. So you get an overview of what’s out there on this topic already. Then, I add my own ideas as well. Most of which, I have been using in practice for quite a while.
The end result is the most robust list I can possibly offer. It will contain common ideas, and ideas that I haven’t ever shared before.
Buckle up, grab a drink, Cashflow Nation, because here it comes!
1. Turn old blog posts into guides.
If you have several posts on the same topic, this is even more applicable. People love free information. It’s what the Internet is all about. They don’t call this the Information Age for nothing. You may very well have content that you can assemble into a guide. You can either make this a new long-form blog post (like this one!), format it into a PDF as a free download, or better yet, BOTH! This is a great method for repurposing content.
2. Upload your PowerPoints to SlideShare.
Do you create PowerPoint slide shows for your business as video or webinar content? You can upload those to SlideShare. SlideShare is an online slide show sharing site owned by LinkedIn. You should do this especially if your business is B2B or business to business. You can get some decent traffic this way as well.
3. Conduct interviews.
Interviews make for a powerful content generator strategy. The general goal behind conducting interviews is not only to provide your audience with a new perspective. It is also in the hope that your interviewee will share the content you create with their audience in addition to you sharing with yours. It’s a great way to kind of exchange links with your audiences while providing new information from an additional viewpoint.
4. Use your Quora Answers to create a more detailed blog post on a topic.
First off, are you using Quora? If you have knowledge in any area under the sun, you should be sharing it on Quora. I have nearly 20,000 views on my answers with just 1,300 of those being in the last month. I was also recently invited to their Partner Program where I can get paid for asking questions. You can pull ideas for more detailed content from your Quora Answers. Then, leave a link in your answer pointing to your blog post.
5. Make the main ideas of your content into Tweets.
This can easily be from 5 to 10 Tweets depending upon the length of your content. My blog posts usually exceed 1,200 words, so I can easily create a ton of Tweets for each one. You can then schedule these however you’d like over time. If you track your Tweets in a spreadsheet, you can reuse them later to revive old content.
BONUS TIP – Using a Click to Tweet plugin can also enhance this idea. Visitors and readers can use Click to Tweet to share your content with their audience. Find out more here.
6. Turn your blog posts into a newsletter.
One of the common questions people have about newsletters or their email list is what they should send out. You can start with your blog posts! You can either have your email marketing platform (I use MailChimp) send out your blog posts automatically, or you can create a periodic newsletter with an excerpt and link to your most recent posts. This opens up a whole world of opportunities.
7. Turn your blog posts into podcasts or vice versa.
As many of you probably know, each episode of The Candid Cashflow Podcast has a corresponding blog post to accompany it. In fact, I write each episode on my blog as a sort of script. Otherwise, I would “um” you all to death. <– I’m actually working from an outline these days instead of doing it this way. However, what I say next is still true. >>>
You can easily turn your blogs into podcast episodes, by just reading them. Turning audio into text is a little more difficult if you don’t work from a script, but it’s still doable. You can do it yourself or hire a Virtual Assistant to transcribe your content for you. Services like Rev only charge $1 per audio minute, so for example, if your audio is 20 minutes long, it will cost you $20 to have it transcribed.
BONUS TIP – I actually let Google Docs type up my transcripts for me. Grant it, this requires some heavy editing on my part since speech-to-text isn’t a perfect technology, but it is working great for me.
I just play the audio that I’ve recorded from my podcast, let Google Docs do its thing. To access Voice typing, click Tools and select it from the drop-down menu.
8. Upgrade your old content.
You are currently reading a piece of content that has been upgraded at least once! Do you have older content where you’ve learned new stuff since you created it? I bet you do! This is a great reason and opportunity for upgrading old content. Add in the new ideas and resources, and add “Updated” or “Updated for 20XX” to the title. Add the updated content into your queue to promote it via social media. This is also a great time to consider turning it into a podcast, video, or guide.
9. Turn your YouTube videos into podcasts or vice versa.
If your main avenue for content creation is video, there is so much you can do with that medium. Like blog posts, you can easily turn your videos into podcasts. There are many tools available to download the audio directly from YouTube. You can also download the mp4 directly from your YouTube Dashboard, and convert it to audio yourself.
10. Turn useful information into an autoresponder series for your email list subscribers.
Again, if you are wondering what to send your email list, you can always repurpose useful blog content into an email series sent to them over a period of time. As new subscribers jump on, they will receive the emails as part of your campaign as well. Any time you can send great content to your list, do it! That’s why they subscribed!
11. Turn blog posts or an article series into an ebook.
This is one of my personal favorites! Since I’m a self-publisher, it’s quite easy for me to compile an ebook I can then sell on Kindle, in paperback, and on many other bookselling platforms. This allows me to reach a new audience, expand my reach, and create an additional passive income stream from the same content.
12. Turn your blog posts into PDFs.
We are a world on the move. As such, you want to make your content as portable as possible. That way, your audience can consume it wherever and whenever is most convenient for them. Not to mention, you are providing an asset they can download on their own device which will remind them to come back and visit you again. A podcast provides the perfect opportunity to create a PDF of downloadable information. That way, if a listener heard something they want to remember, they can grab the show notes to get the information and links.
13. Expand to new platforms.
The best example for this is Medium.com. Medium is a blogging platform from the creators of Twitter. It’s hugely popular and has options to get paid for your writing in addition to a whole bunch of other great stuff I won’t cover in this article. The most important thing to know is that you can import your blog posts to Medium without having to worry about duplicate content penalties from Google. That’s because Medium will create a canonical link back to your blog which tells Google to index your post from your original blog ahead of your Medium post. There is a whole new audience of readers waiting for you on Medium.
Another honorable mention here is Steemit. Steemit is a blogging platform that pays you for your content in a cryptocurrency called STEEM. There are many other apps build on the STEEM blockchain including a video sharing site, and an audio sharing site. Get more information on these and Steemit from Episode 7 of The Candid Cashflow Podcast.
14. Turn top-performing content into infographics.
You will either need to be graphically-inclined or have the means to hire a designer with this option, but infographics get crazy engagement and you may just find yourself being shared all over the place. If you just want to play around, you can use Canva.com. They have an infographic template with TONS of drag and drop elements. You may surprise yourself!
15. Make t-shirts from your Tweets, book quotes, blog quotes, etc.
We talked about where to sell t-shirts online in Episode 16 of The Candid Cashflow Podcast. I believe there was a quick and dirty design guide included in that episode or the show notes. Either way, I’ll be revisiting this soon! Creating a text-based t-shirt is super easy and there are a few good print-on-demand places to sell them online. In fact, text-based shirts actually sell better than graphic shirts, believe it or not. Shirts are a great way to wear your brand and earn a little extra income from your efforts.
16. Make mobile wallpapers out of your visual content.
This is one of my own ideas that I’ve put into practice recently. If you’re creating graphics for social media, it’s quite simple to turn those into mobile wallpapers. You can then offer these as a free download or to add value to your website, courses, and more. People love free downloads! Be sure to include your brand in your graphic. You can then upload it to Zedge. Zedge is a ringtone and wallpaper app that is available for both Android and iPhone. It has been downloaded more than 100 million times in the Google Play Store. My wallpapers have more than 3.5K downloads on Zedge alone. I also upload to DeviantArt.
17. Create a simple, but valuable checklist.
Do you have content that involves a lot of steps? Perhaps you have a long tutorial or something like that. Create a checklist from the content as a free download. You can then use it as a lead magnet to build your email list or upload it to document sites around the web to expand your reach. People love checklists!
18. Upload your mobile wallpapers as Pinterest graphics.
Pinterest can generate a ton of traffic if you do it correctly. There are many courses available online about Pinterest. If you create mobile wallpapers, these are the perfect size and dimensions for pinning! I suggest creating a new board!
19. Turn your content into a course.
A course can be a lucrative asset to your brand. I’ve seen courses double income many times. This is a great way to get paid for sharing your expert knowledge on a topic. If may surprise you how many people are willing to pay for your expertise. Much like an ebook, you still have to market and promote a course, but the rewards can be fantastic!
20. Live stream it!
I did an episode on live streaming with Twitch. You can also live stream on YouTube, DLive, or Facebook. Sure, there are other places, but I want to focus on the ones where you can generate revenue. It doesn’t matter what you do, I promise there is an audience. Twitch was originally created to stream video gameplay, but there has been a recent expansion of creatives streaming their artwork processes, crafts, and more! Be sure to check out Episode 27 of The Candid Cashflow Podcast for more information about live streaming everything!
21. Create a toolkit.
This is a great way to revive old content. Create a folder. It’s best if it’s somewhere you can share it like Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive…something like that. Fill it with old lead magnets you’re not using anymore, templates, graphics, checklists, link lists, and more. Anything and everything you think your audience might find helpful can be included. Brand it as a toolkit. For example, if I was doing this for Candid Cashflow, I might call mine the “Candid Cashflow Toolkit”. Now share it, link it on your website, send it to your list, and promote it.
22. Turn your emails into blog posts, podcasts, etc.
Earlier, I mentioned turning your blog posts and other content into emails, but you can also work this in the other direction. At the end of 2019, I took on an experiment to email my list on a daily basis. That has turned into a HUGE content generator for me. I get tons of ideas by doing that, and I write to my list. I’ve been archiving those emails because so much of that content would be good to expand upon in other areas.
23. Turn user questions into blog posts or an FAQ.
If you get a lot of questions from your user base, you can always answer those once for all in a blog post or FAQ. This is a great way to ensure you’re producing content that your audience is looking for.
24. Use client testimonials in your content.
I have a page for testimonials on my VA website. I also like to get testimonials to put into landing pages when I’m creating content to sell a product. Testimonials lend credibility and social proof to you, your products and services.
25. Use your backend data to create detailed case studies.
Case studies are an amazing value to your readership. It shows them a clear path to best practices without having to go through the trial and error themselves. When you use your own data and testing parameters, you have one-of-a-kind information that only you can share.
That’s a Wrap
I included a content marketing plan in the PDF for this podcast episode. Get your copy at HeyYoAva.com/Episode31.
If you’re interested in past episodes of The Candid Cashflow Podcast, the archives are available at HeyYoAva.com/candidarchives.
This content was originally published as an accompanying blog post when this episode of the podcast was released on July 4, 2018. It has been updated and moved to its new home here on CandidCashflow.com.
