How to ensure you can reuse content over and over

23 November 2022
5 minutes

In short

Both our team at Contentoo and the talented pool of freelance copywriters that support our clients love to reuse content. Creating valuable website content, engaging and insightful blogs, informative and illuminating e-books and then adapting them to suit a new audience, fit a different format or simply refresh them for today’s reader offers a number of important benefits for your brand and your audience.

So, if you want to optimize and amplify your content, boost your promotion and target new leads – all while saving valuable time – you’re in the right place. Read on for top tips on ensuring you can reuse your content over and over again. 

This blog will cover: 

  • What we mean by reusing content.
  • What are the benefits of reusing content.
  • The best ways to reuse content.
  • How to decide which content to reuse.

What is reusing content?

Repurposing content is the activities and strategy involved in identifying content assets that can be reused and adapted to suit a different audience, marketing campaign or channel. It can also mean modifying the content, or parts of it, to suit a particular content format.

For example, a blog that has received a good amount of engagement on Twitter could be repurposed into a how-to guide to address the needs of a lead as they progress through the buyer journey.

What are the benefits of reusing content?

It saves you time and money

Crafting original, valuable content takes time. From ideation to publication it takes a toll on your resources. Repurposing content gives you more bang for your buck and frees you up to continue scaling your content and growing your brand presence. 

It helps you reach a larger audience.

Today’s customer wants to consume content in their preferred format. Some will be more interested in a downloadable guide and others will be more likely to engage with a video how-to. Adapting your content to different formats helps you reach both groups in a medium that suits them best. You can also modify your messaging to address particular pain points, answer questions for leads at specific stages of the customer journey or to resonate with different buyer personas

It boosts your SEO

Publishing quality, original content in a variety of formats, based around specific keywords shows Google et al that you are a credible source which should help to boost your position in the SERPs. 

It breathes new life into old content

Not every content asset is meant to be evergreen. An article that was cutting edge six months ago might look a bit past it today. A few modifications, a new design template or formatting, or simply bringing the copy up to date can help to redeem content that didn’t prove successful the first time around. Or it can offer the chance of a lap of honor for an article that was a hit when it was first published but has lost its relevance today. 

Looking for some advice on attracting your ideal customer? Read our tips for content creation excellence.

It reinforces your messaging

Devising new and useful ways to strengthen your messaging increases its potency and demonstrates you know your stuff. 

Looking for inspiration? Check out some content lessons from Apple.

What are the best ways to reuse content?

Decide which content to repurpose

The first step is identifying the content that would benefit from a marketing makeover. Here are a few tips to get you started. 

  1. Check your website analytics and identify the landing pages that have brought in quality traffic. You’ll want plenty of unique visits with a good amount of time on page. You can repeat this activity with your YouTube channels and social media analytics. 
  2. Do an audit of the topic clusters on your blog. Are there any that would benefit from an update or are there articles that have become relevant again and could just use a refresh? 
  3. Take a look at the content that isn’t performing well. Perhaps a new format would help it to hit the right note, or maybe it needs trimming down or bolstering with some original research or fun infographics.
Image of a keyboard and an "idea lamp"

Work out which format to convert your content to

The right format to update your content to will depend on your goals, your topic and the needs of your audience. Here are a few ideas to get you started. 

Blog post to e-book

Great blog posts whet the audience’s appetite for a topic and give you the chance to dip your toe in the thought leadership pool. A beautifully crafted e-book packed full of interesting research, checklists, useful explainers and so forth offers a valuable opportunity to show your reader that you are the go-to brand that can solve their problems and make their lives that bit easier. 

Whitepaper to blog post

Whitepapers aren’t always the most enticing content format. If you have some meaty information to convey but need it to get the right traction on social media, for example, you could try the somewhat more entertaining and accessible blog format.

Webinars to video tutorials

Webinars have incredible educational value, so why not convert the content into a video guide? You could also incorporate any questions you received during the webinar broadcast to make sure it broaches all the barriers to sale. 

Naturally, there are plenty more options out there; testimonials to case study and blog to podcast to name just two – but we hope these have given you some flavor of what is possible…

Think about the visual presentation

As any good marketer knows, adding visuals for the sake of it is a major no-no. However, you do need to make sure your content is attractive and that it grabs the attention of the reader straight away. Take a good look at both your high and low performing content and see if some interesting infographics could get your point across more effectively than the current copy. Or perhaps you could segment the text with some quotes or tidbits in a larger font to make it more scannable. Graphs can be good too, though make sure that they are easy to understand on smaller screens. 

And so we reach the end of this high-level guide on how to reuse content over and over. One of the most important things to consider is keeping your content assets relevant – which means keeping up with trends. If you’d like to make sure your finger is firmly on the content pulse, take a look at our new report on the State of Content Creation 2022

You’ll doubtless be able to tell how much we love content here at Contentoo. If you would like to chat about your current strategy and goals, please get in touch. We would love to help. 

Check out our latest report!

Email to colleague

Related Reads