Key takeaways
- If you’re not already refreshing and repurposing your content, now is a great time to start.
- Devote a larger proportion of your time (one expert recommends up to 80%) to refreshing content instead of creating new.
- Focus on repurposing your best-performing content to expand its audience.
- If a piece of content failed to perform well in the past, there’s a good chance that the keyword focus was wrong. Research keywords and realign the piece with your customers’ interests.
The effect of refreshing content
Even if your brand’s message remains the same, keyword focus and customers’ interests change—especially during uncertain economic times.
By periodically revamping and realigning your existing content, you can dramatically increase its search performance and get new life out of your old material.
Refreshing your content has been found to help improve:
- Organic traffic.
- Search engine ranking page (SERP) performance.
- Click-through rates.
- Lead generation and conversion.
Best of all, it’s a cost-effective solution compared to creating all-new content from scratch.
Survey results on refreshing content
Most of the experts we spoke to say repurposing and refreshing content is always a priority for them: 70% say refreshing their content is important or very important under normal economic conditions.
In a volatile economy, that number rises slightly to 71%.
The main reasons for refreshing content varied, but here are the most common:
- Saving time and budget.
- Addressing changing customer concerns.
- The ability to provide the same content in multiple formats.
Refreshing content: What do the experts say
Create more value with refreshed content
Some emphasised the importance of getting more value out of your investment in creating original content:
“Quite simply, refreshing and repurposing content is an essential part of a content strategy in any market condition if content teams are to execute efficiently and effectively. Content production, distribution and measurement are resource-intensive and expensive, so who wouldn’t want to get more value out of every bit of content if it can continue to be optimised or be evergreen? A recession period puts extra strain on resources such as having reduced headcount and budget, so it’s a smart move to double-down on refreshing and repurposing existing content as it’s less time and cost than creating all-new content”, Meredith Odgers, Founder at BambooWorx, explained.
Jocelyn Chan even recommended devoting 80% of time to repurposing existing content:“Whether you are at risk of being impacted by a recession or not, I think repurposing and repackaging content is the best way to scale out your efforts. You put a lot of time and energy into creating it, and it’s equally as important to put energy into distributing it by packaging the information in different formats. Also, not everyone likes to read, or listen to a really hyper podcast host, so repetition of your message in a diversity of formats can go a long way. Always apply Pareto’s rule: spend 20% on creating something new and 80% in repackaging and distributing”.
Save money while refreshing content
Others pointed to efficiency and saving money, especially in an unpredictable market:
“As a medium sized company, creating new content non-stop is not very efficient”, says Svenja Böhme, Senior Project Manager at WPWA Team.
“In good times, repurposing the content helps put the message across better. During the recession, it reduces the crunch on resources”, says Munda Kamlesh.
Want to read more expert insights? Make sure to read the report we made with HubSpot.
