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You are here:   Home Blog Why You Should Repurpose Content

Why You Should Repurpose Content

August 16, 2018 by Katie Mitchell

If you read Carrie’s post about creating content faster and more effectively, you know that storing ideas for later is a great way to make crunch time less stressful.

But where do you get those ideas? One answer is from the content you’ve already created. I’m not talking about republishing the exact thing you did last month or even last year, but rather repurposing it into something fresh that gets attention and supports your brand. Let’s talk about how to do that.

Audit Your Existing Content

You create a lot of stellar content, but not everything in your files is worthy of another pass. Before you start repurposing content, examine what you already have to be sure you’re building on the best of it. Time for a content audit.

A content audit is more than a list of what you’ve created – it’s an analysis of the content on that list. The list is simply an inventory of your products and services. Just as a retailer might take inventory of what’s on the shelves and in the stock room, content creators can record work like blog articles, social media posts, white papers, web site pages, etc.

Once you have your organized list you can begin to audit the content. This will involve reading it, of course, but the final decisions about what you’ll repurpose must be about more than what you like and don’t like.

The Content Marketing Institute outlines five steps for auditing your content. Their steps are for content audits in general, so I’ve defined them for our specific intention of content repurposing:

  1. Know your main goal. In this case, the goal is finding content to repurpose, so keep an eye out for pieces that promote your overall messaging and contain opportunities for further research.
  2. Determine which content needs to be audited. Remember to look in all of your channels (website, brochures, social media, etc.). News items, reports on studies, seasonal pieces and other time-sensitive content probably won’t have much to offer, so you may choose to leave them out of the audit.
  3. Define the data types you need. What information do you need to determine if individual pieces are worth repurposing? The data could include a rating (based on a scale of how well it will work for repurposing) that you give the content.
  4. Inventory the content you’ve decided to audit. If the amount is small enough to inventory manually, a spreadsheet should work just fine. For large quantities of content, consider a web-scraping tool.
  5. Audit your content for repurposing opportunities. This could involve another spreadsheet, where you record individual repurposing opportunities within each piece of content. Repurposing opportunities might be a set of statistics, expandable e-book sections or social media posts that inspire blog posts.

We’d like to add a few tips of our own to that list:

  1. Audit by persona. What persona do you target that needs more information now?
  2. Audit by customer journey. Are there places in the customer journey that have holes in terms of the information needs of your persona?
  3. Audit by marketing goals. What key campaigns and marketing goals are you working on that could use some fresh content fast?

Finally, don’t forget that you can group multiple kinds of content together to create new content (a white paper with an infographic, for example, rather than simply looking at the standalone white paper for repurposing opportunities).

It might seem daunting to go through all these auditing steps and record so much information. However, once you develop a solid collection of repurposing opportunities you have a wealth of ideas for generating new content. That’s going to save lots of time in the long run.

More importantly, the careful review of your content will highlight the best aspects of your brand voice and give you a chance to reaffirm your core values and overall business goals.

How to Repurpose Content

Now that you have a good collection of content to repurpose, how do you actually enliven that old content to make it new?

I’m reminded of something I heard in one of my earliest college writing classes: The professor, in teaching the class to enhance creative pieces, used the phrase “Explode the moment” to help us get everything we could out of sentences, paragraphs and stories.

For example, consider this sentence:

As he walked his dog, Nate thought about what he’d make for dinner.

Much more could be said about everything happening here if we explode the moment:

Nate held the leash and trailed behind his trotting papillon. As she sniffed fire hydrants and trees, he debated with himself about dinner. Mac-n-cheese to keep the kids happy, or a nice curry that his wife would gush over?

Now, you’re probably looking for more than turning a sentence into a small paragraph, but you get the point. Basic pieces of information often have more to offer if we look a little deeper.

With marketing content, you have large assets that can be broken into smaller bits which can then be expanded to stand on their own. Better yet, each piece can be repurposed more than one way to spread the messaging across channels.

For example:

  • Take the chapters or sections of an e-book, and turn each into a blog post.
  • Go through one of your long-form blogs and pull out quotes, statistics and blurbs to make 10 social media posts.
  • New blog posts and social media updates can in turn be fodder for email marketing campaigns.

When you figure out how to repurpose blog content for social media or develop a new blog series from last year’s e-book, you position yourself as an authority on the topics covered. You also maintain consistency in your messaging and voice.

For more on how to make the most of your old and new content, sign up for our mailing list and get instant access to your content strategy blueprint.

Have you figured out a brilliant way to repurpose and freshen old content? Tell me about it in the comments below!

Katie Mitchell
Katie Mitchell is a content writer for bizbuzzcontent. When she’s not writing, you can find her cooking, traveling, doing yoga, and relaxing with friends and family.

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Steven S., Senior Manager, Demand Generation, Rentlytics

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Steven S., Senior Manager, Demand Generation, Rentlytics

Jessica leads one of the most professional content agencies I’ve ever worked with. We target a very niche industry, and Jessica and her team were very thoughtful in their approach. From planning thoughtful pieces, to researching and interviewing SMEs, to brainstorming promotion strategies, Jessica and her team maintain a high degree of professionalism and efficiency.
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Bree v.F., Director of Marketing and Engagement, VolunteerMatch

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Bree v.F., Director of Marketing and Engagement, VolunteerMatch

Jessica dedicated her time as a pro-bono volunteer with VolunteerMatch to help us with some key content marketing needs. What impressed me most about working with Jessica was the way she tailored her approach to accommodate the needs of our nonprofit with the resource constraints of our team. Jessica developed personas, one-pagers, case studies and website content that has resulted in an increase in traffic to our site and improved our ability to communicate to our key audiences.
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I've worked with Jessica at her company bizbuzzcontent for years. It's my go-to provider whenever my team is looking for high-quality content. What differentiates bizbuzzcontent is that they not only have superior writing skills but a rare ability to completely understand our industry, our company positioning, brand voice and tone, and customers. This just makes the content highly targeted and relevant, and goes a long way in achieving our marketing goals.
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Collin S., Angel Investor and Technology Executive

I love Jessica and the team over at bizbuzzcontent. Within just a matter of a few interactions, she was able to understand, in depth, our complex solution and business model. Since then, she's been critical to us in driving compelling, engaging content via our blogs and white papers. She's a wonderful, thoughtful person to work with, and the work she's done has been a key factor in increasing our conversion rates.
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bizbuzzcontent helps me efficiently leverage my own subject-matter expertise to create original content on timely topics. Together, we are able to distill complex topics into client-friendly articles that I can use across multiple platforms. I especially appreciate bizzbuzz’s super-efficient process because it keeps me on track for timely production of new content. Jessica Lee is a pleasure to work with, and I rely on her to bring a strategic eye to my publication efforts.
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Strong content values

Jessica is a great content creator, writer, reporter and partner to work with. Highly articulate with strong content values and work ethos, Jessica adds great value to all projects she works on. I would happily recommend Jessica to people who wish to scale their content marketing efforts.

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Andy B., C-Level Marketing and Strategy Consultant

Jessica is a great content creator, writer, reporter and partner to work with. Highly articulate with strong content values and work ethos, Jessica adds great value to all projects she works on. I would happily recommend Jessica to people who wish to scale their content marketing efforts.
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Jessica is a guest speaker of Microsoft internal training program. She made an awesome presentation of how to create marketable web ages to Microsoft Bing Ads product team and services team. Attendees found Jessica very engaging during the presentation. Microsoft Bing Ads is eager to apply the learning in our daily works, and look forward to partnering with Jessica to bring more value to digital advertising community.

Ping J., Product Manager, Microsoft Bing Ads

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Jessica is a guest speaker of Microsoft internal training program. She made an awesome presentation of how to create marketable web ages to Microsoft Bing Ads product team and services team. Attendees found Jessica very engaging during the presentation. Microsoft Bing Ads is eager to apply the learning in our daily works, and look forward to partnering with Jessica to bring more value to digital advertising community.
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Critical extension of the marketing team

Jessica has been instrumental in building our content strategy from ground up, educating our stakeholders and increasing our exposure across all lines of insurance. I can say with confidence that she has been a critical extension of the marketing team, always producing timely deliverable. She has always been enthusiastic about creating new formats for us and new vehicles of information to help the marketing team raise awareness and drive internal adoption. Her most impressive feat from my perspective is how quickly and seamlessly she dived into our 12 lines of insurance. The dexterity and the level of expertise she demonstrated although she had never worked with insurance B2B client was absolutely incredible.

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Stephanie M., VP Marketing Communications, Woodruff-Sawyer & Co.

Jessica has been instrumental in building our content strategy from ground up, educating our stakeholders and increasing our exposure across all lines of insurance. I can say with confidence that she has been a critical extension of the marketing team, always producing timely deliverable. She has always been enthusiastic about creating new formats for us and new vehicles of information to help the marketing team raise awareness and drive internal adoption. Her most impressive feat from my perspective is how quickly and seamlessly she dived into our 12 lines of insurance. The dexterity and the level of expertise she demonstrated although she had never worked with insurance B2B client was absolutely incredible.
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We can't imagine how we managed without bizbuzzcontent before! Working with Jessica Lee is a dream. She is very creative and understands new concepts quickly. The content creation process at bizbuzzcontent is the most efficient we have come across in our many years of working with other writers and agencies. If you want an excellent content program and a company that goes above and beyond, hire bizbuzzcontent today!

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Pauline J., CEO, Group Twenty Seven

We can't imagine how we managed without bizbuzzcontent before! Working with Jessica Lee is a dream. She is very creative and understands new concepts quickly. The content creation process at bizbuzzcontent is the most efficient we have come across in our many years of working with other writers and agencies. If you want an excellent content program and a company that goes above and beyond, hire bizbuzzcontent today!
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Trusted partner for years

Jessica and her team at bizbuzzcontent have been a trusted partner for years, and have helped us with our blog, web copy and email marketing, in addition to providing lots of guidance on other content projects. The team is able to quickly get up to speed on any content project's requirements and create quality content that's on target. Over the years, they've helped us educate, drive brand awareness and website traffic. I would definitely recommend bizbuzzcontent for content services.

Ashley G., Digital Ad Management, SearchForce

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Ashley G., Digital Ad Management, SearchForce

Jessica and her team at bizbuzzcontent have been a trusted partner for years, and have helped us with our blog, web copy and email marketing, in addition to providing lots of guidance on other content projects. The team is able to quickly get up to speed on any content project's requirements and create quality content that's on target. Over the years, they've helped us educate, drive brand awareness and website traffic. I would definitely recommend bizbuzzcontent for content services.
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