Repurposing or “recycling" old content is a marketing hack that will help lift your blog to the next level. It comes with many benefits, which we will go through later on, and the best thing about it?

You simply use content that you have already created.

There’s no scratching around for new topic ideas and spending hours on creating a new post.



Why You Should Repurpose Historical Content:

  • Variety: Individuals have their own preferences in terms of media. Some may prefer videos, while others like a standard written blog post. By presenting your old content through different forms of media, you will be reaching out to a new audience.
  • SEO: By reusing high-quality content, you will be building your reputation as a trustworthy source of information by search engines.
  • Driving home your core message: Ever wonder why politicians say the same thing, time and time again? That’s because it has been scientifically proven that people do respond to repetition. Repurposing your content in different format is a subtle way of doing this.
  • Time-efficient: The content has already been created, so all you need to do is bring it together again and present it in a fresh way.

What Content Should You Focus On:

  • Evergreen content: When we talk about “evergreen," we are talking about content that has long-term appeal. For example, topics like financial advice, healthcare, or motherhood are all evergreen niches. In contrast, TV programs, fashion trends, or video games all have a comparatively short shelf life. You should also look at specific long-term niches within your industry or field.
  • Popular posts: Analyze your own data and see which posts have been particularly popular on your blog. Look into the reasons why - whether it’s the topic, statistics within the content itself, or a strong keyword. Let your findings influence your plan. By repurposing these pieces of content, you’ll be reaching out to a new audience.

How You Can Repurpose Historical Content

  1. Infographics: As you are reading one right now, you’ll appreciate it’s a fun and engaging way to present content. After all, 65% of us are visual learners. Infographics are also more likely to be shared on other platforms, thereby extending your reach. It also increases traffic to your blog by 12% according to one report.
  2. Video/Vlog: Video content has proven to be a powerful marketing tool. In one 2017 survey, 76% of businesses who use video on their site see an increase in web traffic. Take the opportunity to revisit an old blog post and explain some of the key points in greater detail. Doing so will help boost your authority.
  3. Listicle: During the course of creating epic blog posts, it’s highly likely you will have found some killer stats. Bringing them together in one listicle and link those key facts to your own posts, as well as others.
  4. Social Media: With 2.2 billion monthly active users on Facebook alone, social media offers immediate access to a huge audience. You can utilize this by highlight specific facts or statistics relating to your industry or field.
  5. Slideshow: Like infographics, you can make this highly visual and break up your post into digestible chunks. It’s easy to set up on Slideshare, one of the top-100 most visited sites in the world. Ensure your slideshow is fun, engaging, and informative.
  6. Email Course: Emails have a return on investment (ROI) of $44 for every $1 spent. Tap into this enormous potential by setting up an email course, which can take place over a number of days or weeks. The best thing? You can just use some of your old blog posts as content, with a few minor tweaks.
  7. E-Books: In a similar way to an email course, e-books present a great opportunity to share your knowledge with your audience.
  8. Update Your Posts: Every so often, it’s a good idea to go through some of your old posts, and see where they need updating. For example, if I said “last year" in a post written in 2017, it would look a bit strange. So I would replace that term with “in 2017." These details may seem small, but up to date posts fare better than those which have been left behind.
  9. Expand Your Posts: If you have created a post on the top ten Italian restaurants in your area, then you could turn it into a series. Top ten Indian restaurants, cocktail bars, or ice cream places.
  10. Create a New Post: Well, kind of. You can look back to your archive, and you can use old content to create a new post. You can either take a key statistic or section, and expand on some of the key points made.
  11. Quora: With over 190 million monthly active users, Quora is a globally respected question and answer platform. You can use some of your old posts to help answer some questions, which will build your reputation and even generate leads.
  12. Guest Posts: This requires striking a balance between simply copy and pasting, and coming up with new content. Other blogs and publications will welcome high-quality, original content, and not something that can be found on your site. However, there’s nothing stopping you from turning back to your old posts for inspiration - which can save you hours of research.