While fresh content is critically important to the success of any digital marketing campaign, the task of creating a steady flow of fresh material can become a tremendous burden to local businesses operating with limited resources. One highly effective solution to this problem can be found in content repurposing. Many of the biggest and most successful content marketers use content repurposing to increase their audience reach.

Unlike content republishing, which is nothing more than publishing the same content across multiple sites, content repurposing is essentially offering the same story in a variety of different ways. By tweaking and enhancing previously published content for different audiences and market channels, you can expand your audience and breathe new life into your material.

Why You Should Consider Repurposing Your Content

• Content repurposing enables you to reach a new audience. Some people prefer infographics over text or podcasts over e-books. Repurposing your content for different formats allows you to appeal to different audiences with different medium preferences.
• You can extend the life of your material without risking a duplicate content penalty by repurposing your content to bring it to life for new and old audiences alike.
• Content repurposing gives readers who missed your content the first time around to have a second chance of reading it. This maximizes the investment you made in creating the content, as well as provides you with another opportunity for content promotion and acquiring inbound backlinks.

What Type of Content is a Good Candidate for Repurposing?
Content that you’re considering for repurposing should be evergreen – content that hasn’t become outdated or irrelevant with the passage of time. Look over your Google Analytics archives for those posts that were the most popular with your audience. Finally, look for posts that would require only minor updating to make them fresh and relevant again.

How to Repurpose Your Content
Remember that the idea behind repurposing is not to just reuse the same piece of content over and over again. Your goal is to tweak and update your material to give it a new appeal to a new audience.

1. Create multiple new posts from the original content. A numbered-list article could be spun off into a series of new posts that covers each item in more detail. Say you have an original article on the “Five Most Important Tips for Winterizing Your Car.” Each of these maintenance tips could be expanded into a new article with additional details, examples, and resources for the reader.

Another repurposing possibility would be to reverse the process. Select several related posts and write a new post that summarizes the main points in one comprehensive article.

2. Repurpose and re-promote blog content to your social media followers. This is an effective way to reach new readers as well as test variations in headlines and text approaches. Repurposing content in this manner has been found to generate up to 75 percent of the original engagement.

3. Create a video or podcast of a popular post for your followers who prefer alternate methods of receiving content. Presenting your material in a different format avoids SEO problems with duplicate content.

4. Build an infographic of a post that summarizes your content in an easy-to-digest visual outline. This is particularly effective for data-heavy posts.

5. Share your content with email subscribers. Create a condensed version of a popular post for your email followers, and include a link to the full article for those who may be interested in reading more.