Content recycling: Smart tips for repurposing your old content for maximum impact
Creating new and relevant content regularly — that is the biggest challenge for every journalist and thought leader.
Creating new and relevant content regularly — that is the biggest challenge for every journalist and thought leader.
So why not polish up and reuse painstakingly created and popular content? Because this much is clear: The effort required to recycle existing content is significantly lower than the Create completely new content to care for.
The advantage is clear: The effort required to recycle existing content is much lower than creating completely new content. For this reason, content reuse should be an important part of any content strategy.
Reusing content is critical to your success. It's the fastest way to create high-quality content. If you haven't incorporated this tactic yet, be sure to consider doing so.
What you'll learn in this blog:
- Why you should recycle your content
- How to find suitable content
- General tips for revising content
- The 3 key principles of content recycling
Why you should recycle your content
First, let's take a closer look at the biggest benefits of content recycling.
Work effectively
They know how tedious and time-consuming thorough content research can be. It is true that recycling content also requires a lot of work. However, it is not comparable to a complete rebuild.
Also: Let's say you've put a lot of time and effort into researching and writing an article. First and foremost, you probably feel a little bit of pride.
Second, wouldn't it be a shame if you only gave your readers the chance to consume your high-quality content once?
Content recycling saves you a lot of time and effort. You'll also benefit from your best content once again.
Many companies also share this assessment. Take a look at Curata's diagram, for example:
Extend reach
Content recycling means that you process your content in different formats. The main formats are audio, video, and text.
If you replay your best articles after a while, for example as a podcast on various platforms, you will significantly increase your reach.
Although users in your target audience are likely to have a lot in common, they most likely don't have the same learning style. More than half of people learn primarily visually, but the rest prefer audio, for example. This means that you are not optimally addressing the rest with articles and videos.
Republished articles as podcasts can thus help you to reach the remaining 30% of auditory learners perfectly.
Psychology
Let's stay briefly on the subject of psychology.
that The human brain learns primarily through repetition. This is another key point why it is recommended to distribute a message in different versions and formats, as well as via different media.
By reusing your content, you ensure that the information is also remembered by your target group.
SEO
Did you know that 51% of traffic to websites comes from organic search results from Google & Co on average? This was the result of a BrightEdge Study.
You'll be wondering what that has to do with content recycling. Well, recycling your content gives you the opportunity to update all SEO-relevant data on the side.
You should check whether the keywords are still correct, the links are still up to date and whether metadata is stored.
In the first part, I briefly discussed the reasons for content recycling. Perhaps you are now asking yourself: Which content is actually best suited for recycling?
How to find suitable content
So, first of all: Of course, in theory, any content can be reused. However, not all content is equally suitable. Some of your items are much more appropriate than others.
So what should you look for when you're looking for content to recycle?
In general, content that is either
- was frequently shared
- ranks well on Google
- has a lot of backlinks
- and above all, is still relevant.
But one by one.
Take a content inventory
They start with a so-called content inventory. That means you analyze your existing content. The following criteria are best suited for this purpose.
page views
With a look at Google Analytics or analysis tool of your choice, you can quickly identify the content that has the most page views. Remember this content for recycling later.
interactions
Are there social media posts that stand out to you due to an above-average number of social shares?
You should also check out blog posts that have received lots of positive comments. As well as blog posts that give rise to There were lively discussions.
If the topics are still up to date, you can build on them and take up the topic again.
backlinks
Now take a look at those posts that were able to generate lots of backlinks. This means that this content was particularly relevant to other content creators.
In this regard, I can give you an extremely readable Items from Quick Sprout recommend about the types of content that generate the most backlinks.
Evergreen content
Another hot tip is, after Keep an eye out for evergreen content. In other words, content that is read over and over again and is independent of time. A valuable help for identifying evergreen content is Evergreen Score by Buzzsumo.
Example topic: “How to build a dog house in 5 steps.” An article with clear explanations and attractive photos is ideal for timeless, relevant content. Because this much is clear: Even in 5 years, people will most likely still keep dogs.
Allow me to make a small comment on my own behalf. In fact, our integrated content intelligence goes one step further: Because this even gives you seasonal topic recommendations.
With just a few clicks, you can use countless data to discover which months, topics such as cycling, recipes or universities are particularly popular. And this much is certain: The results are sometimes astonishing.
As you can see, there are many criteria that help you find suitable content for recycling. You simply focus on choosing the content that scored well in your analysis on as many criteria as possible.
Pretty easy, huh?
General tips for revising content
Before you start recycling content, you should definitely consider the following points.
How to make sure that the older content still fits your goals and values.
- Does the selected content still match the positioning of your company? If not, adjust the key messages accordingly or dispose of the content.
- Did the target group from back then remain the same? If anything has changed here, the content must be changed accordingly.
- Are the keywords from back then still up to date? Or is it appropriate to adjust them?
- You should review and update figures, data and facts. Nothing is more embarrassing than old data.
- Check out all links. Google penalizes links that don't work with a poorer ranking.
The 3 key principles of content recycling
Once the content has been selected, you can start making your old content shine in new splendor. I will now show you which three key principles you can follow.
1. Serve content bites
The most common form of content recycling is this: You divide longer content (e.g. issues) into several small “bites” (including articles). Keyword content model. Let me give you three examples.
White paper —> Blog
Split a white paper or e-book into a series of blog posts. In the individual posts, you refer to the original format and offer it to your readers as a free download.
Longer articles are also great for a range of newsletters.
Blog —> Social media posts
For social media, you can break down the content into even smaller pieces. Sometimes a quote or a picture is enough.
Just pick up an article like this 33 Amazing Things You Didn't Know About Your Own Body.
From that, in turn, grab a part of the introduction for a short teaser facebook. And simply use the most interesting quotes and statistics for Twitter. As in the example below:
Videos —> GIFs or shorter videos
Do you have a longer video about your company, your products, or whatever? Then recycle it. Create several short videos from it or animated GIFs. These snack videos attract attention and are therefore great for social media.
Also possible: Simply publish your existing content on a new channel, such as Apple News+.
2. Several short pieces of content become a long format
The opposite approach is also possible: You create a comprehensive content format from several short pieces of content.
Blog posts —> White paper or e-book
For example, you could collect well-functioning blog posts that relate to the same topic. Enrich this content with some up-to-date information. And From this, you create a white paper or an e-book.
compilations
We humans love simplicity and good summaries. These are ideal conditions for regular compilations. You can use this type of content every quarter or six months, for example.
Compilations are short teased listings your best blog posts. They are usually read with pleasure and shared frequently.
Short how-to videos —> Video course
Have you created several how-to videos that are thematically similar? Great, then combine them into a video course. You can then offer the video course for download on your website.
3. Change your content to another format
The last common option is to publish your existing content in a completely different format. Do you still remember the three main formats text, video and audio?
Print —> Digital formats
As a publisher, you have a wide range of printed content, such as magazines, brochures or studies. Why not reuse that content?
Enrich the content with interactions and animations and you have the perfect content for social media, your website, or your blog.
Video —> Blog
Once you've created a video, you can convert this video into a blog and embed it on your website. The advantage of this is that the new content Now also ranked among search engines. And thus ensures more traffic to your website.
Blog —> Podcast
One form of content recycling that is becoming increasingly popular is turning a blog into a podcast. One Edison Research survey in 2017 According to this, 24% of respondents listen to a podcast at least once a month.
So take your most popular posts and articles and turn them into podcast episodes. Don't you have a podcast yet? Well it's easy to get started.
Podcasts also have a decisive advantage: your voice. Just like video, it is a very personal medium. With a podcast, it is relatively easy for you to establish a personal relationship with your listeners and create trust.
Try out new platforms
Of course, you can also make things even easier for yourself and simply test new platforms with existing content.
At Publishing content to other platforms, you don't have the pressure to rewrite or edit the original content.
Sites such as Medium, LinkedIn Publisher and Business2Community enable syndication of content. These huge platforms can help you make your content accessible to a larger group of people.
However, before you decide to share your articles on these websites, there is one thing you should check first.
Namely, whether your original content has “rel=canonical” tag included. This little day gives Google important information about where to find the original article.
The day can be spent, for example, with Yoast plugin add quickly.
conclusion
An important aspect of a functioning content strategy is to regularly serve your target group with varied and relevant content.
Content recycling is therefore an indispensable way to conserve your own resources and keep the time required low. Used correctly, it also has the potential to have a huge effect on your website visits.
Finally, a personal suggestion: Let yourself be guided by the three principles just listed. And feel free to try out one or the other format in a playful way.
Only through small experiments can you find out how reusing content can help bring significantly more visitors to your website.
Do you have any other ideas on how to repurpose content? We'd love to hear them. Just write us down linkedin, facebook or twitter.
