Google created the Panda update to penalize sites that relied on very low-quality content. Their official guidance from the Official Google Webmaster Blog states: Essentially Google are telling you to write for the user, not to satisfy the key phrase density you would like to achieve. It’s not 1999 any more! All of this means that your content is going to take longer to produce. Higher quality content isn’t easy – it’s very time consuming.With that in mind, smart marketers have worked out a way to leverage existing content, in new formats, which will help businesses get more shelf life from the content they do create. In this article I’m going to show you three ways in which an existing piece of content can be repurposed. This achieves three things:
Gives your business visibility on popular social networks.Save you lots of time in the research and development phases of content creation.Allows you to provide your users with content in a format appropriate for them.
Create a Slideshare Presentation
Slideshare is a social network for sharing slide decks or presentations. It’s a great way to break down complex topics into easy to consume chunks. The simplicity of creating a Slideshare presentation makes repurposing blog posts into slide decks a really attractive proposition. Simply break down your wordy blog post into bullet points for easy consumption, then create an attractive, branded presentation, including links and upload to Slideshare. It really is that simple! Not only will you create a presence on Slideshare itself (which ranks well in many search results), but you’ll be able to embed the slides back onto the original post to give users a different way to consume your content. It costs you nothing except a little time. Slideshare themselves even offer some guidance on how best to repurpose your content for Slideshare specifically.
Create a Video Presentation of Your Post
Video content is incredibly powerful. Digital marketers have long understood the value of video content and the social networks that have been created to satisfy the demand for video. How many times have you accessed YouTube this week? Well you’re not alone. Some of the stats that you can find on YouTube’s site are testament to just how big a deal video content is. The network has over 1 billion users and collectively they generate billions of views a day! If you’re not leveraging this huge audience, you’re missing an opportunity. Videos don’t have to be expensive either? Have you got a camera phone? Modern mobile devices are more than capable of recording you speaking into camera in high definition. Simply stand against a white background, or create a branded backdrop and tell the world about your post. It’s simple enough to do and will not only give you access to YouTube’s audience, but will go a long way to humanising your brand. The other huge advantage of YouTube is that their videos rank really well in search engines. Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion back in 2006. Since then, YouTube videos have become a more and more common sight in search results. This gives you the chance to rank in a higher position than you might otherwise have, especially if your business is relatively new and your website hasn’t yet got the strength to compete for the top positions. Or you could take a different route and create videos based on your expertise. This will let visitors know that you’re an authority on the subject you’re covering. The buyer’s guides on this car parts retailer are a great example of using your existing expertise to create another format of content for visitors to enjoy.
Create an Ebook to Give Away
Now this is probably a little more advanced than the two methods previously discussed in this article but it can be hugely worthwhile. When you’ve been working on content marketing for some time you’re likely to have groups of blog posts that logically fit together. These blog posts can be grouped together and formatted into an ebook. Ebooks can be very attractive as lead magnets, helping you secure a new user’s email by providing them with something for them to download and take away in exchange for subscribing to your newsletter or creating an account. Blog posts can run anywhere from 250 words to 10,000. Once you’ve grouped a few of these together you’ll realise how much content you’ve already created! All you need to do now is create your ebook. Luckily for us, both Microsoft Office and Google Docs let you export as a PDF file. That’s all there is to it! This is as much about reformatting content as it is about repurposing it. Not only do you have to spend next to no time creating your ebook, but you’ve also created a new lead magnet in the process!
Take Things Further
So there you have it – three ways you can repurpose content completely free. Leveraging all the hard work you’re already doing to create great content is an important part of being able to sustain the quality of your work. The three methods described above are all free of charge (apart from some of your time) and represent a really good introduction to content repurposing. Taking things further you could also look into:
InfographicsPodcastsWebinarsGuest PostsWhitepapers
How are you repurposing content at the moment? Do you have any success stories about how you’ve repurposed your content?
