What once was old can always be new again, and that includes your content. Here’s what you need to know about repurposing content safely.
Takeaways
- Repurposing is great for both your bottom line and your content’s visibility.
- Penalties for repurposing content don’t work quite how you think, and that’s a good thing.
- Focus on adding value when repurposing old content, and your audiences won’t get bored.
Anna: Whoever said, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” never repurposed their content. Hey, everybody, my name is Anna. And I am a strategist at Convince & Convert. Today, I wanna talk to you about repurposing content. Repurposing content is an approach that takes existing published content, refreshes it, remixes it, and puts an entirely new spin on it to create something totally new and wonderfully different. I’m a huge fan of repurposing content for, really, two main reasons.
The first one is that, contrary to popular belief, creating content isn’t free. In fact, it’s actually quite expensive. It costs a lot of time and a lot of money. And those are things that not every marketing department or brand has excess amounts of. So repurposing content can really help maximize the existing investments we’ve already made.
The second main reason I’m a huge fan of repurposing content is because thanks to the rise of content marketing over the years, most brands are sitting on mountains of content. And the problem is when we’re so focused on creating new content, we keep adding to that mountain. And that means that old content, even if it’s good, doesn’t get seen by users because it gets buried under all that new content. So repurposing content really can take a lot of that great old content and give it a breath of fresh air.
Now when it comes to repurposing content, there are a couple of myths that are swirling about out there. There’s a couple of reasons why maybe you’re not focusing so heavily on repurposing your content. I wanna talk about three of those myths today and help dispel them with you.
So the first myth for repurposing content is that you’re going to get penalized for having duplicate content. Well, this is a touchy subject. Because obviously we don’t wanna be penalized by any search engine or even cause any frustration to any users by having duplicate content. But, remember, repurposing isn’t just duplicating. Repurposing content isn’t a copy and paste approach. It’s a remix and refresh approach. So, if you’re taking a white paper and turning it into a blog post series or taking a blog post and turning it into an infographic. You’re not copying and pasting, you’re providing something new and different. So search engines and users aren’t going to see that as the same content. In addition, even if you do run into some duplicate content issues, which happens with repurposing content, you would have to repurpose incredibly large amounts of content and also be seen as being malicious with your intent for duplicating that content. So, it’s not even so much as duplicating a footer or a boilerplate language, it would have to be, sort of, copying and pasting acres worth of content in order to even get flagged by users or by any search engine.
So myth number two on repurposing content: You can’t reuse other people’s content. This actually just isn’t true. We take inspiration from everywhere. And we never really know where inspiration is gonna strike. So, sometimes this comes from other people. Now, this is okay. If somebody created a framework or published a blog or has an infographic that you have feedback on or you can provide your own take on, by all means, you should use that content and provide your point of view on it. But there are a few rules to follow in order to do so. And the first one is always, and I mean, always, give credit where credit’s due. In fact, you should probably just go ahead and ask that person for permission and let them know what you’re going to do with their content. And then, when they give you permission, make sure you credit them in the final published work. It’s really just the human thing to do. Also, remember, theft isn’t cool, but paying homage is.
Finally, the third, your audiences are going to be bored. This myth is quite common but it’s a myth. Remember, again, content repurposing isn’t copying and pasting. If you publish and post the same content, on every channel, over and over and over again, yeah, your audiences are gonna be bored. But, as we talked about before, if you take an infographic and you turn it into, maybe, some social teasers. Or if you take a white paper and turn it into that blog post series, it’s gonna be new and it’s gonna be different. And as long as you’re adding value and your providing a reason for readers to read that content again, you’re gonna be okay. They’re not gonna get bored. And also, focus on other channels as well. You don’t have to keep republishing in the same channel that that original content was published in.
Just like Doc Martens, vinyl records, and acid wash jeans, what once was old can always be new again, and that includes our content. So, I would love to hear: Now that you’ve heard, what do you think about repurposing content? And how are you using it today? Go ahead and leave me a comment below, and I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks, everybody. Cheers!
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