Repurposing Your Blog Content: Why its worth the effort

Just like you can repurpose an everyday item like a chair to give it a new lease of life, updating content on your blog offers a range of benefits for your website and your entire business too.

Whether you’re looking to achieve new goals, reach a new audience, or improve the content that isn’t performing as well as you would have liked, repurposing your blog content can be a huge benefit.

In this post, we’ll discuss the specific benefits and give you a few ideas for the various ways you can repurpose content for maximum effect.

Repurposing Content Improves Less Successful Posts

Updating content on your blog is an effective but often overlooked method of improving some of your less successful content. This isn’t to say that your existing content lacks quality. It simply may lack the delivery required to gain the traction you want. In this instance, it’s a good idea to analyse the content to identify where it fails to resonate with your audience in the same way as more successful content.

For example, if you created an eBook that fails to grab your audience’s attention or doesn’t capture many leads, you can always repurpose it. Lengthier content can be successful when repurposed as a series of blog posts, all of which will inform and engage readers while driving traffic to the various pages of your website. However, the opposite can also be true — where a series of posts could work better as one large piece of content. It all comes down to the needs and preferences of your audience.

It Helps You to Achieve Multiple Goals

When you produce content, there’s always a goal in mind, and a well-crafted blog post can work wonders for certain areas of your business or website. But individual pieces of content don’t necessarily have to have a singular goal, especially if you are repurposing content to focus on a different creative space. For example, repurposing content for social media purposes is a huge benefit for exposure, growing your audience and gaining brand recognition on multiple platforms. 

A common yet fantastic example for achieving social media traction is infographics. A quick, engaging method of delivering information with a range of eye-catching images, colours and content. And the great thing is that it’s actually straightforward to repurpose other content into infographics. All you have to do is highlight the key points/pieces of advice in your blog post and present them in a fun and easy-to-digest way. If you have a lot of information to include, you can always use multiple images or slides — which can easily be uploaded as one post on social networks.

Reach New Audience Members

Think about it, if you uploaded a blog post a year ago, two years or even six months ago — it won’t reach or engage the same people as if you posted it today. With new people creating new social media accounts every day, there’s a continual flow of potential new audience members and customers out there waiting to find content that suits their needs. Not to mention those who recently developed a want or need for services/products you sell, repurposing content is a brilliant way to put fresh(ish) content in front of new eyes.

Also, you may have refined your audience or adjusted your content approach since you originally posted the content. Consistency and quality are both crucial aspects of any venture. Updating content on your blog allows you to spruce up old posts and put the new and improved version in front of new and loyal visitors.

Diversify Your Content

We mentioned above that consistency is one of the vital aspects of your website, but that doesn’t mean you can afford to be predictable. Offering your audience content that feels ‘samey’ or repetitive is a fantastic way to drive them away. Plus, it’s just a bit boring to produce, which is never good for the creative process. Repurposing content to explore various styles and platforms helps you appeal to a broader audience. And we don’t have to tell you that a bigger, broader audience equals more sales.

Repurposing content across multiple platforms maximises the potential to reach more people and ensures that your brand is represented consistently across all channels. Whether it’s your loyal audience or new customers you’re yet to connect with, brand consistency speaks volumes about your content’s quality and the genuine benefit it offers.

Improves SEO

Repurposing content allows you to produce a higher volume of regular content. Google loves this, as it demonstrates that you create an abundance of high-quality content and that you are a relevant and reliable source of information in your chosen field. This contributes massively to improving your site’s SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and reflecting yourself as a trustworthy brand and website.

When it comes to ensuring that your website is highly visible on search engines and reaches the right people at the right time, improving your SEO is critical. And it’s something that can be continually worked on and refined to suit the ever-changing algorithms and the needs of your audience.

Target Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

The buyer’s journey is exactly how it sounds, the process a buyer goes through before they eventually decide to commit to a purchase. The three stages are:

• Awareness: A buyer is aware they have a problem or need.
• Consideration: A buyer considers options to solve their newly-defined problem.
• Decision: A buyer evaluates their options and picks the right provider who appears to offer the best solution.

These stages are very different, and the people in your target audience will never all be at the same stage in the buyer’s journey at the same time. This means it’s essential to create content for all three stages, therefore maximising your chances of success. However, this requires a lot of time and effort, which may pull you or your employees away from other responsibilities. Instead, repurposing content allows you to utilise one piece of source content for a variety of purposes. Essentially, repurposing content has the potential to maximise output while investing the same amount of input.

For example, some people may be on the verge of making a decision and require a longer, detailed piece of content to tip them over the edge. Whereas those who simply want to get to know your business a bit better may require shorter, easy-to-consume content. Regardless of the stage of the buyer’s journey, repurposing and updating content on your blog can be a game-changer for covering all bases. By tailoring your content to suit the three stages of the buyer’s journey, you can guide them through the process and improve your chances of ensuring a sale — and future business, for that matter.

About the author...

Alan SpurgeonWithout Alan, there’d be no Hedgehog. Our Boston-born director began Hedgehog a decade ago in a tiny office above a florists in Bedford. Since then, Alan has worked tirelessly to grow Hedgehog to what it is today. Using his years of SEO and business expertise, Alan knows how to produce strategies for clients that work towards the ultimate goal; generating new business online. Never one to keep his expertise to himself, Alan has spoken at a number of industry events, including Digitalks in Sao Paulo, and has contributed to a number of industry books and publications.