How To Repurpose Content

Every now and then you should take some of your old content and repurpose it. If you’ve never done that, then you might wonder just how to repurpose old content. Which content should you repurpose and where should you repurpose it?

Let’s start with which content should be repurposed.

The best content to re-use for new purposes is old content that did well. It got a lot of page views, shares, or drew more than the average number of inbound links. If it was an article in an article directory, maybe it was republished often enough that it achieved rock star status in building inbound links for your website. In short, it was content that did its job and did it well.

So where should you repurpose that old content that did so well?

You don’t want to overuse it. In other words, you don’t want to repurpose it for multiple websites and spread it around. It’s best to repurpose old content for one use and make that use pay for you.

If the content you are repurposing was an article, use it as a blog post or convert it to video. You could turn it into a podcast where you simply read it as if it was a discussion with an invisible audience, then you could publish it on your website or in a podcast directory.

There are other ways to re-use old content. What you have to do is decide the best way to use it for your current audience. It might make a good newsletter article if it wasn’t used that way before.

Bottom line, figure out the best use of the new packaging of that old content and reorder it to be the best it can be in its new form.

What do you have to do to repurpose old content well?

The danger in repurposing old content is in not making it new enough. You don’t want it to be a duplicate of what you’ve published before. So, you wouldn’t take a blog post and copy it verbatim to use as a guest post on someone else’s blog. That would be a bad repurposing effort.

The first thing you should do is some keyword research. What keyword was the original article optimized for? Are there other terms related to it that would be just as good, or better? Do your research and find out what the current trends are in your niche. What are the most popular and most profitable keywords related to the topic of the content you want to repurpose? Chances are, a different keyword would be a better target for today’s article.

After you’ve done your keyword research, make a list of the major points in your old content. Are those points still relevant today or is there new knowledge on the subject that you can use to update the information. Make a new list of relevant points for the new content.

Now that you have your outline for the new content, start writing. Use your keyword effectively and give it a new title. Then, republish.