Most business owners and marketers are so focused on producing individual pieces of content that they totally forget to maximize the value of the content they’ve already created. As a result, they end up overspending on their content creation efforts and getting a minimal return on investment.
If you’re looking for a way to amplify your marketing and take your SEO to the next level, it’s imperative that you take content resourcefulness seriously. In doing so, you’ll discover what it’s like to fully leverage every individual piece of content your business produces and enjoy the benefits of reaching a wider audience with a more compelling message.
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The Typical Approach to Content and SEO
Developing a 1,000-to-2,000-word blog post takes a lot of time. No matter what anyone tells you, or how well you know the subject, the process of putting that many coherent words into a blog post and optimizing it for WordPress (or whatever CMS you use) takes time. Just consider all of the steps required in the process:
- Brainstorming an idea
- Performing keyword research
- Conducting a competitive search analysis
- Outlining the blog post
- Writing the blog post
- Optimizing for keywords
- Optimizing technical SEO
- Finding or creating graphics
- Loading into CMS
- Publishing and sharing on social media
- Post-publishing SEO (like link building)
- Responding to comments
A simple blog post never takes “just an hour” to create. If done well, most blog posts take several hours by the time it’s all said and done. And if you aren’t willing to take the time, then you have to be willing to pay someone else to perform this laundry list of tasks on your behalf. In either case, you’re paying (either in the form of time or money).
Thankfully, there’s a better way. And if you’re willing to dig in and be more resourceful with your approach to content creation and SEO, you’ll find that it’s possible to get so much more value out of each individual piece of content you create. In other words, you’re able to generate a much higher ROI on the initial investment of time and/or money.
Content Resourcefulness: A 21st Century SEO Skill
As the term suggests, content resourcefulness – also known as content recycling or content amplification – is all about squeezing every last drop of juice out of each individual piece of content you create by turning larger content assets into a collection of fragmented pieces that can be created and shared to add maximum SEO value. In other words, one blog post could be turned into a YouTube video, a series of social media posts, and an email campaign. Likewise, a single YouTube video could act as the basis for a new blog post or series of LinkedIn posts.
Repurposing content yields a number of benefits, but is most commonly leveraged as a way of:
- Saving time. By taking the content you’ve already created and splintering it into a variety of other content resources, you can save hours of time every single week (and have a whole lot more to show for it).
- Increasing exposure. If you’re a smaller brand with limited organic search traffic on your website, a single blog post won’t move the proverbial SEO needle for you very much. It takes months and years of steady content creation to get the sort of results you’re seeking. But with a resourceful strategy that fragments a single piece of content into a variety of customer-facing content assets, you can quickly increase exposure and enjoy both short-term and long-term benefits.
- Enhancing SEO. From an SEO perspective, you should be doing everything you can to increase the “stickiness” of every piece of content you produce. By leading with resourcefulness, you’re able to maximize the SEO power of every post and do more with less.
Truth be told, this is just the beginning of the benefits brands experience when they begin repurposing their content. It’s a self-feeding cycle that turns content creation from a thorn in your side to a powerful brand-building tool.
11 Ways to Repurpose Your Content
Now that we’ve laid the proper foundation for why it’s necessary to be resourceful with content, it’s time to dig in and get super practical with how businesses and brands of every size can actually put a smart strategy into place.
The first step is to make a list of the content you currently have on your website. In particular, pay attention to the evergreen topics that will continue to generate value over time (regardless of hot trends and news angles).
The second step is to review the analytics and/or use subjective analysis to figure out which of these content pieces are most popular with your target audience. Ask yourself:
- Which evergreen blog posts get the most monthly traffic?
- Which pieces of content seem to resonate with people most?
- Which posts get the most shares and engagement on social media?
As you conduct a thorough analysis of your existing content, you’ll most likely zero in on one, two, or three evergreen posts that have the potential to serve as cornerstones for your content strategy. And while you can always add new content to the mix in the future, it’s helpful to start with one of these.
It’ll look different in every situation, but here are a few powerful ways anyone can repurpose a high-quality piece of blog content and begin experiencing the benefits mentioned above:
1. Lead Magnet/Content Upgrade
Blog posts are great for getting a prospect’s foot in the door, per se. It’s an easy, approachable way to give a visitor some value and indoctrinate them into your brand’s ecosystem. But if you’re looking for a way to drop even more value on someone, a lead magnet or gated content upgrade is the way to go.
These resources, which require the reader to provide an email address in exchange for the download, come across as more authoritative than the average blog post. Options include:
- Checklist
- Cheat sheet
- PDF version of the post
- List of tools or resources
- Template or swipe file
- Fill-in-the-blank sheet
- Printable resource
You don’t even have to do much other than add on/reformat the content you’ve already created. Slap your brand’s logo onto it, add a little bit of context, save it as a PDF, and set up an automated email campaign that sends out whenever someone fills out the opt-in form on your site.
2. eBook
When it comes to longer evergreen posts, you might be able to expound upon what was written and turn it into an ebook.
The great thing about an eBook is that it automatically carries a high degree of weight and authority that isn’t imparted with a simple blog post. And while there are a few things you’ll want to do to spruce up the blog post before turning it into an eBook, you can use the majority of the existing content and simply slap a cover and table of contents onto it.
Whereas a traditional book typically needs a minimum of 100 to 125 pages to even be considered worthy of printing, there’s no minimum requirement for ebooks. Even if you only have enough content to fill 35 or 40 pages, you can go to “publishing.”
You’ll almost certainly have to beef up your existing blog post to transform it into an ebook, but don’t be intimidated. Take each section of your blog post and turn it into a chapter. Add anything you feel like you skipped over or left out of the blog post. Then create some custom graphics, charts, graphs, and/or pull-out quotes using a tool like Canva. (Adding a couple of graphics to each chapter can increase the length of your ebook by dozens of pages.)
3. LinkedIn & Medium Posts
Generally speaking, taking a post on your blog and copying and pasting the text into another post (onsite or offsite) is a big “no-no.” Google will quickly pick up on this and slap you with a duplicate content penalty. And rather than amplify your SEO, you’ll actually hurt your results. But there is an exception to this rule. (Actually, there are a couple of them.)
Unbeknownst to most business owners and marketers, you can repost existing content from your website or blog to both LinkedIn and Medium without any sort of penalty. You’re literally able to copy, paste, and publish. It’s as simple as that.
While there are some best practices – like making sure the blog post version is published first, creating a unique headline for each version, and always linking back to the original post – you don’t have to do very much.
By publishing your content to LinkedIn and Medium, you increase your organic exposure and give your content an entirely new audience to reach. Blogger Ryan Battles used this strategy once on a blog post that had only received 224 views over its entire lifetime on his website. After publishing to LinkedIn, he got 2,087 views in a matter of weeks. In other words, he got 10x the exposure simply by reposting. That’s a no-brainer!
4. Guest Blog Post Series
One of the best methods of enhancing search rankings and driving organic visibility to a blog post is through link building. And out of all the link building strategies that exist, none are more powerful than guest blogging.
Guest blogging is the practice of publishing original content on someone else’s blog in exchange for the opportunity to post a backlink to your own website. It’s a great way of generating visibility with a new audience while also telling Google that your content is authoritative and valuable.
When most people write guest blog posts, they come up with an entirely new topic and then link back to a related blog post on their own website. But if you’re looking to be resourceful, you can simply repurpose what you already have.
In most cases, there’s a whole lot more to write about a topic. You can almost always dig deeper. And if you’re super strategic about it, you might be able to turn one blog post into a series of guest blog posts. Simply take each subheading from your original post and create a new post that dives deeper into this topic. (Be sure to include a backlink to the original post as a way of improving your blog’s own SEO.)
5. Email Campaign
In much the same way that a blog post can be fragmented into an entire guest blog series, you may be able to splinter it into an email campaign.
Unlike a guest blog series where you have to rewrite all of the content to avoid duplicate penalties, you’re free to do whatever you want with email. You could copy and paste each section of the blog post and turn it into a separate email with a strategic call-to-action at the end of each message.
A good three-to-five-part drip email campaign spaced out over 10-14 days is a really good way to add value to people who are already on your email list. It keeps you top of mind (and might even start conversations with a few customers who had forgotten about you).
6. Social Media Posts
Many businesses and brands see social media as a thorn in their side. It’s something they know they ought to be doing more of, but simply can’t muster up the time, energy, or motivation to do something about. But here’s the thing: You’re probably overthinking it.
If you have existing blog content, then you have a treasure trove of social media posts without even realizing it. Every 1,000-word blog post can easily be turned into 5-10 short-form posts for every single social media platform. That means if you have profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, you can turn a single blog post into as many as 20-40 posts. That’s enough content for an entire month of posting!
But do you want to know the real power of this method? Using a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite, you can set these posts to automatically repost indefinitely over a period of several months. In other words, you can automatically publish the same Facebook post every 90 days. And if you do this every time, you write a new blog post, you’ll suddenly have the most active social media presence of any brand in your space (without having to lift a finger).
7. Facebook Group Post
On a related note, you can always repurpose content inside of Facebook groups that you’re a member of. The key is to do so without coming across as spammy (which could cause you to be removed from the group).
Rather than posting a link and saying, “visit my blog post,” you want to lead by adding value. Grab the most valuable nugget from your blog post and create an entire post where you simply give away valuable information for free. At the end of the post (or in the comments), you can include a link to the original post and tell people to visit for more information.
8. YouTube Video
Despite the massive popularity of YouTube – and the frequency with which most people use it in their personal lives – very few business owners and marketers are tapping into its value. If you want to maximize each piece of content on your website, start by turning every post into a YouTube video.
Depending on how conversational your blogging style is, you might be able to use the post as a line-for-line script. But if it sounds too stuffy and academic, you may have to rework the post. Either way, adding video to the mix is a great way to increase value.
9. Facebook Live
Not interested in recording a long form video. Try doing a weekly Facebook Live where you take a part of your blog post and casually talk about it while recording yourself with your phone’s camera. This casual approach breeds engagement and allows you to reach your audience in a totally new way.
10. Podcast Episode
Podcasting has exploded onto the scene over the past couple of years. And believe it or not, starting your own podcast is easier than you probably realize. With just some basic equipment and a simple podcasting platform, you can launch your own show and reach your audience with a brand-new medium.
Most podcasters struggle with knowing what to discuss. But if you’re already blogging, you just take each blog post and turn it into a podcast episode. You probably won’t get a massive response right away but be consistent and let your show mature. Google is taking podcast content seriously and you’ll eventually generate some significant SEO juice from this channel.
11. SlideShare
A SlideShare presentation might seem like an archaic form of content that would never work in today’s online marketplace, but don’t be so quick to discount it. Plenty of brands have successfully turned blog posts into SlideShare presentations (and it doesn’t require very much additional time or effort). CopyBlogger, for example, used this same method to turn one blog post into a presentation that was viewed more than 99,000 times.
Creating a SlideShare presentation is as easy as turning each section of a blog post into a PowerPoint slide and then uploading to the platform. Once uploaded, native users can find it on the platform. You can also share the presentation on other social media channels. (They work especially well on LinkedIn.)
Get a Head Start With SEO.co
At SEO.co, we believe in the power of high-quality content to amplify SEO, increase visibility, and drive revenue for small and large brands alike. And being resourceful with the content you create is a great place to begin.
If you’re looking for a partner in link building and content marketing, we would love to begin building a relationship. We’ve worked with thousands of brands over the past decade and would love to add your name to the list of businesses that have scaled their organic traffic and exposure with high-quality content and links. Let’s chat!
Tim holds expertise in building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams.
When he's not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach...preferably in Hawaii.
Over the years he's written for publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal, ReadWrite and other highly respected online publications. Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.
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