How to get more success out of your existing content

They say new is always better right? Well, I think it’s time to disprove that statement – in the world of content marketing at least.

It can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that to serve fresh, on-trend and original content to your audience, you need to start from scratch every time. But that’s not true at all! Repurposing your existing content can give it a new lease of life that will remind your audience of your continued and developing knowledge and expertise on a subject.

Why should we be repurposing content?

• The most obvious and (probably) most appealing reason is that it saves time and money. Why spend hours trying to reinvent the wheel for a new piece of content you don’t know will resonate with your audience, when you can spend a shorter amount of time just focusing on repurposing and refreshing your most successful content?
• The rule of seven. In the interest of disproving ‘new is always better’, the rule of seven is one of the oldest marketing concepts, and is still true of customer buying behaviour today. On average, it takes a potential customer seven interactions before they will make a purchase from your brand. Repurposing your content with a consistent marketing message will go a long way in getting your brand out there to move prospects down that buyer funnel.
• In 2019 BrightEdge released a study stating that organic search holds a 53% share among traffic source.¹ So, by this logic, if you can repurpose optimised content, this will help you gain more visibility organically with potential new customers.

How can you repurpose your content?

• Repurposing involves taking content in one format and reusing the information in a different format, either to target a different audience, share it on a different channel, or draw attention to a specific message.
• For example, a thought leadership whitepaper could be taken apart into a series of blog posts, an animation could be made into social posts, or a podcast series could be turned into an email newsletter. The list really is endless.

And what about content syndication?

• Content syndication is the process of taking your existing materials – e.g. blog posts and articles – and posting the exact same content on third party publication sites to gain visibility and traffic from a new audience.
• ‘But won’t this damage my SEO performance? Google hates duplicate content!’ I hear you scream. To put it simply, no it won’t. BUT, only if you do it right: you need to make sure it is clear that it’s a syndicated piece of content by linking back to where your article was originally shared on the third party sites or your own website.
• This can be a great way to get your brand name out to new prospects, and even better, it can be done for free. One way to syndicate your content for free is by ‘guest posting’ on publication sites such as Medium, and then sharing the same content on your own website at a later date.

For more information on how you can get your existing content working harder and to plan for the future, Purple are here to help. Take a read of our 6-step guide to building your content marketing roadmap - download below. 

1 https://www.brightedge.com/resources/research-reports/channel_share

Lucy Birtwistle is a Senior Account Executive at the Purple Agency, working within the B2B team. She has extensive experience working with both B2B and B2C clients across the logistics and technology industries.