Content recycling for sustainable marketing

min read

It is naïve to assume that all content is always fresh and entirely new. Imagine if that were right – we'd see much less content (no more duplicates ever!).

Content Recycling For Sustainable Marketing

There's this saying that everything new is something old that's been well-forgotten. Well, yes and no. It is naïve to assume that all content is always fresh and entirely new. Imagine if that were right – we'd either see much less content (no more duplicates ever!) or humanity would be progressing with incredible speed and constantly coming up with unique ideas. But that's just not how this game works.

New Content: Does It Exist?

Even prolific and genius writers or scientists, the ones whose names we study in school, never came up with one unique idea after another. No, quite the opposite – they kept working on one idea, expanding it, polishing it, redesigning and reinventing it, and listening to their inspiration. Over and over and over again. Inspiration is what helps us look at old things in a new way and see possibilities. In that sense – new things are old but seen in a different way. The same goes for any content, really. Ever thought about movies as recycled or repurposed books? Well, that's what some of them are, for better or for worse. Content is constantly repurposed, improved and changed. Copy-pasting is simply not an option. Not only because it's boring but it's also awfully harmful, whether it's in your website or in a scientific publication. With that said, when it comes to content marketing and your efforts to offer really useful content to your customers or potential leads, there are a number of ways you could go about this.  

The How's and Why's of Repurposing Content

Before you start repurposing or recycling content you need to consider why you're doing it and who you're targeting. As recently noted, mapping content is an important part of any good content marketing strategy. It helps you target specific groups of people within your audience with the right type of content, depending on where they are positioned within the sales cycle. Repurposed content is one of the ways to go about this. It's not simply about doing something with old content when you've run out of ideas but about taking that content and targeting it even more specifically to a certain audience with a certain goal in mind. That goal could be anything from helping them move along the buying cycle to offering premium content to loyal and long-term clients. Repurposing your content is also a way of adding sustainability to your marketing efforts and driving home better results without having to constantly produce only one type of content. So, without further ado, here are some of the numerous ways you can recycle and repurpose your already existing content.

1. Presentations

You can take any blog post and repurpose it into a presentation which you can then upload to, say, Slideshare. Many people find visuals more compelling than text and can even understand information delivered through visuals better.

2. Infographics

Infographics have been a huge success for the past few tears as a way of presenting information in an easily digestible manner. From cool facts to really serious statistics, infographics are an enticing way to share information succinctly.

3. Video and Photographs

Creating unique video content is high up the content ladder and especially if it is designed as a follow-up to a blog post, an article or to a certain discussion which occurred on one of your social media profiles. Good and targeted video content (a recorded webinar, for example) is equal to telling people you have a personal and professional approach and that is always appreciated. Posting photographs or pictures to Pinterest, especially if they are professional and make a good point about who you are and what you do, is also a way of adding value to your already existing content.

4. Audio

Rule of thumb in the art of repurposing content is that the more different content options you provide to people, the more people will be drawn to consider and use your content, as different content speaks to different minds. In the case of audio this could mean offering interviews or podcasts, or offering a transcript of an audio recording. Or, ideally, both.

5. Ebook, White Paper, Presentation

If you have a really good content marketing strategy and all of your content is carefully mapped and targeted, you're certainly qualified to aggregate some of that content and turn it either into an ebook or a white paper which you can offer as premium content or as bait for future leads. That depends on your personal strategy but white papers are definitely one of the best content assets out there.

6. Social media

Who said you have to have an article or blog post in order to repurpose? Why not repurpose content the other way around? A tweet is just as much content as a blog post. In what sense? In the sense that it can get an idea across. If you have a particularly ingenious tweet, expand it, make an article or blog post out of it, engage people, turn it into a survey, make an article which responds to a certain question on Twitter or Facebook or take a discussion which occurred there and turn them into a blog post. The possibilities are endless, really.

7. FAQs and Customer feedback

Repurposed content does not need to be your own, it can also come from somewhere else. Take your customers' feedback or questions which you often receive and repurpose these – make a blog post around them or add these answers to evergreen content on your website. Either way, you will be adding new and useful content which will serve you down the line. So, you see, repurposed content is not about repetition, not at all, it is about polishing and honing one's content, about reinventing and reimagining it, about presenting it from a different angle with a particular audience or persona in mind. Repurposing and recycling is about being creative and inspired about what is already present.