As we begin to close out the last few weeks of the year, and if you’ve got a few extra dollars in your marketing budget to spend before the year’s end, you might think: Why bother with new content considering the time and effort it takes into producing something entirely new?
However, what if I told you there was a way to connect your brand message to a much wider audience using your existing content? There is a huge misconception about content — specifically, that once you put it out into the world, you’re done with it. This couldn’t be farther from the truth, which is where repurposing content comes into play.
Let’s look at a few ways you can get started with repurposed content during these last few weeks of the year (Trust me, it’s still possible) and how to re-engage old contacts.
Recycle content with a proven track record of success
Anything you produce can be used farther down the line, and there are a ton of benefits that come from adding repurposed content to your marketing strategy, including:
An SEO boost: If you repurpose an old blog post into an interactive asset, for instance, you generate new opportunities for backlinks, and authoritative links from high-ranking sites can help improve your rank for specific keywords.
Reach a new audience: Think about repurposed content as a follow-up email. Your initial email might not have been opened, but the follow-up serves as another opportunity for the recipient to see whatever it is that you sent. The same principle goes for repurposed content: Your target audience might have seen your initial content, but sending the content out again in a new format is yet another way to get your brand message in front of the right eyes.
An easy place to start is by reviewing your site analytics to see what specific pages had the highest engagement within the last year. When looking at your report, keep an eye out for content that drove the most traffic and social shares.
Usually, these old posts need just a bit of tweaking to become relevant again. Here are a few easy ways you can modify old posts:
Update a post with new facts and figures: Check out any links in a high-performing post to see if there are opportunities to update your sources. Does it link to a social media report that was updated this year? Add that new link.
Create a SlideShare: SlideShare is one of the 100 most-visited sites in the world, according to the company, so if you’re not uploading your content to the site, you’re already falling behind. However, it’s easy to get started — particularly at the end of the year. Last year, Fractl (my employer) put together a quick deck on 16 takeaways we learned from a year of marketing research. It generated thousands of views, in large part because we sent the deck to any contacts we worked with that year, who shared it with their communities.
Turn already published content into a podcast: With 42 million Americans (PDF) listening to a podcast weekly, there’s a good chance that some of your audience prefers content they don’t have to read. If you’re new to the platform, start by simply recording yourself reading any high-performing blog posts and adding the recording to the post. The most effective use of podcasting, though, comes from using your own content as a starting point for a much larger discussion.
Repost content on different social accounts and forums: You’ll find that most of your content that is worth repurposing is also evergreen, and one of the great things about this type of content is that it’s typically as valuable as it was when you first published it. Schedule new tweets and Facebook posts that feature this content, and check out sites like Reddit and Quora, where your content can help answer questions in the different communities.
Re-engage old contacts who have gone to the back burner
It’s not uncommon to see your email engagement rate slow down, which is why a lot of companies implement a regular subscriber purge. (HubSpot, for instance, actually saw some benefits when they cut 250,000 people from their email list).
But before you cut ties with some of these contacts altogether, consider one last Hail Mary effort. For example, I put together the following email for contacts who hadn’t engaged with any of our emails within the last six months:
Aside from seeing our engagement rates increase significantly thanks to a purge of subscribers who are no longer interested in our content, we also saw a ton of old contacts not only ask to stay subscribed but bounce around our latest case studies — typically some of our highest-converting content.
Another easy way to generate new interest from an old contact? Filter your email list to those contacts who came out as “undeliverable.” From there, see if you can find their new email address and reach out personally — offering some of your latest content to show what they’ve been missing.
Do something special for your current clients
Re-engagement doesn’t mean you need to focus solely on potential leads; you should also focus on clients that already exist. Offer discounts or special offers to loyal customers, clients or email list subscribers. Being extra kind to your clients and customers not only generates sales, it’s also a great way to get referrals.
Bottom line: No matter the time of year, your marketing efforts should never slow down
Repurposing content and figuring out how to re-engage old contacts are two big time-savers for content creators — particularly when it comes to making the most out of your end-of-the-year marketing efforts. While not all of these efforts can guarantee success, remember that it’s a lot easier to promote content that has proven itself to be engaging to contacts who have shown an interest in what you’ve had to say at some point.
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