We’re all looking for ways to maximize the impact of our content marketing strategies while minimizing our time, effort, and resources. (And BTW, that’s not a bad goal).

The plot twist? Finding the balance between leveraging our efforts and providing real, valuable content can be tricky.

Not enough effort infused into our content often means lazy approaches to value, which means your content marketing strategy (and your audience) can suffer.

Too much effort can mean a stellar marketing strategy but a total takeover of your time and resources.

As a business owner, you’re looking for a sweet spot–and that’s where content repurposing can come in handy, a perfect little balance of creating valuable content with minimal effort that you know will resonate with your audience.

Content repurposing is when you resume existing content you’ve written or created in a new format to make its impact last longer, resonate with new audiences, and provide more value.

Repurposing content is sometimes called content recycling, which makes sense to me–you’re taking something that’s done its job and giving it a new, important job.

What does content repurposing look like?

To be totally clear from the start, it’s not a copy/paste job of your most popular blog post being directly posted on your social media.

What is it, exactly?

Let’s dive in so you can become a copy-repurposing pro.

Content Repurposing: What It Is & What It Isn't

Before you can jumpstart a content repurposing strategy, it’s crucial to know what content repurposing is and isn’t. A lot of people are under the impression that recycling content means copying and pasting the exact words from one piece of content to another.

Not only is that super unoriginal, but it can also be damaging to your brand’s domain authority and marketing goals.

When search engines see duplicated copy, they flag it as suspicious–and that hurts your SEO rankings.

All of this leads to a valuable question–what is content repurposing, and what isn’t content repurposing?

Content repurposing IS:

Sharing an older piece of content with updated info, new links, and additions
Analyzing what copy performed well for you and repurposing it (from an IG caption to a blog, from a blog to an FAQ answer on a social media post, from a social media post to an email newsletter, etc.)
Repurposing content in a new medium to reach a larger, different audience

Why Repurpose Content for Your Content Marketing Strategy?

This question could be as simple as asking another question: why reinvent the wheel?

I’m not against working hard and brainstorming new ideas from scratch–odds are, you do alot of that.

So when something like content repurposing comes along–which is totally legit, helpful to your audience, and a good content marketing strategy–I’m pretty much all for it.

If you look at your content marketing strategy and notice that some topic–whatever it might be–resonates with your audience, why wouldn’t you expand on that topic? If you know a piece of content is helpful and applicable to your audience, why wouldn’t you bring that topic into another space with a different audience?

A survey suggests that nearly 50% of marketers thought of content repurposing as more effective than creating new content from scratch. And about 65% of them said that it’s inarguably more cost-effective to repurpose content than build new content or make small updates to existing content.

Here’s my take on why repurposing and recycling content is a solid move for your marketing strategy:

You Save Yourself Time & Energy

We’ve all heard the “work smarter, not harder” talk before, and content recycling absolutely applies. If you create awesome content that your audience sees as valuable, you’re doing a good job–but you don’t get a special prize by doing it all from scratch all the time. You don’t win some sort of medal for never going back to old posts or blogs and asking, “How can I bring this topic back to the surface in a helpful way?” Taking this route can be incredibly valuable for your audience while saving you the time and effort of brainstorming totally new topics and ideas.

It Can Boost Your SEO

It’s suggested that repurposing content can give you a little SEO push. When you have multiple types of content focused on a set of similar keywords, search engine crawlers are going to start recognizing you as the authority on those keywords. (Think about it as you would think about cornerstone content).

Reaches Different Audiences

So, your audience loved that blog post you wrote about a certain topic. Think your Instagram followers might love to see something about it, too? Probably. Repurpose that blog into a social media post series that you can share with a different audience. Creating a great blog is one thing–creating a great blog and corresponding email campaign, YouTube video, and social media series is another. That’s using the same information and effort to tackle a variety of audiences.

How to Repurpose Content Like a Copywriting Pro

Find What Worked

In my opinion, there’s no point in repurposing content that isn’t interesting or applicable to your audience, and that means that before you can make the choice to repurpose content, you need to know what is interesting and applicable.

Take a peek back at your blogs, your whitepapers, and your social media content. What sparked interest among your audience? Ask yourself–what got more views, more interactions, more likes, and more follow-ups?

The topics that resonated with people most are the ones that they likely want to know more about, and those are the ones you should consider repurposing and recycling.

Repurpose Across Your Platforms

That blog post you published got a ton of attention–why not use those themes to create an effective Instagram post?

The About Us section on your website tells a great story, and you always get amazing kudos for it.

Why wouldn’t you expand that into a blog post? There’s a great FAQ section on your site that your YouTube audience would benefit from hearing. Turn that into a quick video for them to see.

No, I’m not recommending you ever copy anything word for word from one part of your site to another, but you should use high-performing copy as inspiration and guidance for your content’s repurposing.

The content you recycle and reuse can take on so many forms, like:

An infographic
An eBook
A social media post (or series of posts)
A blog
Site content
Video scripts
Podcast scripts
Pull quotes for your blog
Audios for reels or TikToks

If content performs well and is worth using, why make your job one million times harder and start from scratch?

Recognize what’s working, repurpose that content, and watch that content do the legwork for you.

Then, make it a habit–use this method to help with consistency in your content marketing strategy!

Use the Branch Method

Did you know that every topic has a ton of other topics you could branch off it? No, I don’t know if this method actually has a name, and no, I’m sure it’s not the branch method, but this is how I refer to this scope of thinking in my brain.

Think about a topic in your mind, like “How to plan social media content for your business.” That’s one topic, right? The branch method encourages you to go further, to branch off that topic into related topics. So, you start with the “how to plan social media content for your business” topic, but that branches into related topics, like:

What is social media content?
What are the top 5 ways to up your social media content strategy game?
Does social media really matter for your business?
10 ways social media content technique can improve your business
How social media content works with your brand’s digital marketing plan
Should social media content impact your content marketing strategy?

This type of thinking can feel pretty natural to people who consider themselves inherently curious. For people like that, this list could likely go on and on (and on) pretty seamlessly. So, ultimately, all you need is one solid topic to work with so that you can repurpose content from it.

For people who aren’t as curious by nature, this way of thinking can take some getting used to, but once you start questioning everything–even the topics you’re creating yourself, you can start this process.

Need Help? Hire a Pro

If you decide that recycling your own content isn’t the best use of your time (or you just don’t want to do it), there are plenty of copywriters out there who can take the gold of your OG content and repurpose it into new, strategic copy.

What's Inside the Blog

Content Repurposing: What It Is & What It Isn't