How to turbo-charge your content planning by repurposing

With today’s relentless demand for content, it’s easy to feel like you’re on a never-ending content planning hamster wheel. Here’s how to save time and boost your content ROI using content you already have.

High-quality content can build trust in your brand, boost sales, and even help you justify higher prices. However, creating all that content consistently is a challenge for stretched marketing teams. It takes time and budget to continually optimise your content marketing plan  – both in short supply these days.

That’s why content repurposing can be a content-planning game-changer.

By reimagining and reformatting existing content, you can extend its lifespan, reach new audiences, and significantly boost your ROI.

In this quick guide, we’ll explore advanced content repurposing techniques that will accelerate your content planning and execution – at every stage of the customer journey.

Why add repurposing to your content marketing plan?

You’ve already invested budget in creating great content. So before you start chasing the next shiny idea, here’s five good reasons to make sure it’s working as hard as it can.

1. Efficiency: extract maximum value from your existing content assets, saving time and resources. Your CFO will love you.
2. Consistency: improve trust in your brand message, by making sure it’s the same  across all your platforms and customer journey touchpoints.
3. SEO: target different keywords and improve your search engine visibility.
4. Audience: reach broader audience segments by using different channels.
5. Reinforce: repeat key messages to help with retention and brand recall.

Sounds great, right? Let’s explore how you can repurpose content – and elevate your content marketing strategy by getting more runs on the board.

6 sure-fire repurposing tactics to use in your content planning

 

1. Turn long-form content into a micro-content series

Do you have whitepapers, ebooks, research reports, or deep-dive insight articles?  These are a goldmine for repurposing. Here’s how to break them down:

• Extract key statistics or quotes for social media posts
• Create infographics summarising main points
• Develop a series of short-form videos explaining core concepts
• Write multiple blog posts, each focusing on a specific subtopic.

With this approach, you can create new content for each stage of the customer journey. Keep building awareness with social posts, while driving consideration and conversion with videos and educational blog posts.

2. Convert articles into new formats

Not everyone likes to read articles and blogs. Some people prefer visual or audio content – especially if they’re consuming it on their commute. So get creative with the content you have:

• Turn blog posts into podcasts or add audio downloads
• Create video tutorials or presentations based on how-to guides
• Develop interactive quizzes from educational blogs
• Design slideshows and carousels for social posts.

AI tools can make this much simpler, but make sure the result still feels genuine before you publish.

3. Compile related content into comprehensive resources

Sometimes more is more. Can you bring together different pieces of content to create a more substantial, authoritative resource?

• Curate a series of blog posts into an ebook or ultimate guide
• Combine webinar recordings and supporting materials into an online course
• Create a themed content hub that aggregates all resources on a specific topic
• Develop an annual report or industry analysis from multiple data-driven pieces.

High-value hero content can be a powerful lead magnet, and establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry. This is the type of content your prospects will trade their email address for.

4. Localise and customise content for different markets

Expand the relevance and reach of your content to more geographic regions or more diverse audience segments:

• Translate your best content into different languages
• Adapt case studies to reflect regional business practices
• Customise visuals and examples to be inclusive of other cultures
• Create market-specific versions of reports or whitepapers – such as an Asia-Pacific region deep dive.

This is also an opportunity to spotlight more diverse subject matter experts within your business or showcase your broad reach.

5. Revitalise outdated content with updated information

Don’t let old content gather dust. If it worked in the past, maybe all you need to do is breathe new life into it:

• Update statistics and examples in evergreen articles
• Add new sections to existing guides based on industry developments
• Create a ‘Then vs. Now’ comparison piece, highlighting changes over time
• Develop follow-up content that builds on the success or lessons learned from previous case studies.

It’s important to keep live content up to date, and this can also help you make the most of its established SEO value.

6. Make it more relatable with user-generated content

Your customers and prospects can be a valuable source of content – and all these ideas should play a role in shaping your content marketing plan:

• Compile customer testimonials into a video or success stories page
• Create FAQs based on common customer queries – if you want to know what people care about, comb through your customer service call transcripts
• Develop case studies that make your clients the hero of the story
• Curate user-generated social media content into a branded campaign

Social proof is a powerful content play. Including your audience can enhance engagement and build a community around your brand – just remember they are more likely to share content that makes them look great.

Get systematic with your content planning

By now you should have dozens of great ideas to repurpose the content you love. But to give it the best chance of success, you need a clear content strategy. Follow these steps.

1. Audit current content: How do you know what to repurpose? Make sure you have a shared content inventory, and can identify high-performing opportunities.
2. Map content to customer journey: Content will have a more measurable impact when it is targeted to support each stage of the customer journey, from awareness to loyalty. During your audit, check for gaps. Is all your content top-of-funnel? Do you need more specific content to encourage referrals and reviews?
3. Create a repurposing calendar: Integrate content repurposing into your overall content planning process to maintain a steady flow of diverse content.
4. Establish guidelines: Make sure everyone understands the brand identity rules across different content formats and platforms.
5. Measure and optimise: Track the performance of repurposed content, test new ideas, and keep refining to improve the impact.

Create more content in less time

Content repurposing can help you significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your content marketing plan. As well as creating more high quality content with less effort (and budget), you’ll also improve your customer journey experience.

This is not simply recycling old material. It’s about reimagining, refreshing, and recontextualising your best content to maximise its impact and reach. That’s a strategic approach to content repurposing – and it can help you nurture leads, build brand authority, and ultimately drive business growth.

Next up: Take your content planning to the next level with data-driven audience insights.

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