9 Ways To Resurrect Traffic and Repurpose Old Content

In the world of creating content, one of the constant problems you’ll face is coming up with new, fresh ideas that your customers are interested in. Your site requires fresh new content on a regular basis, but it’s difficult to come up with topics and headlines that will catch the attention of those who have been with you forever. Few companies realize that they can repurpose and recycle old content rather than struggling through new ideas or writer’s block. The trick is to do it correctly.

Every piece of content you put on your website represents your brand. It may get shared on social media, rank your site and convert visitors into loyal customers. We have a few ways you can repurpose your old content to actually bring new traffic to your site.

1. Try a New Format

Old content is most likely in the form of text such as a blog post or article. One way to repurpose old content is to take the text and use it as a narration for a new type of content. Use the text to create a video or to design the content matter for a different type of content. A new video can be placed on the same page as the original content and add quality to the original post. Perhaps the hardest part of this concept is creating the video, and we have a few tips to help you. The following are a few options you can use to create a video.

• Go over the main ideas in your blog and simply record the screen in order to show your visuals online.
• Convert the blog post into slides, add photos to them and create your video as a webinar.
• Repurpose the blog into a presentation and record yourself giving it on camera.
• Simply record yourself talking about the most important parts of the blog.
• Use Facebook’s live recap feature to re-share the content and save your recording.

Once you’ve chosen your format and made your video, there are a few more steps you have to follow before your project is done.

• Add to the quality of the post by embedding the video on the original page.
• Run ads for the blog post and your new video on Facebook and YouTube.
• Include the link to the video and the blog to your customers in your newsletter.
• Always promote your new content.

2. Create an Infograph From Old Content

Most visitors want your content in a visual form that they can digest quickly. Today’s average customer doesn’t have the time to read a lengthy blog post to learn what they want. Infographics are ideal for taking old content and turning it into something new and easy to digest. If you have content that went viral in the past that provides great information, change the form and create an infographic from the information.

There are a variety of programs on the web that make it easy to make an infographic, meaning infographics are better than videos when time is short. Check your Google results to see which of your posts ranked the best, and create an infographic that is branded so even when it’s shared, consumers know where the idea came from.

3. Create a Podcast

A podcast in an easy way to repurpose old content. In today’s world, online marketers love podcasts because consumers can learn more about your brand while they are doing something else like driving or exercising.

If you have a radio voice, just record yourself reading the original popular post and use it in the podcast. If your voice doesn’t work well, you can hire someone else or go in-house to find the ideal sound for the podcast.

4. Include Content In Email Blasts

If you’re skilled at email marketing, you have new people constantly signing up to join your email list and get information about your products and company. As new customers sign on, they may have missed the original content that was so popular.

You can reuse this content in an email blast to catch the “newbies” up to speed on what your company has done in the past. Your goal is to design a campaign that includes anywhere from 5-20 of your best blogs or articles over a couple of months in your email blasts. This will keep readers coming back to your site and keep them engaged.

5. Use Categories or Tags to Create Listicles

If you’re using WordPress for your content, then you are in luck. WordPress makes it easy to repurpose and reuse old content because you can categorize and tag any content you post. If you’ve been tagging and categorizing your content for a while now, you can pick one from your history and use it to create new content.

The particular category or tag you choose will have a list of posts that are connected to it. Pull those posts up and convert them into a listicle, which is essentially an article in a list format. For example, think of Buzzfeed posts and how many popular posts are in the form of lists. This is what you want to create with your old content.

6. Create a SlideShare Presentation

Successful content marketers know how to take a large chunk of information and convert it into a way that a viewer can digest it quickly without a lot of effort. SlideShare is a tool that can help you do exactly that. Take your old content and turn it into a SlideShare presentation. Use only the most important points from your post and reinforce them with images, graphs and stats that are interesting and relevant.

SlideShare presentations can be embedded similar to a tweet, image or YouTube video. At the bottom of the slideshow, click the share button and copy and paste the “Embed” code to your site’s blog.

7. Turn Several Posts Into an E-Book

One way to establish authority for your brand within your industry is to publish an e-book. Fortunately, this may be easier than you think if you use old content to create a new product. You may have already written enough content for an e-book within your posts on your blog. Sort through your previous posts and find related articles. Combine them into one single e-book with each post being its own chapter.

Once you’ve finished your copying and pasting, you’ll need to invest the energy and time into making it attractive to readers and consumers. You can choose to either sell your e-book or give it away to promote your brand. Upload your book to Amazon to bring attention to your company and brand. In this way, you are using your old work to create an entirely new way to market your business.

8. Use Social Media to Re-Share Evergreen Content

If you had an evergreen post that went viral in the past, now is the time to share it again. If it was popular in the past, it’s likely to be popular again. You can tweet or post the same popular posts in order to never let a good blog die. Always re-share and refresh posts that are your biggest hits.

Use social media platforms to share your popular evergreen posts. Post the link on your Facebook page, your Twitter feed or your LinkedIn profiles. Every time you share it, just change your text a little and update your content guides each quarter.

9. Create a Webinar

If you have a blog post or article that is particularly informative and popular, you may be able to repurpose it with a webinar. Webinars are ideal ways to build your brand and establish your company as an expert force in the industry. Creating a webinar is easy if you take your old content and repurpose it. Essentially, your webinar is already written and ready to go.

Successful webinars are about more than content. Once the webinar is created, you have to promote it effectively to guarantee that you aren’t just talking to yourself during the presentation.

Use Old Content Now

There’s no time like the present to start using your old content to create new, engaging posts on your site. If you’re having a hard time coming up with new writing ideas and fighting through writer’s block, take your good ideas from the past and make them work for you again. Update, repurpose and re-share to keep your site lively and your content informative and valuable for your visitors.