Repurposing content might sound like a quick way to get out of creating something fresh and original.
However, repurposing content like an older blog post into an infographic is one of the most effective ways to increase the ROI of your content marketing.
There is more to repurposing than changing a word here or a phrase here or there and reposting. It takes existing content and improves its value by adding new information or transforming it into a new medium for consumption.
Repurposing and optimizing old content is one of the core principles of our Hyperlocal Lead Generation Services to help drive traffic and leads to your website.
Some simple but effective examples of repurposing existing content include transforming a:
- Video into a blog
- Blog into a video
- Main blog/service page points to an infographic
- Service page into a blog
- Infographic into a blog
- Series of guides into a downloadable ebook
This guide will help you develop a proper content repurposing strategy to recapture lost engagement and keep your brand top-of-mind.
What Is Content Repurposing?
SEO best practices evolve over time, making updating and optimizing old or decaying content essential for websites. While many webmasters overlook the importance of content pruning and optimization, they are essential practices for maintaining traffic and complying with Google’s E-E-A-T policies.
At its core, content repurposing takes existing content and adapts it into a different format, angle, or platform.
This goes beyond copying and pasting or tweaking a few lines—true repurposing involves transforming the original piece into something fresh and engaging for a new audience or purpose.
Examples of Effective Content Repurposing
- Blog post → Infographic
- Webinar → Blog series
- Video → Social media clips
- Customer testimonial → Case study
- Email series → EBook
- Blog → Podcast topic discussion
It’s important to distinguish repurposing from duplication. Reposting the same article on multiple channels without changes can harm your SEO and bore your audience. Instead, think of repurposing as reimagining your content or presenting the same core information to suit a different audience or content medium.
Benefits of Content Repurposing
Repurposing content is a low-risk, high-ROI strategy that offers content creators several benefits.
1. The Research Is Already Done
Creating high-quality content often starts with in-depth research. Whether you’re crafting a blog, a whitepaper, or a newsletter, gathering reliable sources, organizing ideas, and forming a compelling message takes time.
When you repurpose content, you’re building off that existing research and structure. Instead of starting from scratch, you’re making the most of the work you’ve already done. Often, you collect more data than you can use in a single piece, which becomes an excellent resource for additional formats like videos, infographics, or email series.
2. Reach New Audiences
Not everyone consumes content the same way. Some people love long-form blogs, others prefer quick videos, and some engage most with visual content like charts or graphics.
Repurposing content into multiple formats helps you reach different audience segments. That blog post you wrote last year might resonate with visual learners if turned into an infographic. A podcast transcript could become a highly shareable blog article for your SEO campaign. The possibilities are endless.
More formats also mean more places to publish—think Pinterest for infographics, YouTube for tutorials, or LinkedIn for long-form thought leadership articles.
3. Reinforce Your Message
In marketing, repetition isn’t a bad thing. Most people need to hear or see a message multiple times before they act on it.
Presenting the same message across different platforms and formats reinforces your brand identity, core values, and calls to action. A prospective client who sees your blog, infographic, and video on the same topic will have a clearer, more consistent impression of your business.
Plus, repetition across formats helps solidify your brand voice and makes your company more memorable in a crowded digital space.
4. Generate More Backlinks and Improve SEO
Each new format or version of a piece of content increases the number of pages and platforms where your brand shows up, providing an opportunity to generate backlinks.
Let’s say you write a comprehensive blog post on industry trends. You then turn it into a LinkedIn article, a YouTube video, and an infographic that others embed on their sites. That’s four different pieces of content with potential to attract links, drive traffic, and boost your domain authority.
Every repurposed piece becomes a new door into your ecosystem, increasing visibility and improving your rankings without starting over.
5. Save Time While Maintaining a Steady Flow of Content
Let’s face it—creating original content takes time and money. Repurposing allows you to keep up with the demand for fresh material while minimizing creative burnout. Instead of constantly churning out new ideas, you can maximize the value of what you’ve already created.
Marketers and business owners who feel stretched thin often struggle to stay consistent with publishing schedules. Repurposing solves this by creating a content pipeline from a single asset. One in-depth blog can spawn weeks’ worth of content when broken into videos, quote cards, newsletters, and more.
How to Decide What Content to Repurpose
Not every piece of content is worth reusing. Here’s how to choose the best candidates for repurposing:
1. Previous Top-Performing Content
Start with blog posts or pages that have had high traffic, strong engagement, or solid conversion rates in the past, but have recently been devalued by search engines. Google does consider age strongly, as older pieces of content will slowly lose steam the longer they sit on your website.
However, republishing a piece of content with updated information and a fresh timestamp will almost automatically be ranked higher in Google’s algorithm, especially as it will most likely have tons of backlinks pointing to it.
For example, go into SEMrush or your Google Analytics and look back 1-4 years for top-performing content to find examples that are no longer ranking, but have had success in the past.
2. Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is ripe for repurposing every few years, as information tends to evolve in every industry, and it gives you opportunities to drive awareness to your brand.
For example, evergreen content can be easily turned into tutorials, FAQs, infographics, or downloadable guides that stay relevant long-term.
Additionally, you can turn evergreen content into lead generation bait in the form of downloadable guides, ebooks, and whitepapers.
3. Underperforming Content With Potential
Sometimes a blog flops not because the idea was bad, but because the format wasn’t right. If you believe a post had strong insights but failed to gain traction, consider transforming it into a video, webinar, or visual asset. A different medium may work better for certain topics, such as transforming a DIY or installation blog into a video.
4. Perform a Content Audit
Perform a thorough content audit to develop a holistic strategy and content calendar around optimizations and new content. This will identify opportunities for growth and weaknesses in your current content marketing strategy that can be exploited with content optimizations.
ContentMender offers all prospective clients a free mini content audit of all existing content to help fine-tune your strategy using our proven SEO-driven content marketing formula. To learn more about our approach, schedule your free consultation today and get your free content audit delivered to you ASAP.
FAQs
Is content repurposing the same as reposting?
No. Reposting typically involves sharing the same piece of content again with minimal or no changes, while repurposing involves transforming the content into a new format or angle. For example, taking a blog post and turning it into a short video or infographic qualifies as repurposing—it’s more strategic and tailored to different audiences or platforms.
Will repurposing content hurt my SEO?
Not if it’s done correctly. Repurposing can help your SEO by driving traffic from different sources, increasing time on site, and earning more backlinks as long as you’re not duplicating the same content word-for-word across multiple pages or platforms. Be sure to add unique value and context to each version of the repurposed content.
How often should I repurpose content?
There’s no hard rule, but a good strategy is to audit your content quarterly to identify top-performing or evergreen pieces that can be repackaged. Consistently repurposing even one or two pieces per month can lead to a steady stream of high-value, multi-format content without starting from scratch every time.
