How to decide which content to repurpose?

Everyone advises you to repurpose content—and for a good reason. It helps you expand your reach, reinforce your message, publish new content frequently without creating it from scratch, and rank higher on search results.

But how do you decide which content to repurpose? One mistake, and you could waste time, effort, and dollars without gaining much. But don’t worry.

We have been repurposing for our clients (with 10X ROI: more views, leads, and paying customers) and know the secret to finding the ideal content to repurpose.

Here are the five tips to get you started:

1. Search for evergreen content

Evergreen content is content that’s relevant and valuable for months and years. It’s immune to short-term trends. Let me explain.

If you create content on the recent election news, you can’t repurpose that 15 days later. Why? By now, it’s yesterday's news, and no one cares about it.

But, if you have an in-depth article on “How to acquire your first paying customers,” you can repurpose it 2-3 months later, even two years later. People will still find it relevant and helpful.

Here are some types of evergreen content:

So, filter evergreen topics from your archives (blog, YouTube videos, social media posts) and convert them into different formats. You can repurpose one blog into a YouTube video, e-book, podcast, email newsletter issue, and social media content.

2. Find popular content

Repurposing your popular content (most views/shares/comments) is the best recipe for content success. Why? People already love those content (else, why will it be popular?), and if you spice it with a few changes, success is inevitable.

Here are a few tips for finding your popular content:

a) Scan your Google Analytics. Look for the posts with the most traffic, shares, and comments. Repurpose them.

b) Similarly, dive into your YouTube analytics and find the videos with the most views, watch time, likes, shares, and comments. Turn them into podcasts, shorts and reels, and a blog post.

c) Analyze your social media content. See which of your Twitter threads, LinkedIn posts, or Instagram carousels are performing great.

3. Repurpose content that needs updating

If you’ve been publishing content for years, you’ll have a few of them with outdated research, examples, or perspectives.

For example, say you blogged on “How to do SEO: A step-by-step guide” last year. But today, you know 3-4 lesser-known SEO tricks (in addition to the already mentioned ones). Plus, you would like to include a few client case studies and update the post with the latest stats.

That post is ripe for a makeover. Repurpose it with the latest details.

4. Hijack trends

There are times when a few topics are the talk of the industry. For example, in 2017, everyone was talking about Influencer marketing. If you’d content around it, you could have repurposed it on multiple platforms and capitalized on the trend—attracting more traffic and lead.

There are four ways you can spot trends:

a) Do keyword research

Look for what your users are searching for on the different platforms. Type in a keyword and let that platform autocomplete it with suggestions.

For example, I typed in content repurposing on YouTube. Here are its suggestions:

These are keywords that your potential users are searching for on YouTube. So, if you want to repurpose your content on YouTube, you can repurpose it around these topics.

Similarly, you can find autocomplete keywords on Google and social media.

b) Listen to your audience

Read your reader’s comments on your blog posts, YouTube, and social media. You can even directly ask them what content they’d like to consume.

Search for commonalities between these and repurpose topics accordingly.

c) Be active on social media

Social media platforms (specifically Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit) are ideal indicators of your users’ most pressing problems. Read their and influencers’ posts to find the trending topics.

d) Seek insight from the industry

Every industry has a few popular publications, authors, and people. Read their content/ask them to find the trending topics.

5. Repurpose all new content

Repurpose each new long-form content—blog post, YouTube video, podcast, research papers, and more. You likely spend hours and invest huge dollars into each of them—so why not repurpose them onto different platforms to maximize your ROI?

Your YouTube video can be a blog post, Instagram Reel, Twitter thread, and social media graphics. Similarly, you can turn your new podcast into an article, social media content (Twitter thread, LinkedIn post, Instagram carousels), and short-form videos (share a <60-sec clip as an Instagram Reel/YouTube short).

That’s it! You know how to find the gems to repurpose. Start repurposing today and reap the rewards for years.