Content creation is essential to get your audience’s attention and convert them into leads and customers. But content creation is also time-consuming, and can take time away from your business. One of the ways to cut content creation time is through content recycling or repurposing content. Knowing how to repurpose content effectively will help you save time and reach a wider audience. Try these content recycling ideas to get more value out of your current content.
How to Recycle Content
Content recycling or content repurposing means making a few changes to a piece of content to move it to a different format, platform, or reach a new audience. Before getting started on content recycling ideas, there’s a few important things to know about how to repurpose content effectively.
Look For Your Best Content
To save time in content creation, it’s important to first look for your best content to repurpose. Repurposing content that didn’t perform well to begin with won’t help much. This content should be evergreen; content that is consistently relevant and interesting. Look for the following:
- Blog posts with the most traffic
- Guides or gated content with the most downloads
- Posts with the most shares
- Videos or podcasts with the most views or listens
- Informational webpages with the most visits
Consider New Platforms
Once you’ve honed in on your best content, next decide where you’d like your recycled content to appear. Don’t choose a platform or medium at random. Consider where your audience is likely to find your content. For example, LinkedIn might be better for a B2B industrial firm, while Instagram might be better for a B2C consumer products business. You might be targeting a slightly different audience with your repurposed content than your original, but it’s important to have an audience in mind. Consider the following as you assess where your recycled content will live:
- Who is your audience? Are they active on this platform? How will you reach them?
- Where do you already have a following? What platforms do you already have experience with?
- How long will it take to repurpose content for this platform? Is the effort and time realistic?
- Can your original content piece be reasonably recycled to this new platform and medium?
Select Highlights
With your original content piece and new destination in mind, it’s time to select highlights from your original idea. Generally, recycling content means taking a longer content piece and distilling it into a shorter one. In this case, you’ll want to select the core concepts of your content and the most reliable sources. If you’re lengthening a short content piece into a longer one, take the core concepts and do some research on how you can expand them.
Repackage and Recycle
With your highlights and new medium selected, you should have an outline for how to repurpose your content. This will probably involve some graphic design, content reorganization, and reformatting. You might need some video editing or SEO experience. Do some research to see how experts recommend making a great post on your new platform. The content recycling ideas here can also help you get started.
12 Content Recycling Ideas to Cut Content Creation Time
1. YouTube Videos
YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world, right after Google. Creating YouTube videos is at the top of our content recycling ideas because they’re likely to hit a wide audience, and video content is increasingly valuable. Though it will take some time to create a video from a detailed blog post or webpage, the highlights you extract will give you an outline and a script. Collect some images and animations to illustrate your point and you can create an informative, impactful video in a fraction of the time.
2. Slideshows
Slideshows are an effective way to display ideas or concepts quickly, while keeping your audience’s attention. Though slideshows generally won’t perform as well as videos, they do generate more shares and engagement than text or single images. To create an ideal slideshow, keep your information brief, make your graphics compelling, and support your information with reliable sources.
3. Social Media Videos
Social media videos are generally shorter than YouTube videos. Recycling your longer content into a series of shorter social media videos can help you significantly cut content creation time. The ideal length for social media videos is between 30 seconds and three minutes, depending on the platform. You’ll still need some compelling graphics or animations, but this is a great way to reach your followers and delivery informative content.
4. Infographics
Infographics allow you to share data in a compelling and memorable way. If your original content was information-heavy, an infographic will be a particularly useful content recycling idea. With a bit of graphic design experience, you can create a highly shareable content piece that will look appealing on your website or any social media platform.
5. Social Text Posts
Social media is still filled with text. Though text posts don’t particularly stand out, they are very easy to create. Repurpose your longform content highlights into short snippets for your social media accounts, and add pictures or graphics where necessary.
6. Class or Course
This content recycling idea may require you to spend a bit more time expanding your content as well as reformatting. However, it can also help you create a valuable content piece. Use your informative blog post, webpage, or downloadable content to create an instructive course. You might share this on an online course marketplace or repurpose your content to create an additional lead magnet.
7. Email Drip
Use highlights from your content piece to create an email drip to stay engaged with your leads. Keep your emails brief, highlight important information and link to longer content if you have it.
8. Checklist
A checklist is a brief instructional tool that’s easy to repurpose from your longer content. You can make your checklist items as short or detailed as you like, share on your website or social media, or make your checklist gated.
9. Ebook
Ebooks have become another popular way to educate consumers, demonstrate your authority, or even develop another income stream. Your ebook may be long or short, though it should be informative enough to be worth your customers’ time and, if you are selling it, money. You might combine several content pieces to create an ebook, or expand a content piece.
10. Guest post
Guests posts can be an effective way to reach a new audience and demonstrate your expertise. Instead of duplicating a post you already have, recycle your content slightly to suit your destination blog or site.
11. Webinar
A webinar or webinar series is a useful educational tool that your audience, leads or customers can consistently come back to. Like your class or ebook, you can save content creation time by combining your blog posts, web pages, guides or other informative content.
12. Podcast
If you already have a number of effective videos, you already have most of the content you’ll need for a podcast. This is a great content recycling idea to save time. Make some slight audio edits, write a transcript or use automated tools to make a transcript. Select the right podcast directory and you can reach a wider audience with little effort.
Use these content recycling ideas to cut your content creation time and extend the reach of your content. With a fraction of the time it takes to research and create new content, you can repurpose and redistribute content that already performs well.