Blogging is dead, right? Nope! I have a little chuckle anytime I hear this because, as someone who’s blogged at least 3+ times per week for the last 8 years, I’ve experienced the multi-fold benefits of posting longer form content online. Between boosting search engine optimization on your website, to providing free resources and education to your audience, to just sharing snippets of your life in real time, blogging is so powerful in so many ways. And it’s not going anywhere anytime soon, pinky promise.
But… that doesn’t mean topics to blog about are always easy to come by. In fact, if you’ve ever spent time blogging, you know that sometimes it can be a vicious cycle of coming up with some solid ideas, drafting posts, publishing, and then — a drought in inspiration hits. But, have you ever thought to repurpose content for your blog? It’s one of my favorite little tricks. And it can translate to any other platform, too (like social media).
It might feel like you’re “cheating” the system because you’re not coming up with fresh, original, brand new content EVERY time, but that’s a good thing, sister! You don’t need (or likely want) to come up with something totally new each and every time you sit down to write. And furthermore — that’s just not sustainable long-term. When you repurpose content, think of it as expanding on past topics or introducing them in a new way.
Here are 5 ways you can repurpose content for your own blog:
01. Look at your top performers.
You know your girl loves digging into the data! When you look at your best-performing blog post analytics, do you see any trends? What do people enjoy reading about the most or spend the most time on? Try just pulling the top 10 to 20 posts on your blog of all time. Come up with topics and create content that’s aligned with those top performers, because you already know they’ll do well.
Consider breaking down one component inside some of those top-performing posts. For example, my posts about motherhood have always done really well on my blog, so we try to come up with more similar topics to serve the mamas wanting to read about my experiences with a new baby and parenting. You can gain a LOT of insight and ideas from things you’ve already written that have done well with your audience.
02. Update a topic with a new angle or information.
If you’ve been blogging for a while, start digging through your older posts. Is any of the information outdated, or could you expand on any of it in a more in-depth manner? Feel free to update the copy and images in old posts and literally re-publish them as new! There’s no rule against giving old posts a facelift — especially if it will be more useful for your audience if it has fresh information.
03. Do a round-up post of past content.
We’ve been playing with this idea more and more because we’ve been realizing the sheer volume of content in our arsenal behind the JK brand. We have endless blog posts and podcast episodes covering things like starting a business, building and email list, and growing on social media. So, we’ve begun compiling some of those resources into big round-up posts, so that readers can click through to more detailed information on the topics they’re interested in. Here’s an example of one of our round-ups that did really well recently!
04. Break things down into bulleted lists.
The longer blogging is around, the more we’re learning about reader habits. In general, blog readers want easy-to-read content that’s skim-able and consumable within a minute or two — max. So while long-form content is GREAT for SEO purposes, it’s not always conducive for readers to have long, flow-y paragraphs and sentences. If you’re not already, start breaking your paragraphs down into 1 to 3 sentences, and utilize lists as much as possible.
It could be helpful to take an old post with some sort of education or service component and rewrite it as a bulleted list. Publish it as something new, and see how it performs in comparison to the old post! We have a lot of luck with listicle-style articles because people can pop around and find what they need inside that type of post.
05. Answer questions readers have had on past posts.
A GREAT way to repurpose past content is to look to your readers. What questions did they have on past posts and topics? If you get several questions on certain topics, you could even do a full Q+A post out of it! Or if the question covers a more complicated topic, dedicate a full post to answering the one question. Answering questions your audience has is a way to do deeper dives on your content. Plus, it shows you’re paying attention to what your readers are asking for!
Don’t be afraid to think outside the box when it comes to repurposing content for your blog. Or maybe, in this case, it’s thinking inside the box — of past topics and posts you’ve already created! So many content creators hold themselves to the impossible standard of creating BRAND new content each and every time. But it just isn’t sustainable for the long run. Return to what’s worked before, and reframe it in a fresh way. You’ll feel way less frazzled about content creation, and your audience will know what topics to turn to you for!
Curious about how I stretch 1 piece of content 10 different ways?
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