Content Creation

7 Killer Ways to Repurpose Blog Content [Cheat Sheet]

In this article

  • Loading...

Valuable content gets traffic. And original content converts customers.

Only problem?

It’s a nightmare to create. Coming up with new material on a daily basis can feel impossible.  And it often takes a half to a full workday for just a single blog post.

But there’s hope.

You can bring in more traffic, and convert more leads by simply repurposing content for your existing original blog content. It’s one of the easiest ways to boost the results of your marketing.

Here are 7 killer ways to repurpose content and create new types of content to get more customers.

repurpose blog infographic

A cheat sheet to 10x your content output

Turn it into different formats

Refresh your old material

Turn a numbered summary into individual posts

Mix & match

The ‘hub-and-spoke’ method

The ‘one topic’ series

Just on your own bandwagon

How to compete in the content marketing hunger games

It used to be easy. It’s never been this hard.

Just a few years ago you could rattle off a ~500-word post in an hour or two.

Crank it out, share on social media, and get on with your day.

The problem? That doesn’t cut it anymore.

Because the stakes get higher when millions of posts are published on the daily. Social requires dollars to get any traction.

Average first-page search engine results on Google average 1,890 words. And Orbit Media‘s survey results show that blog post length has grown 19% in just a single year (up to 1054 words long).

length-of-a-blog-post

(Thanks for nothing, Skyscrapers.)

Length isn’t the primary problem though. Your time is.

This in-depth original content is taking significantly longer to create, too. The average post’s up 26% in the last year (with an average of 3 hours 16 minutes).

average-time-spent-writing-blog-post

While some of the best marketer’s devote up to an entire day on a single post! Amazing tools like Grammarly Premium can help shave some minutes off each article here or there.

But you ain’t hours and hours a day to devote to it. Not many do.

There are features to push, campaigns to iterate, and clients to satisfy.

Fortunately, there is a solution. You just need to use one of these seven tips for repurposing content.

 

repurpose blog different formats

Tip #1. Turn it into different formats 
turning content into video illustration

One of the easiest ways to reuse your existing original content is to take a blog post, and turn it into a speech, podcast or video.

At our content marketing agency, we often repurpose our blog post into videos to make it more engaging.

You can even take a series of blog posts around the same topic, and easily create 20-30 minutes worth of material.

But there’s another hidden benefit.

You can’t reuse text online because of duplicate content issues, which can negatively affect your SEO. But if you turn it into another format (like audio, video, or offline), then you can avoid this problem and double your content creation.

Of course, you can also flip this around and create new online content from different sources.

One of the biggest opportunities is your existing offline material, like old speeches and presentations, that could form the foundation of new online content creation.

You can even take boring information like raw data or statistics that you’ve gathered, and create a story around it to give it new life. This information can be transformed into an infographic, or a new report that will help you generate email leads. (There are a ton of free infographic templates to choose from online if you don’t want to reinvent the wheel.)

Writers are great at taking raw information and creating compelling stories around it that your audience will find interesting.

Another untapped resource is your past emails, like taking excerpts from longer explanations and answers to people’s questions and turning them into blog posts and social media posts. Frequently asked questions work well because you know if one person has that question, then more probably do too. They tap directly into the personas you want to target.

Repurposing content into new types of content is one of the oldest tricks in the book. It works to grow organic traffic and social media shares and if you have enough data and content on a specific topic, you can choose the best online course platform for your organization and create a course to sell to your followers. Not only will this provide them more value, but it could be a lucrative way of repurposing content you’ve already made.

repurpose blog refresh old

Tip #2. Refresh your old material 
refresh your old material illustration

Your own blog archive contains a wealth of information. And best of all, you already know which posts or topics were most successful.

So refresh them by updating with new information or adding new material. Creating an infographic is a great way to add more visual content to your posts.

This tactic to repurpose content gives you an excuse to reuse your old original content, while also providing the same additional valuable content that performed so well in the past. This also applies to your logo company, you can take advantage of the repurposing strategy and launch the new face of your website.

College textbooks do this all the time. They take last year’s edition, update the content with new, timely examples, and charge a higher price each year.

But be careful…

You have to make sure that the original posts you’re refreshing — and writing — are evergreen. They need to exist on their own for years to come.

That means staying away from “news” or “update” type content and focusing on tutorials or tips that will be relevant for a long time.

Just like the experts from our MasterClass review can attest, it’s the details that make all the difference!

Lastly, set up a SERP tracking tool and monitor your keyword positions. If an article is slipping for its main keywords, it may be due for an update. You’ll also be able to see the impact of your updates by tracking position improvements afterward.

repurpose blog lists summaries

Tip #3. Turn a numbered summary into individual posts 
writing illustration

Numbered list posts are always a hit and are an excellent content marketing strategy.

People love bite-sized information or tactical tips. And they’re used to great effect in inbound marketing.

Listicles are like a guilty pleasure. We can’t help but click when we see “10 Ways to…” or “97 Tips for…”.

You can breath new life into these posts by drilling down into each individual topic, and turning them into their own, full post.

So the next time you write “5 Ways to [blank]”, you can summarize each point briefly, and then flesh out each individual post into a longer explanation with more background, information, and helpful examples. You can even create an infographic to summarize the points (just like we did at the top of this blog post).

And again, you could always do the opposite.

Take 3, 5, or 7 popular blog posts on the same subject, and turn them into one summary post. This provides people with a quick reference post with concise summarizes on each major topic.

And it gives you the ability to create this content quickly by borrowing from the original content in a popular blog.

repurpose blog mix and match

Tip #4. Mix & match 
mix and match content illustration

There are two elements to every blog post: Body + Story

You will usually have several “talking points” in mind for the Body of your article. These are like your three main sections, or five steps in a process that you want to explain to readers. This is the meat or body of your content.

But there’s a problem.

People don’t just want facts and information. They’re overwhelmed with facts. And they can simply go to Wikipedia to get the raw information.

Instead, people want to be entertained and emotionally connect to your article.

So you also have to craft a theme for your content. This is the Story and slant your article has that makes it stand out from everything else like it. And it lets you inject your own personality into it.

Now once you have a Body and Story in mind, you can mix-and-match that content to increase it’s lifespan.

For example, you can take the Body of one article on your own site, and create guest posts out of it by just changing the Story. This works extremely well because you already know the post will be successful before you give it to someone.

Some people are worried about repeating themselves. They shy away from repeatedly bringing up the same topics.

But repetition is actually a good thing.

You have to put yourself in the shoes of a casual or new visitor. These people need repetition in order to understand and internalize your unique perspective.

Everyone is busy. And contrary to popular belief… they aren’t paying that much attention to you. People are so wrapped up in their own worlds that they typically don’t notice you reused the same topic on two different sites.

The repetition actually helps solidify the idea for people and helps them remember it more effectively.

repurpose blog hub and spoke

Tip #5. The ‘hub-and-spoke’ method
hub and spoke method illustration

The Hub and Spoke method is where you write one major, in-depth piece on your own blog, and write follow ups, additions, summarizations, or related news on other sites and link back to your own main piece for further reading.

This tactic is beneficial in several ways.

  • It helps you extend the life of each article by continuing to bring it up – no matter how old it is.
  • It helps you create additional content quickly because you already know all the important things to say.
  • It gets you targeted Referral traffic that will convert better than other online marketing channels.
  • And it improves your SEO with relevant, high-quality links back to your site.

As you can see, there’s really no downside.

The final benefit is that these new, additional posts don’t need to be as in-depth as your original article. So you can easily hire a blog writer, or have someone in house write quick summaries and bring in new facts to give the content a new spin.

repurpose blog one topic series

Tip #6. The ‘one topic’ series 
one topic illustration

People love bite-sized information or tactical tips. They’re like a guilty pleasure. We can’t help but click when we see “10 Ways to…” or “97 Tips for…”.

And they’re also perfect to quickly repurpose content.

You can breath new life into these summary posts by drilling down into each individual topic, and turning them into their own, full post.

So the next time you write “5 Ways to [blank]“, you can summarize each point briefly, and then flesh out each individual post into a longer explanation with more background, information, and helpful examples.

And you could always do the opposite. Take 3, 5, or 7 posts on the same subject, and turn them into one summary post. This provides people with a concise summary on each major topic.

When publishing long-form content like we’re recommending here, moving it from Google Docs can be incredibly time-consuming. Check out Wordable’s free Doc to CMS tool to make it easy.

But you can also use this technique to highlight others. People will gladly share them via social media on Twitter or in a Facebook post. This ‘one topic’ content strategy to boost your visibility on social media platforms.

For example, you could do one simple interview (3-5 questions) with 5 different people. You can even do it all through email or social media platforms.

In the summary post, you give one good quote from each interviewee. Then you follow up with the full interview for each person in additional posts.

In this scenario, not only are you re-using your content well, but you’re also having other people do the work for you (in the form of their answers to your questions).

Now, what if you can’t have experts write weigh-in?

Then get your employees to share their perspectives. They all come from different backgrounds and departments, so they probably have different opinions on each subject. And they’re probably experts in their own right if they work day in and day out in that subject. This makes creating content ten times easier.

And it gives you the ability to create additional content quickly by borrowing from the original.

repurpose blog bandwagon

Tip #7. Jump on your own bandwagon 
repurpose bandwagon illustration

Finally, you can’t always predict what posts will be popular before hitting “Publish”.

That’s as true for blog posts as it is for online marketing in general.

Sometimes you think you just produced your best work, and it falls flat. While other times you’re slightly embarrassed to publish something, and it takes off virally for reasons you can’t predict. Sometimes your analytics results refute your own personal taste.

But either way, when you have popular blog posts that really resonate with people, you need to keep the fire burning.

Here’s where you can use a little trick for expanding your content creation. Write additional angles and follow-ups. Now bring in your interviews to get the expert’s opinions. You can even write a post about all the objections – just so you can link and bring up your own post.

This is also a perfect example of where you can use the “Hub and Spoke” method mentioned above. When you have a piece of content on your own site that becomes popular, then start getting people to rehash your article and post it on other websites. You can also reshare the same content to Twitter, Facebook, or in an Instagram post.

You can use this tactic in combination with any of them. And it will help you easily double or triple your existing content output.

And best all, if the original content is good enough (and it probably is if people are talking about it, sharing it, etc.), then no one will mind the redundancy.

In fact, they’ll probably be eager to hear more.


The seven ideas for repurposing content are guaranteed to boost your online presence and search engine rankings. You don’t need to start from scratch with every original content piece you create. And you don’t need an entire content creation team like Gary Vaynerchuk.

The ability to source ideas from others, or repurpose content into new formats is a great way to reduce the time involved while ramping up the results.

Get long-term ROI.

We help you grow through expertise, strategy, and the best content on the web.