Brands are investing a significant amount of time, effort and money into content marketing. We all know that content is the best way to increase brand awareness and attract the right kinds of customers. After all, substance is more important than style in the world of web marketing.
Considering the significant value represented by a brand’s accumulated body of online content, getting the most from this precious resource is critical. There are a few ways that a business can repurpose its content to maintain its long-term validity.
A Quick Polish & a Few Updates
The best way to bring your content into the present is with an honest appraisal of its relevance to a current audience and a thorough refurbishing. If you’re smart, then every piece of content you’ve crafted or commissioned will be fairly easy to bring up to speed.
If not, that should be a priority in the future. Go through older content and spruce it up to be relevant in light of current trends and viewpoints.
Markup to Strengthen Structure
While Google and its rivals have gotten quite good at assessing quality online, webmasters still need to help out search engines by structuring their content intelligently. You can do that by using things like rel=canonical
tags and 301 redirects to make content easier to index.
Restructuring your content will ensure that it’s found by the right consumers via organic search. In addition, you’ll definitely want to look into using Google Authorship markup to establish either yourself or your brand as a thought leader in your niche.
Consolidation for Clarity & Brevity
Oftentimes, content that once seemed to be quite original and relevant loses a lot of its impact over time. What seemed like a good idea at first might not fly in the present day. What was once cutting-edge knowledge might now be common knowledge that doesn’t require as much explanation.
If you knew a bit of HTML in 1997, you qualified as a full-fledged web design geek. Nowadays, everyone is at least casually familiar with it. Consolidate older articles into truncated versions for a savvier, more modern audience.
Using Social Media to Find New Audiences
Even if you place an emphasis on creating evergreen content with a long shelf life, you may find that your original audience has outgrown it. That doesn’t mean that it’s not good anymore. It just means that you need to find a new audience that will appreciate it.
If it’s truly evergreen, you can use social media to push it in front of the right eyeballs. Rather than ditching seemingly dated information, nudge it in the direction of a new crowd for a second life.
Where to Turn for Help
Though it may seem like a simple task to repurpose content, it’s actually a bit more complicated. In fact, repurposing content can be more difficult than building it from scratch for those that aren’t exactly in the know on the content marketing front. If you’re not a suave content maven, it might make more sense to hire a content repurposing expert rather than tackle the project on one’s own. With a little elbow grease, older content can clean up nicely and continue to deliver value over time.