Recycling Old Content

For many websites, there is an almost constant need for new content to stay relevant, attract new visitors and retain existing ones. Repurposing previously published content can be one way to make this job easier or, conversely, to offer content in a new, fresh way. In this blog post, we'll look at the ways you can reuse old content.

Adapting or converting content into new formats

Content that has already been published or used can be reused in various ways, which has several advantages. The main one is that you can re-purpose content to an audience that you may not have reached before. This gives you a further influx of visitors to your website and creates new opportunities.

Recycling content is also often easier than creating new content. After all, you've already researched the figures, have experience with the topic and know what was particularly popular about it thanks to tools like Google Analytics. This means that you can often reuse content more quickly than starting from scratch. And you can serve a topic or keyword better than if you only offer the content in one way.

Podcast or audio clip

If you convert your written content into podcasts or audio clips, you can not only attract new visitors, but also make your website more accessible for people with visual impairments. This target group can then easily listen to the content and does not have to do so with the automatic robot voice.

audio clips or podcasts are therefore best placed directly over the written content. And platforms such as Spotify or Apple Podcasts can also be used to tap into completely new target groups. After all, these platforms already have a large user base that is always on the lookout for new and interesting content. So you can also appeal to these people.

Video for YouTube

YouTube is also a platform that offers great opportunities for website operators who focus on content. Short and long-form videos have a huge audience that can be reached on YouTube, as this site already has a large global audience. Videos that stand out and go viral can quickly attract millions of viewers. Will your video about the "best USB mouse for Windows" also attract millions of viewers? Of course, this is not realistic in every case. But even the strangest and most unlikely topics can still find a large audience.

Your previous blog post or a page on your website can be transferred relatively easily into a video and, ideally, embedded directly on this page. This way, you can offer existing visitors to your website to simply watch a video on the topic or read it instead.

Infographic or social media post

Blog posts or pages with a clear conclusion or points where percentages can be read can also be turned into infographics, charts, graphs and tables. With such images that can be made from these, you can attract a larger audience on social channels as this provides a short "snackable" version of the content.

A handy tool that can be used for this is Canva, where you can easily include dots and with the templates they have for this, you can quickly make a nice result out of it. Without having to spend a day creating the graphic components yourself.

Create an e-book or white paper

If you already have a nice stock of existing content, you can also convert it into an e-book or white paper. However, this is not as quick as the other options described here. With the exception of a whitepaper. An e-book involves quite a lot of work and can take several working days. After all, you want your e-book to be readable and not just a cobbled-together whole. Often a flowing text is required to connect the individual pages together, as well as the arrangement and adaptation to a .pdf file or an e-book file extension such as .epub.

e-books or whitepapers are often an 'upsell' or a way to convert visitors into paying customers. An ebook or whitepaper itself doesn't bring much traffic to the website itself, but can be used as bait for an email address or a way to generate revenue from your blog or content site in addition to ads.

Have you already made efforts to recycle your existing content? Let us know via social media!