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We are living in an era where we have witnessed and experienced the death of mainstream media and the democratization of traditional information systems and development practices. Now, instant communication platforms have provided content creators with their own stage and the power to attract and include people from anywhere at any time, allowing content to have earned its rightful place as King. Content and content creation is defined as the contribution of information to different forms of digital media with the purpose of the audience using it in specific contexts. Although that might sound fairly straightforward, content creation is a complex skill and has a lot of moving parts at all times. Those who create content in any capacity such as to market themselves or a business, understand the strenuous amounts of time, effort, and energy that go into a single post. These content creators know that building and growing an audience and a devoted following is not an easy process, especially when a huge portion of seeing strong results is based on coming up with new and innovative ideas and concepts that haven’t already been touched on. When having used what seems like the majority of your original ideas, it may appear challenging to create fresh, engaging and unique material on a regular schedule, especially when other creators in the same space are also developing compelling content. Fortunately, content repurposing (also known as content recycling) is a smart and helpful tactic. High achieving content creators recycle their previous work by re-contextualizing the piece of content and expanding on their original idea followed by presenting it in a refreshing way.

When considering the idea of repurposing content, it may lazy or transparent. You may think that without hesitation, your audience will know that this information has already been presented, however, if you’re reworking and reviving your content in a meaningful way without being repetitive, then the re-purposing of your content can actually greatly benefit your followers. By breaking down large pieces of content such as blog posts or e-books into digestible chunks like a series of videos or graphics, can help the consumer better understand the information in its new form. Another example of recycling your content is interviewing someone on a topic you’ve already covered to gain an alternate perspective or re-working a podcast episode into an Instagram post, or even implementing a contest/giveaway based on previously distributed material.

‍Many content creators drive inspiration from other creators in similar industries, and this can be positive behaviour as it leads to different and unique views on various topics and can even lead to possible collaborative endeavors. There are only so many ideas after all so it’s critical to acknowledge and comprehend the difference between gathering inspiration and motivation from other creators in the space and allowing that to steer creativity within your content, versus reformatting the exact same ideas from others.

When you are re-using your formerly assembled content, it is important to be aware of what content repurposing isn't. Recycling your content is not taking articles from other websites, reworking them, and then labeling them as your own idea. It is not posting or uploading your same exact content across all of your channels (remember to use each of your channels for its intended purpose). Content repurposing is not reiterating the same information over and over, or blatantly taking someone else’s posts and re-posting it as your own. It is good to be aware of the do’s and don’ts when reviving your content in order to maintain authenticity and truthfulness to your audience and yourself.

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If your brain is constantly overflowing with new ideas, then you may not feel the need to recycle content for quite some time, however, there are some added benefits to re-using old material despite being on the non-stop idea train. So, why recycle old content? There are a multitude of phases that go into the creation and implementation of content. This includes research, ideation, ensuring your catering to your target audience and segmenting those audiences, content creation, revision, content optimization, ensuring consistency amongst your work, engagement, and more. (This order is subject to change depending on how you’re creating content and what type). Throughout these stages, you’ve spent a lot of time on likely just a single piece of content, so by re-purposing old content you’re able to save yourself a lot of time as you have already done the research, collected the data, and gone through several more of these phases. Deciding which pieces of content to recycle is up to you and/or your team. By reviewing and re-shaping high-performing content, you already know your audience was responsive and enjoyed engaging with that material, and by re-approaching and re-structuring lower performing content from a new angle, you have the opportunity to change your audiences original perspective. A great way to address the recycling of content is to start by diving deeper into topics that require further attention. What may have been a simple graphic could have the potential to be an entire email newsletter and even be developed into a video series. Growth as a content creator includes the growth of your audience, and your new followers have likely not been exposed to previously released content. By being able to reiterate and update your previously built content allows those newer members to experience this information for the first time. Finally, recycling your content is highly beneficial for your SEO (search engine optimization). By re-using similar content, you are optimizing and targeting keywords that help your page get recognized for having valuable information and resources. The higher the frequency of which you are able to reiterate specific topics and demonstrate your value to your consumers, the higher ranking you achieve.

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When to recycle your content is completely up to you and how you have designed your current content strategy. If ever you are feeling uninspired or in need of something new to engage and feed your audience with, it's not a bad idea to revisit previously distributed content for the possibility of a deeper dive into older topics. As for how to re-purpose your content, as previously mentioned this requires determining which content can still provide your audience with value and can be restructured specifically and appropriately for each of your channels. The struggles and challenges of content development often consist of maintaining high quality and consistent branding, maintaining consistent output, determining content marketing ROI, clearly identifying strategic alignment + KPIs, proving credibility and authority, developing content with a customer-centric mindset, budget, and much more. By thoughtfully re-purposing your content, it is likely you will break through many of those challenges as you have the ability to allocate more time towards specific areas of your content strategy that prove to be beneficial for your brand and identify areas that require attentional in order to produce growth.