
Repurposing Old Content
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“Old content can be made new again, simply by looking at it from a different angle.”

So, we're talking about taking your old content and repurposing it. I'll explain more about that in a moment.
But first, let me share with you why I'm writing this particular blog post. It involves time travel, TV repeats (re-runs) and monetary constraints.
If you're reading this long after the early part of 2020 is a distant memory, you may not know that almost the whole world went into lockdown to combat a virus known as Covid-19. Many people had enforced "leisure" time and many watched more TV than normal.
A TV show called "Time Tunnel" has been running several times a day on one of the channels I have access to. The show was quite popular back when it first aired and it's not being shown again. That is reusing old content, but it's not repurposing. The original show production team had to find ways to save money and they saved absolute fortunes by not creating fresh content for their shows.

Let me explain.
The show involved time travel. The two main characters would be bounced from one time period to another (mostly in the past). To construct a new set for each time period every week would have been massively expensive.
Instead what the producers did was look for existing content that related somewhat to the theme of each week's show. Remember this point, because it becomes important later on.
So for example, when they had a theme about the Trojan war they looked for stock footage and old clips from films that had already been made about similar themes.
What they did with old content.
Old content, on its own, doesn't make for a brand new TV show - or even a blog post. But added in at the right moment it can fill in any gaps - which is how Irwin Allen and his team used the footage they found to flesh out their own show. Most of the people watching the show won't even have noticed that stock, or old footage was used. If the meat of your story engages your viewers they'll enjoy it.
Any repurposed content will simply seem to fit right in. I'm doing it here. I'm talking about a TV show from the Sixties and describing it to you. I didn't invent that content, or the fact they reused film clips. I'm simply repurposing the show description and a little bit of history to fit this blog post.
If you add in content that matches what you're talking about it will add to the value of your content. That's before we consider another aspect of repurposing.
Types of repurposing
This is likely not the first time you'll have heard this (from me or anyone else). You can take a written item and turn it into audio, a podcast, an audiobook, a video, a meme. The advantage is that the more forms you can make from it, the more exposure it will give you. Some people like to read text, some like to listen to audio and some like to watch video.
On this page you can listen to the article as an audio file generated automatically for me by Amazon. I normally do my own voiceovers, but I thought it might be fun to show that you don't even have to do that, if you don't want to!

You can go the other way too - you can turn the spoken word into a text article. I'll probably create a mini-tutorial on doing that if enough people leave a comment. If you want to see such a tutorial leave a comment about your own views on repurposing content.
The benefits
There's more than one benefit to repurposing existing content. I'm not talking about stealing someone else's, by the way. I'm talking about repurposing your own content. Let me list just a few of the ways you can benefit.
- More informative for your readers, viewers and listeners, if you expand on your main topic.
- Easier for Google to know what your topic is about, including related content
- Free ranking - with a longer form article that contains several related sub-topics you can get ranked for keywords you're not even chasing!
- Better engagement with site visitors - if you give them value (don't just post junk)
- Saving time and money. You don't have to pay for extra content and if you do it all yourself it saves time in creating new content. Why write a brand new 1,000 word article when you can add an existing 500 word article to older content to create a totally new one?
There's more, of course, but any one of those advantages on its own would be worth having.
When you round out your content with related content on the subtopics closely related to your main topic, you give more value to your content. No, not every single time, but more often than not. If you need a short snappy article then of course that's what you should go for. But here's something else to consider.
How old should content be before you repurpose it?
Actually the answer has already been hinted at in this post. Did you spot it? If you did, great! If not then let me explain.
You can repurpose brand new content. You don't have to repurpose older content. Every time you create a piece of content ask yourself how to repurpose it. In this new blog post I've repurposed the text into audio. I've done that immediately! No need to wait for six months.

“You can repurpose brand new content”
If you start to think of repurposing your content as something that should be done every time you create a piece of content, you'll soon get into the habit of doing so. You can even use automated tools to do it, like the text to audio plugin I used here. You can even have the main bullet points of your text turned into videos automatically with the right tools. Imagine creating a full audio of your written article, then creating a video of the main headings or bullet points. All at the click of a few buttons.
Take it further. Repurpose the repurposed content!
Take the audio you created, add it to the video you created and boom, you have the written word, audio and a video. And if you want you can upload the audio to podcast directories and the video to video sharing sites.
Exposure equals traffic
If each of those pieces of content get you a little traffic, together they get you more than any single one of them. And they can continue to do so for a long time to come. Each one can drive traffic to the other, building up your presence on your blog, on your YouTube channel (or Vimeo) or even your Podcast channel.
Why work three times harder when you can work three or four times smarter?
This sounds like a lot of work!
It may sound like a lot of work, but it's far less work than creating four totally separate pieces of content. And when you get used to it it can be very quick. If you end up with four types of content from an article, but it only takes you twice as long as the article itself, how much time have you saved? Think about it.
You just doubled your output in any given amount of time. Doubled. And when you get used to this you can do it pretty fast so the benefit increases.
The blank page syndrome

I've suffered this myself and I've had so many people tell me the same thing. Stare at a blank sheet and it's hard to know where to start.
But take something that's already there and you can follow the structure, you can edit the headings, you can modify some of the key phrases. And better yet, each one will spark ideas in your brain that lead to more content.
Why make it difficult for yourself? Even the world's best writers have trouble with blank pages. It's called writer's block. What makes anyone think it would be different for normal people like us?
Next steps
First, I'd love you to leave a comment about how you currently use repurposing, or if you don't, let me know why you haven't done so yet.
Second, I'd recommend you take a look at any blog post, or article you've created. Ask yourself how you can use it to add to something else, or to create something new from it, like an audio.
Third, if you do step two please let me know where I can see it! I won't share it with anyone (unless you give permission), but I would love to see how you've used repurposing in your own work.
Don't forget to comment and please share this article on your social media - I appreciate it!
I think it is a good idea. The thing I have to figure out is how to do it in the topic I am interested in which is a bit of a scientific field. I do have permission to use articles “as is” provided I give a credit link. I can’t change the articles, they must be as written. Since this is for a blog, I really don’t see how I can repurpose the “as is” articles. I may try using 1/2 is “as is” and then I add something after the credit area. I might have an image or video to separate the two areas. Or, I may just find a complementary topic, with not as many restrictions, and just take an article from article builder or some other plr and edit it as you state above. In a slightly different vein, I did try to make multiple slightly different variations of some videos once and YouTube shut down the channel. I couldn’t figure why other than the videos might have been too similar. So in terms of repurposing, the topic above, I would probably not want to make too many similar copies as I’ve had a bad experience with that in the past. And, as always, I wonder where all these different versions are posted? I am pretty much settled on either a blog or Youtube. I don’t do the social media thing much. So what are other options other than social media?
Hi Cheryl,
First, I would say that you should be posting on social media. I don’t like social media channels myself, but I realise that I have to use them to get my message out there and generate traffic. I’m late to that party, but I’m forcing myself to do it because it works. I’d encourage you to do the same.
With the type of article you’ve mentioned, it may be possible for you to create content (video, text, audio) that “explains” or clarifies the original article. You can use it as a starting point for discussion, rather than changing it directly. I’m taking your content – your questions – and using it to generate some content of my own – the reply.
Of course it does depend on what your blog is about. If you’re publishing scientific content and that’s a match for your blog’s niche then the repurposing needs match in some way. Are you allowed to turn the articles into audio? Or under fair use could you critique them, or some portion of them?
For the YouTube point, if you keep publishing what is essentially the same video then it does look like video spamming. If you take a longer article and turn it into a series of videos that each address a different part, that is usually ok. And doing that it’s ok to do a short recap on the second and subsequent videos of what has gone before. Think of it as the tv show technique – they very often recap a little bit of the previous episode to set the scene for that week’s episode.
I hope that helps. Feel free to post follow up questions if you’re not sure of anything.
Hi Amin – once again a very informative piece of content. I’m going to give some of this repurposing of content, especially the audio and then possibly cutting it to a quick video as well.
Chris,
Do let me know when you’ve done that. I’d love to see how you get on. If you check Michael’s comment and my reply to him you’ll see I’m intending to do some follow up on this topic. I’ll be repurposing my repurposing content 😀
Hi Amin, great Post, and excellent advice – as always. I have been using the idea of re-purposing recently to cut down on time spent creating content, and having more than one media – the written article, images relating to it, an MP3 version of it and a video hosted on YouTube. Once you’ve done a few you get a good system going and it takes less and less time. I’ve heard of sharing Powerpoint slides on another platform with a link back and even converting an article to a PDF file and hosting on another platform – so many more ways of putting content out there and having them link back to the original post.
I am using one of Prosperative’s products to help with the audio and video creation – Article Amplifier, saves a ton of time. I think repurposing is a great technique, and especially if you have access to a lot of posts or articles it helps getting over the blank page problem, which i have encountered before as well.
Michael, excellent point about PDF!
There’s also a really easy way (in Powerpoint, not sure about Keynote) to create a Powerpoint presentation from a written article. I think that would make a good, short tutorial video.
You see what I mean about repurposing content? It can even be comments from your own blog!
When I create the tutorial video, I’ll reference your comment on this post. I will repurpose your comment into the starting point of a tutorial video, that also comes back to this post since they are related content. In fact the whole of that process would make another useful tutorial, I think, of a concrete example of repurposing!.
Thanks for the comment and yes, Article Amplifier is a great little tool (of course I’m biased!)