Maximizing ROI with Repurposed Content

Are you an avid recycler? The team members at Calysto are, and although we’re as green as they come, that’s not the type of recycling we’re talking about. Around here, recycling means repurposing—taking one piece of content and using it again and again and again. And if you track all this content in a content calendar, you can ensure you’re using it in the most effective ways.

Repurposing delivers several strong benefits: It helps you make sure your company’s key messages are reinforced in every piece and that your marketing budget is maximized. It also ensures that content has a certain amount of shelf life so that you can conduct longer-term campaigns. Finally, it delivers strong ROI vs. using the content in a one-off manor and moving on quickly to the next topic or theme.

Let’s make one thing clear: Repurposing content does not mean a quick cut and paste job and voila, you’ve got a great new piece. It means taking a piece of existing content and:

• Expanding on the entire topic to make a longer article
• Taking a longer piece and “atomizing” it into a series of smaller individual pieces
• Determining how to use the content (article, eBook, blog post, press release, white paper, case study, Q&A, Top 10 list, podcast, webinar) across different channels (website, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, partner or customer sites, and more).

Repurposing in Action

Let’s use this specific blog post as an example. To repurpose the content, you could:

• Expand it into a longer white paper by removing the first-person tone, including industry research and building out sections on each of the repurposing ideas
• Use the intro from the white paper as a speaking abstract and submit it as a proposed panel session at an upcoming industry event
• Create a list of the Top 10 recommendations for repurposing content and offer it for publication on a website that writes about content marketing
• Use it as the basis for a press release announcing the “Top 10 Ways to Repurpose Your Company’s Content” and distribute across the newswires
• Turn that Top 10 list into an Infographic
• Break down the infographic into bite-sized pieces and socialize it on LinkedIn and Twitter
• Create a series of videos based on each section of the infographic
• Embed that Infographic back into a new blog post

One thing to keep in mind—you don’t have to do this work at once, but it makes sense to lay out your topics and themes in the aforementioned content calendar. Then you can tackle the list piece by piece while starting on the next campaign. The key is to stay at a particular theme or topic until the ROI starts to drop and you’re seeing fewer likes and retweets, leads and website traffic. Then it’s time to move on to the next big idea (which you’ve been working on in the background) and start the cycle over again.

What’s your best example of repurposing content? How many ways have you found to reuse a single piece of content?