Are you out of ideas when it comes to what to post next on your business’s blog or social media pages? Or maybe you have little to no time to make new pieces of content that your customers would love to hear about.
If you find yourself in this situation, then be sure to stick with me until the end of this article, because I’m going to go over a real world example of how to repurpose content using the five step strategy that I outlined in my prior article. If you haven’t read that article already, I highly recommend you read that immediately after this article or before you finish this particular article.
So if you’re excited as I jump into a real-world example of how to repurpose some content and give you some ideas of how you can do the same, then be sure to check out my YouTube channel to get new videos every single week.
Without further ado, let’s get started on this case study for repurposing content.
In this article, we’re going to go into a lawncare services website. And from my research, I saw a thing engaged a local SEO agency to help them out. And overall, I would say that that agency did a pretty decent job. However, there are a ton of opportunities that can still be uncovered as we go through the five step process of repurposing content.
So here you can see with this example of the five reasons to hire a landscaping company, that they are giving some helpful tips and things to think about when you’re engaging with a landscaping company.
What I’m going to do here is, I’m going to put it into a word counter site to see how many words this content has. And what I’ll find is that it has around 800 or so words give or take.
This is a decent post, but it could definitely be a lot more in depth in terms of being an authoritative piece, if they wanted to further improve their ranking for this particular topic area.
So what I’m doing on the screen here is, I’m pulling a few posts and I’m seeing how long each of their posts are. So that can try to get a general sense of how much content they have on their site. So here, I’m just copying and pasting some of the key posts that I have been looking at on their site and seeing how many words they fall into.
Step 1. Take stock of what you have and what’s most popular.
Now let’s jump into step one, which is taking stock of what we already have in our content. As I work my way through their site, what I’m trying to figure out is what is already ranking really well on their site, so that we can get the biggest bang for our buck in terms of our time when we’re repurposing their content.
And when I start to notice is that there are a few key posts that pop up specifically things like spring flowers in Texas, driving them a ton of traffic as I pull them up in SEMRush. However, the downside to this particular post is that there isn’t that much intent when it comes to search intent, when it come to the phrase like this.
However, they also rank for things such as Dallas lawncare, as well as mulch versus rock. This sort of post on mulch versus rock is a perfect example of an informational post that could be super valuable for a lawncare company like this company.
And as I’m going through SEMRush, what I’m looking for is, I’m trying to find what are the corner pieces of content that are already ranking well, because I know that this is also the sort of stuff that (a) a gets searched a lot, and (b) would be really valuable if it got repurposed.
What I’m doing here is I’m filtering down between a hundred and a thousand in terms of volume, and then looking at everything that falls under the keyword difficulty of a score of at least 80.
So these are the sorts of keyword phrases that are a little bit easier to rank for when it comes to long tail SEO.
The next thing that I’m doing is I’m essentially going through these posts and trying to understand the sort of content that’s been outlined in this post. So here you can see that I have seen this post in terms of the types of flowers for your garden is around a thousand words. And so that’s some pretty decent content.
And what I’m also noticing is that their homepage is ranking for Dallas lawncare. And one of the reasons why is because the word Dallas has actually worked into that page about 13 times on their homepage.
And then the last example you can see here in informational posts in which we’re covering some key topic areas such as what are the benefits of mulch? What are the benefits of rock and landscaping and more?
And so what I’m using there’s, I’m using a scraper tool, which I’ll link in the video description. It’s a free extension, which allows you to quickly identify some of the key headers in the content that you are looking at. It’s a really great way for you to get a sense of the overall outline of the pieces that you are doing your audits on.
Step 2. Create a shortlist of the existing content pieces you think can be repurposed.
The second step that we learned about was to create a short list of the content we think we’re going to repurpose. So what I’m doing here is I’m working my way through the blog and finding pieces that I think could make for great repurposing.
A good example is a seasonal guide for spring landscaping. And another good example is landscaping tips for first time home owners, as I’m going through this first page of results. Another great example is how to protect your lawn from holiday foot traffic from Thanksgiving. This is a great example of some seasonally based content.
I’m also seeing some opportunities to repurpose the content around the reasons to hire a landscaping professional. And lastly, I’m seeing an opportunity to use the testimonials that we have as well as our project gallery, a little bit better in terms of potentially crafting a story with that sort of content that we have on our site.
So something you’ll notice as I go into the project gallery of this landscaping business, is that they’re showing you actual results of their work. But they’re not attaching any potential stories of those exact customers. So this would be a great opportunity for us to repurpose the content of the pictures we have here with potentially more intention, as well as storytelling to help build up our brand.
As we start to shortlist some of the pieces of content we can repurpose, what I want you to start thinking about is the triangle that we went over in the last video and that triangle was thinking of things in terms of audio, visual or print. Since everything we’re pulling in this example is going to be pulled from a blog, everything is currently in print version.
So what I’m going to do here is I’m going to make a spreadsheet. I’m going to title it, Dallas Lawncare Service Content Repurposing. From here, what I’m going to do is I’m going to copy the post titles as well as the post URLs, and then put together a simple matrix as to what content I can potentially repurpose in different forms of media.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to pull the post titles, the URLs, and then list what the original format of the piece of content is. And from there, think about what other types of content I can create from this same exact piece?
Then what I’m going to do is in this spreadsheet, I’m going to set up some simple conditional formatting. And what I can do is I just go into format, conditional formatting, and I set each of these equations to be equal to yes, no, as well as original.
What that’s going to do is it’s just going to serve as a visual indicator for me, as I work my way through this set of posts that I can potentially repurpose. The next thing I’m going to do is I’m going to include some data validation so that there’s a nice little dropdown that we can use as we start to use these posts.
And then all I do is I carry down this formula by using the shortcut on the Mac of command D or you can take that lower right corner in the Excel file and drag it all the way down and then all the way to the right.
And what you’re going to get is you’re going to have a nice table and is going to break down specifically the different types of content that these pieces of content could be turned into.
So what I’m doing here at this point is I’m choosing a few select pieces that were in my shortlist and putting it into my spreadsheet. And what I’m also doing as I go through this, as I’m reviewing each of these posts, thinking about how I could potentially repurpose this content.
So as I look at this landscaping tips for first time homeowners posts, what I’m noticing is there’s some great general advice for first time home owners that I could potentially piece into sound bites or small snippets, and a quick video.
I could make this page so much more engaging if I just thought about how I could potentially make a short video that accompanied this post, or even expanded upon the tips that I outlined in this particular post.
The other thing that I’m noticing is when I start going into the post on foot traffic, we have a few cool tips in terms of cool weather, and preparing your lawn and whatnot. And so these are the sorts of things that could potentially be smaller bite sized pieces of content as we start to use these.
Step 3. Answer how you would make a bite-sized, condensed, or super charged version of the existing content.
This leads us into step number three, which is when we’re going to answer how we’re going to make bite-sized super condensed versions of the content that we already have so that we can repurpose it.
For example, we can create something like Seasonal Lawncare Tips in Under Five Minutes. This could be an ongoing video series that we could then translate into audio format and then share with our customers.
Another example I came up with was, Three Must Knows for Protecting your Lawn from Foot Traffic. We could record a super short video with a lawn and talk about some of the ways to prevent foot traffic. And then we could actually release that video on YouTube and then also make something like the audio only version, and then share that with our customers.
We could also create something like essential landscaping tips for new homeowners. This, I would imagine, could be like a series that we send to anybody that we work with that’s a first time homeowner.
And then the last idea I had was something like an infographic on the reasons to hire a landscaping company. This could be a great way for us to be the source, pull some core data and as well as potentially put it in a more visual manner than just the manner that we are showing things today.
The biggest takeaway I want you to think about as we’re repurposing this content is you want to give as much upfront value as possible. So, what I mean by that is we need to be positioning ourselves to help as many specific customer profiles as possible.
For example, first time homeowners, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of first time homeowner customers that we are constantly working with and talking about the sorts of problems that they’re often asking us as they’re getting a quote from us.
Hopefully from these examples of some repurposed content, you’re starting to get a better sense of how you can reuse your existing content.
As you’ll notice one of the easiest ways that you can stretch out your content even further is to create series of posts.
So I alluded to something like a weekly series for first time homeowners. I also talked about reasons to hire a landscaping company. So you could actually drip that out to be four or five messages that it would be sustained value over time with your prospects.
I know the big thing here that I’m doing is I’m thinking about things in terms of cross-platform distribution. So what I mean by that is, aside from YouTube, you could focus on, what sort of value you could give your email subscribers?
So there are three ways that I can think of right off the bat in terms of repurposing this content and then sharing it with our distribution channels.
One way could be like a welcome series for your new email subscribers. Another way, for example, it could be as a lead magnet, so you could put together every single key blog post in this blog and then specifically have it be a free download for anybody that visits your website.
And a third way that this company could make further use of their existing content is to make a new section of their site for free downloads. That would be like a how to section. So what I would imagine in this situation is you would answer every single key question that people are always asking you, like mulch versus rock, whatever the case may be.
I’m not that familiar with landscaping, to be honest, but ultimately what you’re trying to deliver is so much informational value that the customer or the potential customer is thinking to themselves, “Wow Landscaping is super elaborate. And maybe I just want to hire somebody to help me with this”.
At that point, they’ve gotten so much valuable content from your site, and they’re probably just going to contact you because they know that you’re a trusted source for authority around that space.
Step 4. Do or delegate. Get things done.
All right, so now that we’ve cooked up a ton of potential ideas for repurposing content, the fourth step is to decide whether you’re going to do or delegate. And what I mean by that is, are you going to do the legwork in terms of these content marketing ideas, or are you going to delegate it to somebody else?
In this case, what I found was that this lawncare company actually engaged a local SEO agency that charges anywhere from 1000 to $5,000 a month for their services. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you have the budget in place, you can always hire an agency to potentially help you there.
It can be a total hit or miss though, with respect to those agencies. So make sure you do your due diligence in terms of what you’re getting with these potential services.
If I was to be engaged by a lawncare service in Dallas, I know exactly how I could beat this particular site because honestly, the things that this SEO agency did were just the bare essentials that got them on the first page rankings, but it didn’t create a protective mode.
If I were to continue building out the authority of this site, what I would consider is adding some more story behind the website. And what I mean by that is they could have a short video in which the owner of this lawncare services sharing more about how they got started.
By creating more authenticity with your potential customers, you can help create more opportunities for your prospective customers to connect with the values that you’d care about in your business.
Honestly though, the decision to do or delegate this to somebody else really comes down to your budget, as well as the value of each potential new lead in your business. If each of these new customers is several hundred dollars of recurring revenue, then that’s something in which paying an SEO agency to work with you for a couple months for a couple of grand could be a great ROI.
If on the other hand, each of your leads is only worth like $50 in value, then it’s probably not worth it to hire an SEO agency versus doing it yourself. It really comes down to what your cost of acquisition is as well as the budget that you have in place and how fast you’re looking to get results.
Step 5. Schedule every piece of content’s repurpose release date and promote where possible.
The fifth step for repurposing our content is to schedule out every single piece of repurposed content that you’ve created and promote it wherever as possible.
What I mean by that is let’s say you’re the lawncare company and you made that series of short videos that would repurpose your blog content. Well, in that situation, when you might want to do is you might want to distribute these in your existing Facebook pages, as well as your Twitter pages. You could also start to promote these videos or your new YouTube channel in your email newsletters or your old school handouts that you’re giving your customers already.
The key thing I want you to remember here is, as you’re promoting, you want to always be coming from a place of delivering value for your customers. As long as you’re delivering something of value to your customers, they won’t find it annoying, but if you’re trying to just create something for the sake of creating something, then you’re going to start to get on their nerves.
You’re going to want to go over whether you are promoting the repurpose content within the first few days of release, within a few weeks of release, within a few months, within a year, and so on. As long as you are recycling this content so that it can be seen by as many potential customers of yours as possible, it can be a great way for you to stretch your existing content even further.
Big takeaways
There are two big takeaways that I want you to remember from today.
- The first one is that there is almost always a way to repurpose existing content. What it requires you to do though, is it requires you to take a step back and think about the fundamental value that this piece of content is good for. And from there, you can think about all the potential customer profiles that you could help.
- The second thing that I want you to remember is that you should always be trying to educate your buyer. We’re living in a world in which consumers prefer to buy things after they already know almost everything or everything that they think they need to know about this product before they buy.
It’s the same reason why the Apple store is so effective. You get to go to the store, try out the product for yourself, experience it for yourself, educate yourself, ask any questions with the genius, and from there, make a purchasing decision. So the same thing applies for your service or product.
There you have it though, a real world example of how you can repurpose content using the five step method I went over in my prior article.
If you haven’t already gotten access to my five steps for repurposing content, be sure to check that out here. I include it in my digital marketing jumpstart kit, which will help give you a ton of tips and tricks to help you get started with your content marketing efforts.
If you liked this article, be sure to check out my YouTube channel to get new videos every single week. I’ll help take you from zero to self-starter as you grow your business, get more customers, and hone your business acumen. Also, feel free to share this with anybody that you think might benefit from learning how to repurpose their blog content.
In my next post, I’ll go over how to find content ideas for free.