Long ago, there was a time when, in the ExoB2B blog, we would put together a compilation of the best posts of the year, every year, as a way to reuse our best content.
Our archives have a lot of useful and popular content. It would be a shame to leave them there to die! It’s true though, who goes on a blog other than to read the latest post published and distributed on social networks or by newsletter?
Very few do.
In fact, I would like to read your comments on the subject below.
So, I went through a long period where I didn’t want to know anything about the Repurposing Kings. This method was equivalent to seeing only old content on blogs in the long run.
Long live creativity and novelty!
This is an image from Buffer’s blog, which illustrates what was being written. Less creation and more promotion… The promotion of “oldies”…
The water flowed under the bridges and I changed my point of view: there are finally good sides to the reuse of content.
Here are five tips that really pay off, to intelligently reuse or recycle your old content because unlike what the TV ad says, they are not “sertpuariens” (In French).
1- Republish blogs that are dated but whose subject is still current by refreshing them
As I mentioned, we have a bank of nearly 500 blogs saved on all major B2B marketing topics since 2009:
- Automation
- Web design and development
- Artificial intelligence
- Product launch
- Influence, content, inbound, mobile or integrated marketing
- Martech
- Brand awareness
- Strategic positioning
- Marketing research
- Referencing – SEO
- Social networks
- Communication-marketing strategies
- Thought Leadership
- Marketing transformation
There are more, but we have to limit ourselves…
In bold are the topics that I prefer and that I write about most often. We have a lot of posts in our archives whose content is still very relevant in 2020, even though I myself have been writing them since 2015 for ExoB2B, such as the one on inbound marketing influencers.
The subject of influence marketing is so present in today’s marketing landscape that Lee Odden, an expert in B2B content marketing, devotes all his energy and the majority of his blog posts to it.
Whether we like them or not, influencers still play a very important role in marketing, depending on their types, which was the subject of the post.
Speaking of influence, we’ve arrived at my second tip:
2- The publication of annual rankings
Yes, yes… It is indeed a form of reuse of content from the previous year but, it has been updated. And believe me, it works… “big time”!
For SEO but it also has a huge impact on social networks, particularly Twitter and an important impact for the notoriety of our blog and our company.
This is a major tool in a “Thought Leadership” strategy, which we have done over a three-year period. You can also read the report in this case study: A B2B campaign that has influence.
3- Transform blogs for other platforms and vice versa
I like this one, even if we don’t use it often enough. In short, it’s a matter of finding a series of blogs on the same subject and making them, either an eBook, or why not, a new series for our newsletter or content for new training.
Or even better: convert these blogs into a video series or podcast subjects!!! Same blog content but reused on four new platforms…
And as the subtitle says, it can be the other way around. Thus, we published an eBook on personas in B2B and the content was reused by Lynda St-Arneault in this blog post and by Alain Thériault in a training.
4-Compilations of the best blogs
As mentioned at the beginning of the post, another great way to intelligently recycle content is to publish a compilation of the best posts.
Whether it’s from the year that just ended or, it could be, the Top 10 of the last ten years as 2019 marked the 10th anniversary of Exo’s blog.
You see the trick? It’s beautiful and rewarding on so many levels.
5- The reuse of major social networks
The reuse or recycling of content in a blog has, as an analogy, a new use of social networks. And here I choose my words carefully.
New use does not necessarily mean identical reuse of social networks.
A blog post that is recycled may mean using social networks for its propagation, by using available channels differently or by using new channels that were not used when it was first published.
The traditional Facebook-Twitter- LinkedIn-YouTube quartet could then be revised to make room for another including LinkedIn-Instagram-Pinterest-YouTube. The latter, as you can see, is more image oriented.
And above all, do not forget that this choice is also made according to the lifespan of the content on these networks. As shown in the table above, our blog post has an average lifespan of two years, a lifespan that can be extended with reuse.
But we must not lose sight of the fact that on social networks, it’s quite different.
Our traditional quartet offers a duration of sight or life between 18 minutes and 20 days while the second offers a duration between 21 hours and four months.
And yes, I cheated a little …
I would add a sixth simple trick used under each post on this blog, which is to offer readers a choice of 3 or 4 old posts that might be of interest to them.
If you have any questions or comments, or would like to share with us your experiences of “repurposing content” in B2B…
Write to us. We like to share!
As a member of the NextBlue Alliance, a group of companies offering IBM Watson Artificial Intelligence-based solutions, ExoB2B is well positioned to help your business in your digital shift
