If you run a B2B eCommerce site and have been creating content to boost your traffic, you know that every post you make can be expensive. Because of the effort, time, and money you invest into ensuring that each piece of content attracts valuable leads, eCommerce content marketers have turned to repurpose their previously published content to squeeze every bit of value they can get out of it.
Repurposing is almost synonymous with recycling, as you turn to content you made in the past and transform it through any means into an entirely new piece of content, maximizing its potential to reach a broader target audience. Through this strategy, you can produce fully optimized content relevant to your audience, giving you the necessary boost in traffic using very few resources.
In the following sections, I’ll discuss 14 different ways to repurpose your content into something more engaging and value-driven, helping you find more leads for your B2B business.
#1 Turn your blog posts into podcast episodes
The percentage of consumers who have turned to listening to podcasts has increased over the past few years, and it only continues to grow as the trend becomes ever more popular. The steady increase in podcast listeners since 2006 indicates how effective it can be to adopt audio-based content.
When repurposing a blog post or any type of content into a podcast, you need to identify which points are still valuable and relevant. While some people want to listen to something they can enjoy while going out for a run or doing errands, procurement managers or purchasing managers will likely do so while on their lunch breaks or on their commute. So it's always a good idea to tweak the content into something more conversational. Once you have these things checked, you're ready to start recording.
#2 Segmenting one article into several publications
While there's no set rule regarding what word count works best for SEO on a given blog post, it's generally accepted that longer is better. However, that doesn't always work. A deficiently performing article made in the past can still be put to good use by splitting it into several shorter posts that tackle different parts of the original content and focus on Google trends API for checking and choosing best keywords for your business It's done commonly in other eCommerce sites where some posts are broken down into smaller chunks of content that address specific user concerns related to a specific product or category of products.
For example, instead of writing a 6,000-word-long blog post about sign-up bonuses on different financial tools for businesses or individuals, it could be a much better idea to break it down into four smaller 1,500-word posts with top keywords about business credit card sign-up bonuses, crypto sign-up bonuses business checking or savings account bonuses, paying with rewards credit cards, and crypto payments.
#3 Transform content into social media posts
There is virtually no consumer in the world who does not have access to at least one of the biggest social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. But when it comes to businesses, LinkedIn and Twitter share the throne. As such, they have become home to many eCommerce sites looking to find and interact with other businesses in search of leads.
Whether it be a Twitter thread or a LinkedIn post containing a link to an actual product, the chances of users engaging with your brand or company and converting to paying customers for your eCommerce business are higher in social media posts. Like a podcast, you can take some bits of your past content, which is still timely and relevant, and convert them to any media you want—a short video, image, or text—and upload them to any platform you choose.
# 4 From blog content to Quora answers
Quora is a community of people sharing questions and answers to pretty much anything you can think of. It is a convenient platform for people who want fast solutions to their concerns, and eCommerce marketers can use it to their advantage.
By looking through Quora's questions related to previously published content, you can refurbish your old publication into something concise that directly answers the query. Millions of people use Quora every day, and by making the right tweaks and targeting the right long-tail keywords, you can easily get thousands of views and interactions. Furthermore, by including relevant links to other pieces of content, you can drive your leads down your sales funnel and turn them into valuable customers.
#5 Converting reviews into content
Do you have a product that has rave reviews from consumers? If you do, you can turn it into fantastic content that will generate more value long term. Word-of-mouth advertising and social proof are proven to help drive sales, especially when considering B2B sales. So a value-driven publication is much easier to accomplish by utilizing the testimonials of those who have bought your items in the past.
You can write a short article with direct quotations from the customers, make a slideshow of the reviews they gave, or even a short clip of the reactions of those who have bought and tried the items you sell on your site. These will get the audiences interested in the product and ultimately lead to more sales.
#6 Guest blogging
Guest blogging is a type of collaboration between bloggers, where one writer contributes a post to another blogger's wall to generate engagement, exposure, and value altogether. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement that paves the way for you and your collaborative partner to share content.
You can take different approaches to guest blogging. You can write entirely new content for another website or repurpose and combine your own content instead. Doing this makes your job much easier but still provides something different enough to be valuable to the other blog. With guest blogging, you can take an article you published a few weeks or months back as long as it is relevant and suits the topic you need to write about. You can make necessary adjustments according to the trends and your collaboration agreement.
#7 Repurpose your blog articles into videos
While some users prefer reading blogs and others prefer listening to podcasts, many prefer watching videos. Major sites such as Youtube, Instagram, and Tiktok are all commonly used to stream and publish videos, and eCommerce sites have also been using them to transition to a more digital way of marketing.
These videos require creativity, research, time, and effort to script, record, and edit. However, if you can reuse content you already have, you'll be able to skip most, if not all, of the research and even the part of writing the script, saving you time and money. Whether it's a short 15-second clip or something that runs for 15 minutes, creating videos out of previously published content will bring out a new avenue to reach your target audience.
#8 Making an infographic
You can turn many different types of content into infographics, powerful visual tools to transmit data, and other kinds of information about various products and services. Another way to entice consumers that are attracted to visuals is an infographic, a single piece of creative work that can contain anything from an overview of a product to a summary of an entire blog post. Infographics are great because they tend to be shared more on other blogs and on social media.
Platforms like Venngage, Canva, and Vimeo make creating infographics easy, so all you need to do is pick a template, some concepts, or pieces of information that you want to add from the previous content, and you're ready to start creating.
Consumers like seeing an infographic of a product because it is short, eye-catching, informative, and creative, so you have to ensure that the information you derive from your past content can be rephrased into shorter descriptions.
#9 Compile your blog posts into an ebook
Ebooks are still a feasible form of marketing, and if you have enough articles published on a given product or topic that you can compile into an ebook, you can find another purpose for your content. You just need to curate and sort content that you've made in the past couple of months, check if they are still relevant, order them in a way that makes sense, and turn them into a collection of articles that a user can read, like a manual or book.
Having an ebook on your trajectory as an eCommerce site also adds to your reputation and authority, helping you gain consumer trust in the process.
#10 Use your content for email marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to market your products or services, but it can be challenging to make promotional emails that will effectively get the consumer's attention. Using snippets of your best-performing content on your email marketing campaigns is a surefire way to increase open rates, click-through rates, and even conversion rates.
One of the best things about this is you don't need to make many changes to the content itself, as there is no need to individualize each email to generate value.
#11 Turn your podcast episodes into short articles
This is the opposite of item #1 on this list. While many people like listening to the audio, there are also those who prefer written text, as it allows them to quickly skim the post before deciding if it's worth their time. This is simply not an option with podcasts. As such, you can find another use for your podcasts by turning them into short articles, like a summary of what they actually need to know.
It all boils down to preferences, so you should ensure that you're able to cater to people who just want a quick overview of what your podcast talks about and hopefully get them interested in your products or services at the same time.
#12 Transforming your publications into how-to guides
There will always be someone somewhere wondering how to do this or that, which is why how-to guides are such a popular type of online content. Reading a bulleted list of steps that guide the reader to something rather than reading a few paragraphs to get the same information can make all the difference in the world.
Suppose you have published an article or video that tackles a certain process, like how to change your shipping address or how to pay for purchases using a low-interest credit card. In that case, you can repurpose the content to make it more actionable and engaging.
You could, for example, create a short video, a simple infographic, or, why not, an animation. Anything that conveys the message in a simpler, friendlier way will work.
#13 Reposting your content
This strategy requires very little effort. The point is to take a piece of content from your website, refresh it with new data, more recent examples, or studies, and repost it on other platforms as is. You can use platforms like Medium or Nichehacks, or you can even syndicate your content to other big outlets if you have the clout to do so. When your content is something that you think is relevant and applicable to current marketing trends, it's a good idea to repost the content where users naturally flock to read and interact.
#14 Refreshing evergreen content on your blog
Sometimes, the only change you need to make to your content is to update and adapt it to the current market conditions and trends. A piece of evergreen content written as far back as a year ago might still be relevant today if you update the facts and statistics and add more appropriate and relevant sources.
You always need to do this when repurposing your content anyway, as it'll harm your reputation to feed consumers old or outdated information.
Start repurposing your content today!
Repurposing your content is a less expensive way of boosting your eCommerce site traffic. If you are looking for ways to maximize the potential of the content you have published so far, these 14 tactics can help you get there. Maximizing the value of every piece of content you create is vital, as content creation is a resource-intensive activity that implies costs.
Whether you are a marketer who is struggling to make ends meet between value generation and content creation or someone who just wants to transform previously published content into something more effective, reproducing your own content is a tested and proven way to generate more exposure for your brand with your target audience without breaking the bank.
Author's Bio:
Jordan Bishop is a personal finance expert and travel hacker who holds a degree in finance and entrepreneurship from Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada. He is the founder of Yore Oyster and How I Travel, two sites to help you optimize your finances while living an international life. He recently published his first book, Unperfect, an exploration of problem-solving.
Ricky Hayes
