Re-purpose Your Content and Increase Your ROI
How big is the ROI on your content?
A normal blog post should take between 1 and 10 hours to write, edit, and publish. That’s a lot of time to spend on content creation, and in most cases, you never fully recapture the effort spent on those posts. I wrote recently about scalable content generation but that doesn’t apply in every situation. Instead, if your website is to be a success at scale, you need to create a leverage multiplier that can grow even when you aren’t working. In essence, each unit of work needs to have a greater than 1x return.
The higher that multiplier the more profitable your website becomes. That’s some easy math.
There are a number of ways to build this multiplier value for your content, so let’s talk more about one way of going about that – re-purposing content.
What is Re-purposed Content?
Re-purposed content is awfully common in most industries. T.V. studios call it syndication. Movie Studios call it Netflix streaming. Book publisher call it audio books. I think you get the idea here. Re-purposed content is content developed once, used ad infinitum in a wide array of different contexts. Each reuse requires few additional resources, but retains most of its original value.
Applied to blogs, re-purposed content means getting more mileage from your blog posts in creative ways. A few ways to do that are…
- Write a newsletter, email it. Post it to your blog a few weeks later.
- Create “category landing pages”. Find all related blog posts, write up an intro to the topic, arrange the blog posts in order from easy to difficult. Then you’ve got a central page that ranks for that keyword.
- Take your videos, and remix the footage for new uses.
- The classic “blog series to eBook” technique.
In four easy ways, you’ve created entirely original content from existing content. A quick note – the whole game is much easier to play if you’re writing good content in the first place. If you primary repost content from others, or don’t build a lot of unique insight or value, expect to struggle. On the other hand, 1,000 words of original content that solves a real problem will put you way ahead when it comes time to re-purpose.
This also applies to video content you may have. If you’re already making videos that sell finding new ways to make that content shine for you is crucial – and easy.
Why Should I Re-purpose My Content?
So if things are going well for you, why both with any of this? You can easily live off of your current workflow, so why change it?
Easy – because everyone else is getting ready to eat your lunch if you let them. That, and for most people, creating amazing new content constantly is unsustainable in the long run. Instead, by re-using what you already have, you can continue to grow without needing to struggle at every step.
How I Use Re-purposed Content
Earlier this week, I was going through old posts I’d written and thinking about ways to breath new life into them. I also had Google Analytics fired up in the adjacent browser window with the visitor-sources-by-keyword page open. It was obvious that some of my pages are ranking for great keywords. The only problem was that those pages that ranked may not have been the ideal landing page for a visitor to see for those keywords.
To attempt to rectify this, I created custom category landing pages, as seen below. Each page has an automatically updating list of relevant articles, along with a short intro so Google has something to index and rank, along with a contact form below. The form is helpful so visitors who find these pages know they can get in touch with me quickly and easily. +1 for trust building!
The other surprisingly easy trick, is to spend an hour each week creating deep links between articles within your content. A website that absolutely kills at creating a web of internal links is The Altucher Confidential. I can’t think of another site that is so thoroughly cross-linked.
A Few Examples
These are a few of the custom landing pages I built to get extra mileage out of my content, and to help improve my search-engine rankings.
- Free thesis skins
- Gravity Forms Tutorials
- Thesis Tutorials
So what methods are you using to re-purpose your content and improve ROI? And oh yeah — be sure to check out the other thesis tutorials as well.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
*Nice to finally see the Subscibe to comments plugin!!*
I think this post is basically the flavour-of-the month post…been seeing quite a bit of these. There’s a variant at the DIYThemes blog and Socialtriggers.
That said, I really like the idea of having a message form below the posts. And the dynamic post listing updation(if I understand it correctly) is a winner. I’m sure that works brilliantly for conversion of business prospects! That’s a takeaway for me…but I’m kinda surprised you haven’t added in a “Subscribe to Newsletter box”. Guess your CTA for these pages has a different purpose…
It’s always neat to come over to your site because of the way you think and deploy thought.
Crazy timing on the post, right? I’ve been working on it for a few days and I managed to post it the same time as everyone else.
As far as the newsletter sign ups, my only list is people who’ve downloaded themes, so I don’t make much of an effort to collect other emails (though I probably should.) I’m more concerned with finding new clients from these pages. Either way – an A/B test is in order to see which call to action is worth more to the business.
Not exactly a waste of time..the way I see it, your posts attract a VERY different audience.
When I look at your posts over the past few months, you seem to have moved away from the nifty coding tricks to talking about using WordPress at a more strategic level. The difference is a move from how to why….
Pretty insightful. Thanks!
Many thanks for sharing this idea. I’m going to see what I can do to put these ideas into action on my own site.
I agree with you. Nice article.
I am glad to read this post, its an interesting one. I am always searching for quality posts like this…
Interesting observation. Are you happy with my change in direction, or did you like the old stuff better?
Honestly, I prefer the current trend.
The way I see it is like this: the readers(people like me) can find a Thesis tutorial almost anywhere they care to look i.e. forums, DIYThemes blog, social triggers etc. And it’s incredible stuff that’s being put out. Workable and incredible.
What is missing is strategy on how to evolve a site. Social Triggers does a great job with the marketing angle but falls a tad short(IMO) on overall strategy.
Which is where you fit in. And fit in perfectly. This post isn’t the perfect example but the one on scalable content is a winner. So many ideas there…
So while I can perhaps skip reading the “newest, hottest, bestest” tut out there…I always read your posts. When I believe that I can add some value, I even post a comment or two. Because I know the person on the other end who’s reading it is business savvy as well.
That said, your typography is making me go blind…
Avinash, you have some really good points in this comment thread, although I have no problem with Adam’s typography.
I’m in the same position with my site: moving from tactics to strategy, low level to high level, how to why.
I’ve seen that phenomenon of several people publishing almost the same material, independently, several times. In fact, I have two long articles from 2009 on blogging mistakes which I never published because a whole bunch of people published similar material before I pulled the the trigger on mine. I could probably publish it now.
Hey Dave,
You’re that guy…love your site btw! Read it quite a bit to be honest…quite a bit of actionable content. Actionable at my level which is pretty much nowhere…
That said, for the general tone and content level of this site…I think Adam could do a much better job with his typographical choices. Good typography really sets off content…think I’m gonna do a post on this in a while.
I’m looking forward to it. Be sure to drop me a link when it’s out and I’ll link it up.