How to Repurpose Your Content to Drive New Website Traffic

• Updated on: 2019-03-01
• Read original article here

Tired of spending months creating content only to see it last a fraction of the time online? Want to understand how to reach new audiences and create new fans of your site? Let’s dive into why repurposing content is vital to driving new website traffic for your business.

It’s not every day your team creates a blog post, an infographic, a video, or even a white paper. Resources can be hard-won, especially with smaller organizations, scrappy start-ups, or nonprofits.

Varying the delivery of your information can cast a wider net, bringing increased success for your content, and more visitors to your site.

Let’s say your team writes an eBook. It takes months of planning, research, interviewing experts, and analyzing statistics from studies you conducted.

You release the eBook online, and get a fair number of downloads on your website by posting on your company’s LinkedIn page. But, why stop there? The time and effort that went into this eBook is just begging for a chance to be repurposed. Well, you can increase the amount of traffic back to your website by thinking bigger than just one channel.

For example, take an infographic from page three of your eBook and place on Twitter. If the reader found the infographic valuable, ask users to click a link to read the full book on your site.

But wait, there’s more!

Bottom line: Think of each piece of content not as one-hit wonders, but rather as having the potential to become four or five new communication avenues to drive customers to your site. You’ll be surprised at how much mileage you can get out of one piece of content, whether it’s a full-blown eBook or a 600-word blog post.

Make some of the content you produce“evergreen” content—this is when your post doesn’t expire in weeks or months, but can be relevant for a year or more. The simple truth is this content will be relevant, and stay relevant, on your site longer. The more relevant your website, the more helpful users will find it, creating a better chance to continue engaging with you.

Let’s revisit that eBook example. Perhaps you launched the eBook on your site in the spring. If the content is still relevant in the fall, try relaunching it on your site and other channels. You may get an even better result the second time around! You could even come up with some new promotional visuals to freshen up its look.

You also can go back and update your older content with new information. This is a great way to get more out of the initial work it took to create that eBook or blog post, while staying competitive with the other more recent online content being published.

Tip: If you do update an older blog post with new information, make sure you include a note at the top of your post that lets readers know when the blog post was updated.

Over time, a catalogue of evergreen content on your site will help establish and build your SEO—if the information is both relevant and helpful (Google tends to favor recent content over stuff that’s been around for a while). And like we previously said, don’t stop at just posting to your site—leverage a variety of channels with this same information, and you’ll end up with a whole forest of evergreen content driving back to your website.

Bottom line: When creating evergreen content, choose topics that are universally interesting, helpful, relevant to your audience, and will last longer.

A good example of evergreen vs. time-sensitive content is our “7 Easy Ways to Get More Instagram Followers,” article and our “Instagram Stories vs. Snapchat Stories: What You Need to Know” blog post. The latter was really popular when Instagram first introduced its Stories feature, but slowed down in relevancy and traffic soon afterward, whereas the article on best practices for getting more followers is consistently popular and a good driver of new website traffic via organic search.

So, are you ready to increase traffic to your site by maximizing your content potential?

You’re the expert in your field—and your audience knows that. They keep returning to your website because your content marketing skills are on-point: you’re delivering content that’s both relevant, interesting, and informative.

You might have an entirely new audience just waiting to find out who you are and what you do. That’s where repurposing content really shines. Some people dig infographics, some enjoy pouring over stats and data, and some love listening to podcasts on their way to work.

Tip: Speaking of podcasts, video and audio are also ripe for repurposing. For video, create a blog post, embed the video, but also include the transcript for SEO purposes. If you’re exploring podcasts, simply pull the audio track from your video and upload it.

The best way to increase the number of visitors to your site is to make sure you’re widening your net online: Increase your reach by re-purposing the content you already have, and you’ll start to see the audience results you’ve been dreaming of.

Another great way to drive new website traffic is ensuring you’ve got the right tools in place on your site. Get started today for free with AddThis Share Buttons. Share Buttons give your visitors the chance to easily share your content with their friends, driving more traffic back to your site.