Recently while buying a bag of chips at a grocery store, I ended up trying to decide between two brands (bags) and finally made a decision based on the packaging of one. 

The brand I finally chose was not new. They had just changed their packaging and the new boost to their look was quite appealing. 

This is sort of what content repurposing is all about. 

Technically, the definition of repurposing is:

And content repurposing is exactly this. Top Reasons Why B2B Marketers Should Repurpose Content 

According to an emarketer article, 60% marketers create at least one piece of content each day. Keeping this average in mind, imagine the copious quantities of content being generated by businesses worldwide. Yet, according to a study by Curata, only 29% make repurposing a part of their strategy. Day after day, year after year, if content is only added to blog pages, websites, or created as whitepapers and more, what happens to what was put up over a year, two or several ago? 

Content re-purposing doesn’t only help make better use of existing business content, it can serve an array of other benefits like:

Staying in Tune with Changing Consumer Habits
A recent article on MarTech Advisor talked about how video consumption on online media and especially in email marketing is on the rise and highly effective. What’s even more interesting is that the piece referred to a study by Forbes that said by 2019, 80% of all internet traffic will be to videos! This is a current consumption pattern that marketers cannot ignore. 
If you were to take a look at your past content, chances are that a lot of it would be textual. As a marketer wanting to repurpose content, taking advantage of current trends like the above can give you better insights on what form of content to choose when re-purposing your existing content.

Creating the Right Content Mix 
The digital world and technology boom has led to the creation of endless forms of content. Before the world wide web, there were no blogs or websites. Content was strictly on paper. Over time, businesses went from websites, to blogs to videos to social media posts to whitepapers and infographics. There are so many types of content and a great way to ensure that your business has a balanced mix of all is by repurposing older content to look like newer types or formats of content. 

Doing More with Less
With every changing trend, creating fresh content to compliment it can be time consuming. One way to ensure that your business is always on top of the trend game while conserving resources is by reusing older content and giving it a fresh look. Of course, while creating content, its handy to have a healthy mix of ‘evergreen’ content and ‘topical’ content, so that you have enough in your kitty that can be repurposed without losing its relevance.

For instance, events like the US Open take place every year. If your business has published blog content on an event like the US Open and posted it a year ago, reusing that to market-to newer audiences during the current year’s event might be  a great way of capitalizing on current search trends during the event. Repurposing will help your content show up among the top search results. 

Up your Search Quotient
Its pretty safe to say that digital marketing is a lot about search. Changing trends will lead to online consumers looking for newer things using newer hashtags. Reusing older content to ensure they can show up as current search trends or results can boost your traffic in a far more cost-effective manner as opposed to creating content from scratch for the same purpose. 

To this, Devin Bramhall, Director of Content at Help Scoutcontributes, “Historically, my team's goal has always been traffic, but earlier this year we discovered that our content was not converting subscribers at the rate we wanted (READ: we were below industry standard), which was compromising the number of leads trickling down to our customer success team. 
So we began looking at old blog posts that weren't getting any traffic and found some opportunities to aggregate content and repackage in more useful ways - both for our readers and for the business. 
 
One example is our "Talking to Customers" resource. By combining several posts into a single resource, we actually offered a better experience for our readers - aggregating all existing content on one topic and presenting it in a logical order. At the same time, we created an opportunity for the business: a new resource we could develop a promotional campaign around to attract new readers and convert them into subscribers.Rinse, repeat!  
Another similar example was to refresh old posts and create mini resources - short, actionable takeaways relevant to a particular blog post and offer them as downloads. Again, surfacing content no one was discovering and adapting to augment fresh content we're publishing now. Plus, it takes less time to create a quick PDF than an entire resource, so this is a nice filler between larger campaigns. 
Finally, there's the housekeeping side of things, which is less sexy to talk about but really important: We've been publishing since 2011. Technology, platforms, the world - a lot has changed in the past six years! As a result, some of our content became outdated and therefore no longer as useful (or accurate). We've built our brand on our content, investing in helpful, well-researched, thoughtful, posts for our readers. In order to maintain that, we have to keep the information fresh. However, being a small team with a large body of work, we have to prioritize, so we focus on posts that get the most traffic first to achieve the greatest impact (volume of readers) for our efforts.”
 

What B2Bs Should Consider When Identifying Content to Repurpose 

An earlier B2B Content Marketing Report  shared how 51% marketers lack the bandwidth to constantly create new content while 50% face a challenge when it comes to creating volume in content. 
Now won’t it seem that one of the best ways to solve a problem like this is by using what is already there? The key here lies in using it better maybe. 

Mark Bornstein, VP of Content Strategy at ON24 adds, "The most important thing for content marketers to realize is that the engagement their content enables is just, if not more, important as the content itself. So, first take an inventory of all your content across channels and identify what drove the most audience engagement -- what blog had the most comments, which webinar drove the most interactivity, which white paper was downloaded and shared most frequently, and so on. Once you’ve identified your top 5 performing assets, each one serves as a core content source for a multi-touch campaign. At ON24, it’s no surprise we get the most engagement through our webinars – they provide meaty dialogue around the issues our customers and prospects care about most. From there, we’re able to take our webinars and develop an entire multimedia library of resources that engage our audience on the same topic in new ways.”  

Here’s what one can keep in mind when trying to identify content to repurpose. 

Track your top performing content and understand what your buyers / readers like to consume
Have clarity between ‘evergreen’ content and ‘topical’ content to decide what content can be updated or expanded from your content library, especially during events that spike search volumes
Identify content that can possibly be leveraged for future marketing campaigns 
In the B2B space, over 51% of the consumers or buyers rely heavily on content before making a buying decision. Content can play a significant role in moving consumers through the funnel. Understanding what resonates with your audience, keeping the B2B style of content consumption in mind will help plan your content repurposing strategy.

While doing all of the above, planning your re-purposing strategy with the aim of making every piece multi-purpose will help kill two birds with one stone. 

How does that work? Well, quite simply:
If you have a rich infographic that’s part of an old blog, you can re-purpose each statistic in the graphic into individual tweets for traction on social media over a period of time, and lead readers back to the original post. 

Mark adds, “Most marketers are very good at mastering content creation for a single channel or phase of the buying journey. But, in this fragmented, digital world, that’s extremely limiting when it comes to meeting customers where they are with the medium they prefer. So, think first about the story you’re trying to tell and experience you want to create, and then figure out the different kinds of content that bring it to life. One core story can fuel an entire integrated campaign, from awareness to conversion – for example, a quick summary video is a great promotional tool for a longer blog post on a topic, which can serve up a gated whitepaper that goes deeper into the issue, leading to a webinar that brings all the assets back together into an hour-long discussion between your audience and subject-matter experts. Now, you’ve got a highly-qualified lead with a pain point identified who is ready for a sales conversation.”

A Few Creative Ways to Repurpose Your Best Performing Content

Once you have a list of the kind of content that is:
-Most popular
-Evergreen
-Worth repurposing
It’s time to pick the type of content you want to turn the above into.

For Blogs Articles:

Blog articles or video interviews to Podcasts. A recent article by Edison Research recently recorded how monthly podcast listeners have grown from 21% to 24% year over year. Older articles, older videos and text – especially interviews - can be repurposed into podcasts. This will not only upgrade your content and make it interactive, but leverage current consumer behavior trends.
Blogs  to newsletters /emailers 
Conversational, engaging newsletters and emailers, delivered straight to your current and targeted reader’s inbox are still the best proven way to  drive engagement and keep conversations going through the sales cycle. How can you ensure that you have a regular flow of content to share via these forms though? Repurpose blog entries of course!. 
Blog Article Series to Downloadables/ Other Ebooks 
The beauty of the digital world is the various ways in which a consumer can be reached. At an advanced sage of the buying cycle, ebooks and downloadables are critical tools to help informed decision making. If you don’t have the resources to create ebooks, it may help to compile a bunch of related blog entries or short articles into a compilation style ebook.
Medium / Quora
Knowledge sharing platforms like Medium and Quora can be leveraged to publish refurbished content. In this case, thoroughly going through interesting pieces that are worth recreating and then rephrasing them to suit the particular platform’s style and tone would be ideal and give you a larger reader base, almost overnight. 
For Interviews:
While some video interviews can be turned into podcasts, other company interviews can be turned into use cases. People like learning from others’ experiences after all.

For PPTs:

PPTs to Slideshare
Google a topic and there are high chances there will be companies who have posted deeply researched studies or PPT content on Slideshare. Not only does this help better your search results, it also helps increase the digital presence of the company. You can even choose to embed earlier ppt slides on your website with interesting graphics. Further, existing slide decks could also be turned into enriching infographics for easier reader consumption and distributed via all your social media channels. 
Christopher adds, “The key aspects of repurposing content very much mirror Bob Stone's 1967 direct marketing list. In it, Stone posited that all direct marketing functions on three key points: list, offer, creative, or who, why, what. Content repurposing - and content marketing by extension - function the same way. We need to keep in mind: -Who the content is for, -Why the content is important to them, -What the content should be, creatively and data-wise. Stone emphasized that this order is important, too. Marketers tend to rush into making the content without questioning or thinking about who it's for or why it's relevant. Research up front is essential to making effective, impactful content.”
 

Tools and Repurposing

There is a tool for everything in the martech world! Yes, even to repurpose your existing content. How a marketer chooses a tool to repurpose content largely depends on:

-The kind of content being repurposed
-The form it is being repurposed into

There are endless number of tools that can easily help marketers repurpose existing content, at a low cost and at a quick pace. 
The best practice to follow when identifying tools for your business would be to draw parameters, make a list of features you know you would need and then shortlist tools based on their cost factors and ease of use. 

Devin adds, “We use Google Analytics to help us prioritize which posts get updated first. The posts with the greatest number of readers need to be accurate, because they're representing our brand to people who haven't necessarily encountered our company or content before. 
We use Hubspot to identify potential opportunities for content that can be used to drive more subscribers. If there is a post that converts a higher number of subscribers with a generic subscribe form, that's a signal to us that it's a topic that's important to our readers, so we should consider offering additional content to convert more of them. (We use this same signal to determine what topics we should publish more on, and even add links to more existing related content in the post.)
kFor our latest project, HelpU, which is a completely new content site, we're using a combination of GA, Hubspot and CrazyEgg to help us hone navigation and even our editorial calendar, so we make rapid improvements to the site, achieve the greatest impact from our content as possible and maintain a great overall experience for our readers.”
 

A few tools in the market:
-Scoop.it: This tool can help with content recreation and their content intelligence solution could also possibly help marketers capitalize on predictive insights to better their content ROI
-Roojom is another platform that helps with content recreation, marketing and distribution too.
If you’re planning on repurposing older content into rich infographics, making use of Visual.ly can help in both creation and distribution.
-List.ly is another effective way to distribute listicles that you may have created using previous content.