Oct 30, 2019

How to Recycle Your Content

Three reasons why you should recycle your content, and tips on how to recycle it effectively.

By Jessica Alex

So, on my Instagram page, I try to incorporate marketing tips, and one of my most recent tips was: Recycle your content. And guess what? I recycled that Instagram post into this very blog post!

The great thing about content is you can often repurpose it — over and over again.

What exactly do I mean by recycling or repurposing?

Recycling or repurposing your content is when you take a piece of content in one form or from one platform and then create content from it in another format. I took the tip I created on Instagram and recycled it to create this blog post.

But why should you also be recycling your content?

1. You can reach a new audience. When you create content on one platform, you may not be reaching all of your intended audience. So, when you recycle your content and then place that content on a different platform, you may be gaining more eyes on your content. And in some cases, recycling your content on the same platform but in a different format can also gain new eyes. For instance, if I post content on my Instagram feed, then I recycle that same content for my Instagram story, I can actually get a fresh pair of eyes on my content.

“By 2020, content marketing will likely involve bringing together multiple types of content in multiple formats to tell a story that’s specific to the highly-targeted audience being pursued.” — Sujan Patel, marketing expert

Sujan Patel content marketing quote — Sujan Patel made this prediction back in 2015, and he was correct!

2. It can save you time in the long run. Planning content can take up a lot of your time. Brainstorming and creating new topics to cover can also be time-consuming. Instead of constantly thinking of brand-new topics every time, why not create multiple pieces of content from your original idea? Remember, instead of taking time to brainstorm a new topic to write about for my blog, I was able to extract this blog post from an Instagram post. That Instagram post also served as the skeleton of this blog post.

“You don’t have to create content day in and day out. You just have to work on getting the content you already have in the hands of more people.” — Derek Halpern, marketing expert

3. You can get the most out of your evergreen content. Your evergreen content is content that, like an evergreen, can last through all seasons. It’s a topic that doesn’t have an expiration date, so to speak. Instead of creating a great piece of content and letting it settle on one platform, why not take that content and recycle or repurpose it to be useful on other platforms or in other formats? If your content can be shared throughout the year (that is, as opposed to a Valentine’s Day post), or it can be used throughout the years, why not create new pieces of content from your original content?

“Hustle is squeezing every bit of juice from the orange.”

— Gary Vaynerchuk, digital marketing expert and bestselling author

Now I can turn this blog post into a podcast or video or a chapter in my ebook — you get the idea.

Here are some examples of how you can recycle your own content:

Turn your blog post into a podcast.
Create a live stream from a topic in your blog post, or create a blog post based on your live-stream discussions.
Turn a topic from your blog post into a newsletter — or vice versa.
Turn your podcast into a video. (Record a video while recording your podcast.)
Take your best blog posts and turn them into a guide or ebook.
Take key points from your blog post and create posts that can be shared on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.
Take key points from your podcast (for example, quotes from your guests) and create posts that can be shared on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.