In this week’s blog I’m going to follow the format of my favourite interviews, and column in a newspaper.
In the Observer magazine every Sunday, there is a section called ‘This Much I Know’.
The questions are not laid out as such, but there is a simple structure to the column which means that you get a real feel for the person being interviewed, an overview if you like, which means you come away armed with more knowledge on the person, and sometimes snippets of information to explore further.
For example, Bill Gates may be interviewed in the column and he will talk about the book that inspired him to start coding or the greatest film he has ever seen. You would read about it and look into it further.
That’s the aim with the subject I’m going to cover today – Repurposing.
If you have ever got involved in ‘up-cycling’ where you take an old wardrobe, buy some Farrow and Ball chalk paint, give it a sand down and bobs your uncle, you’ve made £100, your not a million miles away from what repurposing is.
In fact, ‘upcycling’ is a great analogy for repurposing.
It is about taking something old, giving it a ‘spruce’ and putting it back in the shop window, but in this case, that is your digital window, with the aim of getting more interest in your content.
What is ‘repurposing’, content?
You take something that you have previously created and put a new spin on it, you give it a lick of paint.
What do you mean?
Well, you published a bit of content previously. That was seen by an average amount of people, but over the passing of time more eyes eventually fall upon it. When you repurpose it, either with an update or addition it can potentially reach a new audience segment.
Why would you repurpose content?
It’s quicker than starting from scratch, you have a plethora of old content on which to chew and regurgitate, and it can reach a slightly different audience to last time.
What are the benefits?
Reinforcing a message can help you with your sales. We don’t usually buy on the first pass, it may take five, six or seven attempts to get us in the mood for parting with our hard-earned. When you repurpose you are reinforcing a message, driving by for the second time, giving it another shot. The more you try, the closer you may get to your goal – in theory anyway.
What are some examples?
Use your old blog posts and create an e-book. There may be tens of bits of content that you have used previously, but not in this format, so dig them out and reformat and put them back out with a different delivery system.
Interviews. If you do interviews for a blog or magazine audio record the interviews that you do, and with the permission of the people involved perhaps put them into a podcast, or blog. Swap things up and repurpose.
What’s next then?
Go through your data, find some killer content that did the business first time around, give it a coat of Farrow and Ball and put in back in your shop window.
You never know, this time it may lead to several sales rather than the one you originally got.
