Here at October Dreams Marketing, we promote recycling. No, we’re not talking about the proper disposal of plastic and cans — although that’s very important too! We’re talking about recycling and repurposing used branding content. That’s right, you can turn to older blogs and social media posts if you’re having trouble coming up with brand new ideas, as long as those posts are still relevant. Here’s how to repurpose content.

Reshare content that is still relevant via social media or a blog

Let’s say you have an evergreen blog post that you shared a year ago. It’s still relevant today, and the information in that post can serve as a good reminder to your customers/clients. You can reshare the blog on social media with new captions and new graphics — that way, there’s still something fresh about the post.

Alternatively, you can take information from the evergreen post and write a spinoff piece that focuses on one aspect of the original piece of content. For example, if you wrote a list of the top seven most popular social media sites for your marketing blog, you can write a new blog post that focuses on one of those sites.

Refresh outdated content in blog posts

Now, maybe the old blog post has some outdated information in it. Trends have changed or new studies have been completed since you wrote the original piece. You can still reuse the blog entry! Content updates are great for SEO purposes, so feel free to go back to the old post and add new, relevant information. Or, you can write a new post and link back to the old one.

Pull relevant excerpts from long-form content like e-books

Going back to the spinoff article, you can take excerpts from already-published long-form content, such as a book or e-book, and write a blog post with that information when it’s newsworthy. Here’s an example: Say your cybersecurity company published an e-book a year ago about different cyber attacks and prevention. More recently, a big ransomware attack made the news in the tech realm. You can pull the section about ransomware from your e-book and spotlight that in a blog post. Then, you can direct readers to the e-book for more information.

Create a new email campaign with freebie content

When you’re building an email list, you can offer some freebie content in exchange for people signing up with their email addresses. That can include guides, e-books, checklists, or any other piece of content that your clientele can only get by signing up for the email list. One easy way to come up with freebie content is to browse some of your older posts and then update that information for inclusion in the email campaign. Then, when readers see the old posts, you can have a note that directs them to the email sign-up for access to updated data.

Contact October Dreams Marketing for more content planning tips.