Reuse, Reduce and Recycle Works For Your Content, Too

As our culture has shifted its mindset to more green pursuits of late, it should come as no surprise that the ideas of reuse, reduce and recycle works for your content too. So rather than letting all that old content simply dwindle away over time or even be regulated to the discard bin, why not take a few moments to read some of our ideas on how you can get more life out of your hard work?

After all, more than likely you have spent numerous hours coming up with a content plan along with the creation of said content. You should aim to stretch those words as far as they will go to gain as much value from them as possible!

Tips for Reusing and Recycling Content

• Create a Recycle Bin – In the virtual sense, you need to take some time to grab older pieces of content that might be useful to re-imagine. Start by going back and copying potential articles from six months to a year or more ago into a folder for use. As you go make sure to note topics and titles as a starting list to work with.
• Look to Create Series– Take that list of topics and titles and then pull up your content calendar. Often there are gaps in everyone’s calendar and some of these past ideas might be the perfect filler while also providing the added bonus of creating consistent types of articles. For example, posts that provide rankings or lists of popular things which are subject to change can be refreshed and reused. These repeated ideas essentially become a series that people can recognize and associate with your brand. For example, “Most popular Knitting Gifts for 2014,” can be an annual series. Google considers content new if it has a minimum of 300 added or revised words so if you can meet that criteria you are good to go!
• Update Topics – Sometimes you might write about topics while they are in their infancy. A great thing to do is take that point of view as a starting point and see where the topic has gone. Did you forecast it effectively? If so where do you think it will go next? Has a particular idea blossomed like experts thought? Is it something that could experience resurgence? Is there something new or different that has taken place to make an older topic relevant once again and now your original piece can be used for background information?
• Rewrite and Repurpose – Similar to updating a topic, older articles can be rewritten and repurposed based on changes in your experience and perspective. Wisdom is acquired and there is no shame in changing a point of view in relation to a topic. Updated or current views lead to relevancy which leads to conversations and interest. Rather than leaving something outdated that doesn’t match current philosophy or ideals out on the web attached to your name, rewrite it to your current views.
• Throwback Thursday – Another fun idea is to take some great content that is still relevant and interesting, although old, and link it together with other content either as a “Best Of” type of list or “Everything You Need to Know About” type of list. This method allows creation of a simple new piece of content that leans on past content to help extend its life and showcase that you have been experts on topics for a while. For example, you might craft a new piece of content titled, “Most Read Knitting Blogs from 2015” or maybe, “Our most popular posts on Cross-Stitching.” You can also combine items into a larger whitepaper that provide the same extended level of information in a single document.
• Use Analytics – If you aren’t sure where to start you can use analytics to help show what content was your strongest performers along with themes and ideas that had the most buzz. This can also be helpful in moving forward with new content as you have a better understanding of which areas either you craft better content for or that your audience responds better too while seeing what to stay away from.

Overall taking the time to review content with a goal of reuse and repurposing is a wise investment in time and energy already spent. The goal is to increase engagement and traffic which means not only having fresh new content, but also updating old pieces to add relevancy rather than having outdated pieces subtract it. These ideas to reuse, reduce and recycle content can really help you get more value out of past successes and help lay the groundwork for future content performance.