New content helps people discover you, get interested in your products/services, and build enough trust that they’re ready to buy.

Content is everything from the blog posts you publish, to the copy on your website, what you write in your email newsletters, and even the speeches or presentations you give on a regular basis.

But creating content is difficult. Coming up with new material on a daily basis can feel impossible. And then it’s incredibly time consuming to sit down and start creating this original content from scratch.

But there’s hope.

You can bring in more traffic, and convert more leads by simply repurposing your existing blog content.

Here are 7 ways to get started.

1. Turn it into Different Formats

One of the easiest ways to reuse your existing content is to take a blog post, and turn it into a speech, podcast or video.

You can even take a series of blog posts around the same topic, and easily create 20-30 minutes worth of material.

But there’s another hidden benefit.

You can’t reuse text online because of duplicate content issues, which can negatively affect your SEO. But if you turn it into another format (like audio, video, or offline), then you can avoid this problem and double your content.

Of course, you can also flip this around and create new online content from different sources.

One of the biggest opportunities is your existing offline material, like old speeches and presentations, that could form the foundation of new online content.

You can even take boring information like raw data or statistics that you’ve gathered, and create a story around it to give it new life. This information can be transformed into an infographic, or a new report that will help you generate email leads.

Writers are great at taking raw information and creating compelling stories around it that your audience will find interesting.

Another un-tapped resource is your past emails, like taking excerpts from longer explanations and answers to people’s questions, and turning them into blog posts. Frequently asked questions work well because you know if one person has that question, then many more probably do too.

2. Refresh Your Old Material

Your own blog archive contains a wealth of information. And best of all, you already know which posts or topics were most successful.

So refresh them by updating with new information or adding new material. This gives you an excuse to reuse your old content, while also providing the same quality content that performed so well in the past.

College textbooks do this all the time. They take last years edition, update the content with new, timely examples, and charge a higher price each year.

But be careful…

You have to make sure that the original posts you’re refreshing — and writing — are evergreen. They need to exist on their own for years to come.

That means staying away from “news” or “update” type content, and focusing on tutorials or tips that will be relevant for a long time.

3. Turn a Numbered Summary into Individual Posts

Numbered list posts are always a hit.

People love bite-sized information or tactical tips. They’re like a guilty pleasure. We can’t help but click when we see “10 Ways to…” or “97 Tips for…”.

You can breath new life into these posts by drilling down into each individual topic, and turning them into their own, full post.

So the next time you write “5 Ways to [blank]”, you can summarize each point briefly, and then flesh out each individual post into a longer explanation with more background, information, and helpful examples.

And again, you could always do the opposite.

Take 3, 5, or 7 posts on the same subject, and turn them into one summary post. This provides people with a quick reference post with concise summarizes on each major topic.

And it gives you the ability to create this content quickly by borrowing from the original content.

4. Mix & Match

There are two elements to every blog post: Body + Story

You will usually have several “talking points” in mind for the Body of your article. These are like your three main sections, or five steps in a process that you want to explain to readers. This is the meat or body of your content.

But there’s a problem.

People don’t just want facts and information. They’re overwhelmed with facts. And they can simply go to Wikipedia to get the raw information.

Instead, people want to be entertained and emotionally connect to your article.

So you also have to craft a theme for your content. This is the Story and slant your article has that makes it stand out from everything else like it. And it lets you inject your own personality into it.

Now once you have a Body and Story in mind, you can mix-and-match that content to increase it’s lifespan.

For example, you can take the Body of one article on your own site, and create guest posts out of it by just changing the Story. This works extremely well because you already know the post will be successful before you give it to someone.

Some people are worried about repeating themselves. They shy away from repeatedly bringing up the same topics.

But repetition is actually a good thing.

You have to put yourself in the shoes of a casual or new visitor. These people need repetition in order to understand and internalize your unique perspective.

Everyone is busy. And contrary to popular belief… they aren’t paying that much attention to you. People are so wrapped up in their own worlds that they typically don’t notice you reused the same topic on two different sites.

The repitition actually helps solidify the idea for people and helps them remember it more effectively.

5. The Hub and Spoke Method

The Hub and Spoke method is where you write one major, in-depth piece on your own blog, and write follow ups, additions, summarizations, or related news on other sites and link back to your own main piece for further reading.

This tactic is beneficial in several ways.

• It helps you extend the life of each article by continuing to bring it up – no matter how old it is.
• It helps you create additional content quickly, because you already know all the important things to say.
• It gets you targeted Referral traffic that will convert better than other online marketing channels.
• And it improves your SEO with relevant, high quality links back to your site.

As you can see, there’s really no downside.

The final benefit is that these new, additional posts don’t need to be as in-depth as your original article. So you can easily hire a blog writer, or have someone in house write quick summaries and bring in new facts to give the content a new spin.

6. The One Topic Series

People love bite-sized information or tactical tips. They’re like a guilty pleasure. We can’t help but click when we see “10 Ways to…” or “97 Tips for…”.

And they’re also perfect for quickly repurposing into extra content.

You can breath new life into these summary posts by drilling down into each individual topic, and turning them into their own, full post.

So the next time you write “5 Ways to [blank]“, you can summarize each point briefly, and then flesh out each individual post into a longer explanation with more background, information, and helpful examples.

And you could always do the opposite. Take 3, 5, or 7 posts on the same subject, and turn them into one summary post. This provides people with a concise summary on each major topic.

But you can also use this technique to highlight others.

For example, you could do one simple interview (3-5 questions) with 5 different people. You can even do it all through email.
In the summary post, you give one good quote from each interviewee. Then you follow up with the full interview for each person in additional posts.

In this scenario, not only are you re-using your content well, but you’re also having other people do the work for you (in the form of their answers to your questions).

Now what if you can’t have experts write weigh-in?

Then get your employees to share their perspectives. They all come from different backgrounds and departments, so they probably have different opinions on each subject. And they’re probably experts in their own right if they work day-in and day-out in that subject.

And it gives you the ability to create additional content quickly by borrowing from the original.

7. Jump on Your Own Bandwagon

Finally, you can’t always predict what posts will be popular before hitting “Publish”.

That’s as true for blog posts as it is for online marketing in general.

Sometimes you think you just produced your best work, and it falls flat. While other times you’re embarrassed of publishing something, and it takes off virally for reasons you can’t predict.

But either way, when you have a popular post that really resonates with people, you need to keep the fire burning.

So write additional angles and follow-ups. Now bring in your interviews to get the expert’s opinions. You can even write a post about all the objections – just so you can link and bring up your own post.

This is also a perfect example of where you can use the “Hub and Spoke” method mentioned above. When you have a piece of content on your own site that becomes popular, then start getting people to rehash your article and post it on other websites.

You can use this tactic in combination with any of them. And it will help you easily double or triple your existing content output.

And best all, if the content is good enough (and it probably is if people are talking about it, sharing it, etc.), then no one will mind the redundancy.

In fact, they’ll probably be eager to hear more.