What do you do with all your content, when you’ve accumulated a mountain of it?
When I first started my podcast, I had no idea how long I’d be podcasting for. I never imagined I’d reach 200 episodes, that’s for sure. But now I’ve reached this momentous milestone, I can’t imagine stopping any time soon.
From a repurposing perspective (aka the perspective I can’t help but take!), these podcast episodes translate into 200 blog posts, countless videos, and THOUSANDS of social media posts…all of which are high-value, evergreen pieces of content.
So what am I going to do with it all moving forward?
I share my plan for how I’ll be maximizing my existing content in this 200th podcast episode – with plenty of takeaways for your own content strategy.
Press play on this milestone podcast episode…
Or read on to find out my next steps…
3 Strategies for Maximizing Content
Usually people reflect at a moment like this, but I did plenty of looking back in episode 190 when Content 10x had its 4th birthday - 4 Lessons Learned in 4 Years. So instead, I’m looking forward to the future and what our next steps are for all this content…
Repurposing is a continuous activity, and more than that, it’s a mindset. Sure, we should create our new content with repurposing in mind, and repurpose it. But, we should never ignore the treasure trove of content that we’ve built over time, and the opportunities that lie within. After all, the whole idea is to help your content continue performing and increase your ROI!
With this in mind, there are three major strategies that we’re planning to implement in the coming months to really maximize our content and use it to keep generating results.
Update and optimize blog posts
A blog is one of the most important parts of a content strategy. It’s one of the most likely types of content to appear in search results and is a powerful way of establishing authority online.
But if your posts are outdated or not performing as well as they should, it could be that your time spent creating new content would be better spent simply updating your previous posts.
Keeping your website up-to-date should always be a high priority, however updating blog posts slips through the net for many of us (me included!). A key thing to remember is that high-performing webpages can save you so much time in other areas.
You probably already know the importance of SEO for driving traffic to your website – so if you invest time to optimize for SEO it will pay dividends.
Speaking of SEO, Google prefers new content and when you update an old blog post, the search engine will take this into account. And the really good news is that it will also display the latest edition’s date in the search results, creating a better user experience, as people prefer new content too!
So how are we planning to update our old blog posts? It takes a little bit more than just checking for any outdated information…
Here’s our checklist for updating an old blog post:
- Decide what posts to update: 200+ blogs are a lot to go through! So, to start, we’ll look at Google Analytics to find out highest performing posts, and see if they need any tweaks to stay relevant. From there we can work down the list to choose which posts are worthwhile updating or not. It’s best to focus first on the content we can clearly see people are looking at.
- Ensure posts are evergreen: although we always try to make our content as timeless as possible, things change. References to tools and features that no longer exist will be removed or edited for clarity so that we’re not giving out-of-date advice.
- Add in new content: this is a great opportunity to provide more value for your audience and improve your website’s SEO. Can you link to relevant content across your website that perhaps didn’t exist when you first published this post?
- Review SEO: it may be that, since we published this content, our keywords have changed slightly or we can spot ways to better optimize the page. Taking a keen and critical eye to SEO is as much a business move as it is a way to make sure your audience are getting exactly what they’re looking for.
- Give the page a tidy up: check for any broken links, missing multimedia assets, or anything that isn’t working. And always proofread your content – even if you’ve checked it dozens of times before!
A thorough review and audit like this is a fantastic way to repurpose your content. Taking old blog posts and giving them a new lease of life with updated information, new perspectives, and adding in your own experiences, can completely transform them into something you’re proud to reshare.
Review and update your content treasure trove
You may be thinking, “what is a content treasure trove”? This is something I talked about at length in episode 178, How to Create a Content Treasure Trove for Unlimited Repurposing, but to quickly recap your content treasure trove is a collection of your best-of-the-best content that you can use time and time again.
This isn’t for your long-form content though, the treasure trove is specifically for your social media content.
A content treasure trove is essentially a content library that you can pull posts from and reshare at any moment. Each post should be an asset that your followers find truly valuable.
Now, when we’re going through and updating our blog posts, this is a great opportunity for us to reshare some graphics, quotes, or other content on social media, and simultaneously update our treasure trove.
It’s definitely worthwhile getting some quick insights into those peak performing posts and adding them into your treasure trove, but taking a magnifying glass to what posts work best to promote each blog/podcast/video can be really beneficial too.
And don’t forget to add in new posts as you create them going forward. Your treasure trove should grow alongside the rest of your content and help inspire more high-performing posts as well!
Conduct regular content reviews
This leads me nicely into my final strategy, reviewing the performance of your current content strategy.
In episode 195, Could Your Content Strategy Be Holding You Back?, I discussed what happens when you get stuck with a stale content strategy, and how to change that.
One of the most important takeaways from that episode was conducting regular content reviews. By this I mean analyzing which pieces of your content worked (and which didn’t) so you can create more of the good stuff (and less off the less favored). Of course, you need to define what “worked” means for you.
You can go much deeper with your reviews as well, involving your team, external experts, and taking a look at data from across your content spectrum.
At Content 10x, our content reviews consist of:
- Looking at all the data to make an informed decision
- Bringing in external marketing experts to get different perspectives
- Scoping out new content opportunities and ensuring we have no content gaps
- Considering where our time would be better spent, and what content we need to stop producing
It feels like a really good time to step back and do this for us, but you can do a content review at any time. They’re best done quarterly as a minimum, but you can do them more or less frequently depending on how much content you publish regularly.
After 200 episodes, it’s very likely that our content will start to change, so look out for some changes coming soon…
So that wraps up the three strategies for maximizing your content. Now I want to ask you something…
Help us help you
At this milestone, I want to ask for your thoughts on The Content 10x Podcast.
As we move into the next 200 episodes (and many more), I want to keep giving you the content you want and need to help you repurpose your content. So I’m taking this opportunity to reach out and ask for your feedback.
What do you want to hear more of on the podcast and blog?
For example:
- Platform/format specific repurposing tips and how-to guides – e.g. how to repurpose X into Y
- Interviews with content, marketing, and personal branding experts
- Content on how to become a thought leader / establish a personal brand
- Success stories and real-world examples of businesses that use content to grow and drive sales
- Something else!
Or let me know what isn’t valuable to you!
I’d love to know HOW you consume our content. Do you listen to the podcast episodes, do you watch them on YouTube and the website, do you tend not to consume long-form content and just prefer the social media content? Let me know!
Your responses will help shape the future of The Content 10x Podcast, so leave a comment, get in touch with me on social media (I’m @Content10x on all platforms) or email [email protected] to share your opinion.
I always appreciate hearing your thoughts and opinions on our content, and am looking forward to them even more so at this pivotal moment.
If you’re after more tips and advice on content repurposing, there’s only one place you need to look – the Content 10x book. Find the handy, complete guide to repurposing every content format on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and more.
Or to find out how we can help you implement your content repurposing strategy, check out our end-to-end content repurposing services here.