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As any content marketer will tell you, fresh content drives traffic. Keep your website updated with fresh and interesting content, and Google will direct traffic to you. Simple, right? Well, as anyone who’s tried to keep a website regularly updated will tell you, it’s a lot of work finding creating new, original content, day after day. It can be time-consuming, expensive, and just plain difficult.

Now, this isn’t a miracle cheat code that replaces the need for new content and regular updates. Rather, the following was written to tell you how to make the best use of the content you already have; to repurpose, repackage, and re-edit the content so that you get every ounce of traffic-driving power that it has.

Article to Infographic

Once you’ve written an article, it would be a shame to simply publish it and forget about it. Infographics are a easy and interesting way to package a lot of information into a nice-looking and sharable package, and are very popular on social media. Because they’re a single image, they’re easy to share, retweet, and reblog, so they’re perfectly suited for Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, or Instagram.

Instead, once you’ve published the article, get a designer to turn the whole thing into a slick-looking infographic about the same thing. Wait a week or so, then post the infographic to your website, complete with a link to the original article.

Don’t have a designer? There are plenty of tools on the internet to help you create professional-looking infographics in no time at all.

Listicles

Anyone who has been on the internet recently will tell you that websites like Buzzfeed are making money hand over fist with what’s known as “listicles.” What is a Listicle? It’s simply a list with each point illustrated by an image or photograph. So find an article that can easily be distilled into some outlining points, and use those to create your very own Listicle.

For bonus points, transform the Listicle into a traffic-boosting slideshow. The same content spread over multiple pages will increase ad impressions, driving revenue and giving you even more bang for your content buck.

Flashback Episode

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Have you ever noticed those episodes of sitcoms where the characters all get trapped in a locked room and are forced to recount stories of their old adventures? In reality, those episodes were just the television version of repurposing content—so why not take a page out of their book?

You don’t even need to be sneaky about it like they were. Once or twice a year, go back through the work you’ve published and write up a quick “Best of” list. This can happen late in the year (“Our best posts of 2014”) or at the change of seasons (“Our favorite summer photos”). This allows you to quite honestly and transparently redirect traffic back to your older posts, get some more shares, and update your website. All with minimal effort!

Making the most of your content

Repurposing content is a great way to get a little more mileage out of your marketing budget while keeping your page fresh and updated. If you’re not too excessive, this can be done endlessly to keep the content moving. Once you have the content, of course, you need to amplify it accordingly, using your social media channels to do so. These tips should get you started on making the most of the content you already have, saving you time, money, and effort.

Russel Cooke is a business consultant and journalist based in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on Twitter @RusselCooke2.

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