Speaker 1: 0:05

What is the most effective way to repurpose old content to keep it fresh and relevant? Welcome to Legal Marketing 101. I'm Toby Rosen. Today, we are talking about repurposing your old content. This is all about taking the most high-performing content that you have and breathing new life into it. We're extending the shelf life of articles, we're getting more out of the content we've already created and sometimes we're just giving ourselves a break from writing so that we can, you know, do something else.

Speaker 1: 0:34

In marketing, we've talked a little bit about creating written content first, because it's much easier to repurpose, but the reality is that this can work with a lot of different types of content. So what we're going to do today is we're going to go through how to actually identify this content and then we're going to walk through a couple of different examples of how you can actually repurpose this content and use it for something new, because, like I said, there are a bunch of different reasons that you might want to repurpose this content. You might want to have, you know, something just to put into your content planner, so that you don't have to be creating something for every single new item. So what we're going to do here is we're going to go through all those steps and we are going to figure out some of the best ways to repurpose your content and really create something new out of something you've created in the past. So when it comes to identifying content, let's start there. That's the really key thing is which content is actually worth repurposing. So what we're really doing here is sort of searching for hidden gems in our existing content library. So we want to start by auditing all of our existing materials. We're looking for usually evergreen topics, content that remains relevant over time. Things like how to file a trademark or key steps in a particular litigation process, and popular posts or popular articles on your site that have already resonated with your audience are usually pretty good candidates too, especially if these spark some kind of conversation or you recall getting some kind of engagement based off of them. To make this whole process easier, there are a bunch of ways you could do it just from memory, but there are a lot of really easy tools we can use, the first being Google Analytics or your CMS, like WordPress's built-in metrics, and we can look at a few different metrics in here to determine what's actually going to work well for repurposing. So obviously we're looking at page views, time spent on the page, a number of social shares, that kind of stuff, to gauge what's resonating. If particular articles or blog posts are consistently drawing traffic, either over time or when they are shared on social media, you know, linked to some type of event, or if certain videos are continually generating viewership, then we've found a piece of content that has a lot of potential.

Speaker 1: 2:48

The other thing we want to consider is trends in general, both in the legal industry and with client current interests and you know, say it's an election year. We want to consider those trends. For a very specific example, if there's a new regulation that's affecting your practice area, maybe we have an old article on a similar topic that we could just update to reflect these changes and make it different enough so that it would be new content. You might also revisit some topics that are resurfacing in the news cycles. Like I said, the general trends or things that clients are talking about. If there's an economic slowdown, if there is something going on in schools in your district, whatever it is, the things that clients have concerns about, whether they're concerns about your practice or not. If you can address those concerns through the content, it's usually going to be effective. On top of that, updating the content either updating it in situ or updating it in a new article it refreshes its value. It signals to Google that we're staying up to date and we're publishing new stuff, but it also signals to real people that we stay current and we're up to date with all the latest developments. The other thing about these audits is that you should be doing them, probably pretty regularly, and by doing them strategically, you're going to continually find valuable pieces that can be repurposed and recreated and updated, and this will keep your marketing fresh, while making it so much easier, because most of the hard work is already done.

Speaker 1: 4:15

And when we're repurposing this content, the goal here, like I said, is to give the materials new life. This lets us reach new audiences in a whole bunch of different, fresh ways. So let's dive into some of the more effective strategies for actually repurposing the content, first of which is updating and expanding on the content, because that's you know, it's already there. It's probably the simplest way to do things, and the reality is legal information can change quickly. Yeah, I know, legislatures and court systems are slow, but new regulations happen, new case law happens, and so we can refresh older articles or blog posts with the latest developments, new stats, recent case studies, reviews, whatever. So let's say, we wrote a law on data privacy three to five years ago. Now we can update it to include the latest trends in cybersecurity or recent court rulings that are actually going to make this article valuable again. You can even expand on this content by adding new sections, faq sections, all kinds of things based on what our clients have actually asked us. And this strategy doesn't just boost our SEO by signaling to Google and Bing and et cetera that our content is up to date, but it helps us re-engage with our audience. It gives us something we can reshare because there is new relevant information.

Speaker 1: 5:34

Next on the list is transforming content into different formats. I've talked about this before, but it's a really great way to breed this new life into that existing content. So let's say we take a really well-performing blog post and turn it into a podcast episode where we then discuss that topic in more depth. We break down some of the bullet points from our article and we really dig deep. Or we create a short video where we summarize the main points of the article for the YouTube channel, or even something like a webinar where, like the podcast episode we can really dive into the topic's complexities.

Speaker 1: 6:10

Another idea is infographics. These are really useful for breaking down legal concepts or statistics or just important information in a way that's really visually engaging and this makes it a lot more shareable on social media. Episode and an article and a couple of infographics all on the same topic. We're catering to all of these different audiences based on their preferences. So if they prefer reading or listening or watching, we've got something for them.

Speaker 1: 6:43

And our next idea I think we're on number three now is that we can create like a series or a bundle. Especially if we have a bunch of long form content like guides, white papers, we could break this down into smaller segments and then create a series of content. So if we have a guide on estate planning, let's let's take this as an example. If we have a guide on estate planning, we could turn this into a multi-part blog series that covers topics like wills and then trusts and probate and dealing with family you know all the different things that come in on an estate planning case and each one of these posts it focuses just on its specific aspect. This approach not only makes the content potentially a little bit easier to digest for your audience, but it also keeps the audience coming back for more. They don't get it all in one fell swoop, and the cool thing about this is, if we already have a series, we can bundle those series into an ebook or a downloadable guide, and this provides again value to your audience while generating potentially, some leads through a gated content kind of setup.

Speaker 1: 7:45

We've talked about landing pages before Go back and look for that episode. Next on our list is social media teasers, and there's really a lot to unpack when it comes to content and social media, but we're going to talk about one aspect here. So the reality is that social media is still incredibly effective for engagement and it's really perfect for sharing these bite-sized pieces of content to drive traffic back to the website or back to whatever you know video profile or even social profile that we want. So we can use things like snippets of articles or quotes from articles, key takeaways from our bullet lists in articles, things from webinars, podcast episodes, whatever it is, take these and turn them into social media posts. So if we created, let's say, a recent blog post or a recent video or article on the do's and don'ts of contract drafting, we could then create a series of LinkedIn posts that each one of them is highlighting a do or a don't, or a do and a don't each day. So if we had 10 in our webinar or our podcast, then each day we do one and we have a 10-day series for our audience, and every time we post this we link back to the full article or the full podcast for more information for the user. This approach to publishing the content makes it really easy to digest for the user and it keeps the content top of mind, because it's much easier for somebody to remember a short quote than an entire article. So all of this works together to help us encourage real engagement on social media and on the website and then extends the life of our original topic.

Speaker 1: 9:20

Written about is a really great way to engage people, and this can be done in person or online. So there are a ton of options as to how to actually present this. But as an example, let's say you've written an article about recent changes in employment law. If you have the audience, think about hosting a live Q&A. It could be streamed on Facebook and on YouTube, or a panel discussion streamed the same way with other experts, and you can then dive deeper into the subject. You could do this on your own or with somebody from your office who can run the live stream, or you could do this with a bunch of other experts and really create something that has a draw. This format also allows your audience to ask questions in real time I mean talk about engagement and this value is so significant so you can repurpose the recording afterward too, sharing it as a podcast episode, breaking it down into smaller video clips or social media.

Speaker 1: 10:26

But that starts to get into the inception of repurposing content, where we're in a dream within a dream. The reality here is that this can get overwhelming fast. If you're trying to create four different posts, four different long form pieces of content for one original article, it can be a little overwhelming and you really should be doing all of those things, but it's hard to do it all on your own. So what we want to do here is really leverage technology to streamline this whole process, making it much more efficient, much more scalable and something that you maybe actually could pass off, so that all you have to do is create the original content and it can get repurposed and reused in 10 different ways. So there are a lot of tools that are really good for this.

Speaker 1: 11:09

One of the first things I should mention is that your content management system. I like WordPress. There are a lot of good options, but your content management system is going to be one of the most important pieces of this. So if you're easily able to update and republish and deal with all the post stuff, then great. But that's going to be the first step here.

Speaker 1: 11:28

And then, when we come to visual content, great tools for this are things like Canva. There's a new Adobe product in the last couple of years, adobe Express. That is sort of in between Photoshop and Canva. All of these make it really simple to create super engaging graphics, infographics, social media posts based on the materials that we've already written, and most of these tools are already integrating AI. So you can use the AI integrations that are already existing in the design tools and in the CMS tools that you already have, and you can use tools like ChatGPT or something like Jasper to summarize documents really quickly and understand and generate concise summaries of long articles.

Speaker 1: 12:11

Jasper, specifically, can then turn these into smaller social media posts, email teasers, podcasts, show notes all kinds of different content that you can use for your social media marketing and for your marketing in general, and, on top of this, ai can be really useful for identifying the topics that are related to our original content, so that we can do more research there. Sometimes it can even offer some insights for us, though, and it can help us understand how we can update or expand these articles based on the new audience interests or the new developments. So we can just tell it hey, update this based on this, and it can get us most of the way there. And then we have the automation tools. These can be really useful when it comes to actually posting this content, distributing it across all of these platforms, things like Buffer, zapier. There's a whole bunch of different social media posting platforms where you can connect as many networks as you like and automate essentially your entire workflow for publishing updates, sharing social media snippets, sending out your newsletter, without having to manually intervene at each one of these steps.

Speaker 1: 13:18

So this makes sure that your repurposed content is actually going out, it's reaching your audience consistently at the optimal times, and it'll give you the analytics you need to continue to optimize and understand what you need to publish for your audience. Like I said up top, the goal here is not just one thing whether it is to make sure that you're effectively using the content you've already generated or you're just feeling like you've run out of ideas. Repurposing that old content is an incredibly effective way to use proven content to publish something new. And just because it's the same ideas doesn't mean people don't want to hear about it again, especially if it's something evergreen. Where it's a topic in, let's say, family law it's a topic about child support that just never goes away. There's a new way to share that information. Perhaps it's going to resonate differently with somebody and that could be the last straw when it comes to them coming into your office. So repurposing content it can feel a little bit like we're trying to reinvent the wheel, but the reality is that people react to these things in different ways and we're just giving ourselves another chance to reach the right audience.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Now, before we go, I do want to mention that we have the paid episodes going out on the first Monday of every month. We're really diving deep into topics in those episodes. I know we get pretty deep into topics in the free episodes, but we're really going down into the nitty gritty with a lot of detail in those episodes. So definitely check that out and make sure to subscribe. That's it for Legal Marketing 101. Check out RosenAdvertisingcom for more Thanks.