Repurposing or regenerating content is easy to do with evergreen content, since you know it’ll always be relevant and valuable to your audience. But what about any net-new content you create? Is there a way to create it so that it’ll be easy to regenerate into something new later on?

You bet!

If you’re already in the content regeneration mindset, this will be easy for you. You’ve already reframed your mindset to that almost any original content you produce is easy to regenerate later on. Every time you write, whether it’s a blog post, eBook, email, or social media message, you’re already thinking of ways to turn it into something else.

What if you’re not there yet? What if you’re still struggling with the whole idea of regenerating content?

How can you create content worth regenerating?

The first step is to remember that your content doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You can use it pretty much everywhere you’re already publishing.

The second step is to always produce solid content. The original piece must have strong “core” muscles that’ll allow you to regenerate it into other pieces. Sometimes you’ll expand it into something bigger or comprehensive; other times you’ll chop it up into smaller bite-sized pieces. But if you don’t have good source material to work from, this won’t work.

The third step is to understand your audience. You have to know what they’re looking for, what content they appreciate and value, otherwise your regenerating efforts will be wasted. For example, if they’re looking to you for commentary on industry news and trends, social media messages + a blog post about your company’s holiday party may not work.

The fourth step is to plan out your regeneration strategy. You can’t simply grab any old content and start regenerating it into something else on an ad hoc basis. Regeneration works best when you plan it all out. Think about things like how you’re going to tailor the content for your blog and social media channels. What purpose do you want the content to serve when you republish it? How does the content fit into your larger marketing strategy and overall business goals?

The final step is to create new CTAs for the content. Because you’re regenerating it for different channels and formats, you’ll need to tailor the CTAs to match. Think about what you want your audience to do after reading the content: should they reach out to you? Share the content with their community? Give you a call? Sign up for a webinar?

Pro tip: Avoid this regeneration pitfall

Remember, regenerating content is not simply the act of republishing it on a different channel. That’s probably the main reason companies are leery of trying regeneration or repurposing. They’ve heard the stories about the Google penalties for duplicate content and don’t want to risk it. Add to that customers or fans that follow them on every channel they publish on, and there’s a lot for them to fear.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t regenerate your content; it just means you need to plan it out. After all, consider your own social media usage: you don’t see everything in your timeline all the time, right? You miss a lot of content from the people you follow. Your audience is the same way. They’re busy working too and so don’t have time to see all of your content all the time. In fact, there are some studies out there that show sharing the same content multiple times can bring you additional traffic you’d never have picked up otherwise.

There are a few simple things you can do to reduce the possibility of your audience seeing the exact same content more than once. It’s all about adding more value to the content every time you regenerate it.

Let’s look at an example: Your next product launch or announcement.

A content regeneration example

It all starts with the original announcement, which you published on your blog, under the Product Announcement page.

1. Write a mini case study of a customer that’s already using this product enhancement to overcome an obstacle they face every day.

2. Create a couple of images about the product enhancement for use on subsequent publication.

3. Use an image alongside a feedback quote on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

4. Have your Technical Director publish a LinkedIn Pulse article talking about the development of the new features.

5. Create a mini FAQ page about the enhancement and release each question and answer once a day on social media.

6. Have one of the developers that worked on the project write a behind-the-scenes (BTS) blog post.

7. Create a video that explains the value prospects and leads will get out of the new enhancement.

8. Incorporate the video into your next new leads webinar.

You get the idea.

Keep the future in mind

Before you publish new content, always remember that you can regenerate the content into something else in the future. You want to reach new portions of your audience, so by presenting your content in different ways, you’ll do exactly that. Especially when there’s a topic or piece of content you put a lot of effort in to, you want to make sure to get all the ROI you can out of it. Make it as timeless and reusable in the future.