In the content marketing arena, sometimes you hit the jackpot and get super excited about social media engagement — maybe because your content gave some savvy advice, presented a new idea or explained something with a fresh outlook. But over time, the excitement ends, and your original content is off the radar. Instead of letting your visionary messages get buried forever, explore the ways you can repurpose and alter them to get them in front of audiences once again. An SEO analysis of your website might reveal that you can make old content viable with a few new tweaks, too. So, if you put the time and energy into repurposing a golden article or blog post, you’d be amazed at how you can improve your website’s SEO and your overall brand. Feeling shaky about this idea? Consider this: repurposing content doesn’t make you lazy, it makes you smart. Here are 3 ways to effectively reuse the content you’ve put so much work into.

1. Dig Deeper with a Long Form Piece

Building on top of old ideas is a great way to repurpose your content — you’ve probably learned more as a marketer since you published it, right? For example, if you crafted an article on using Facebook for lead generation, expand it to a broader topic like current social media marketing best practices. You can use the original post or article as a springboard for a long form piece and include SEO tactics from your new campaign. Take the original information and create an in-depth white paper, how-to guide or even an eBook that can be offered as a free download to strike gold the second time around.

2. Transform Original Article into an Infographic

Infographics are effective and very shareable — visuals are processed 60,000 times faster by the brain than text, and 40 percent of people respond better to visual information than written content. Publishers who use infographics also direct more traffic to their sites than those who don’t. When you’re ready to turn your idea into a visual, it’s important to map out your goals, message or story before working on the infographic design. Know what type of data you can take from the original article and what basic graphic elements you’d like to use. To help with the design process, you can take advantage of free online tools for infographics like Easelly, Piktochart or Infogram. In the end, you’ll have a great visual for your audience to engage with on social media sites and your website — it’s a win no matter what!

3. Expand Reach with an Expert Guest Post

Another clever way to utilize your original content is by taking the idea and using it to spark conversation with a guest post. Focus on one or two key points from your original piece, and ask an expert contributor to provide their insight on the issue in a current context. It’s important to be sure that the new post is fresh and not just a rehash of the original version. In addition, make sure it fits with the voice of your blog so it appeals to your brand’s target audience. Since it’s advice or insight from an expert on a topic that you know your customers care about, you’ll be able to engage potential leads, get social media shares and increase your website traffic.

Stretch Your Potential

When you’ve already got valuable content, you can only benefit from growing and stretching it to fit your current needs. Plus, if your SEO analysis showed that you need to up your game to get more traffic, optimizing your older pieces is an effective way to help you reach your goals. If you’re smart about it, your old content can be revamped to remain useful and relevant — a savvy marketer understands the value of tapping into all of their resources to improve their strategy.