Congratulations! You had a popular article that brought high engagement and a host of new readers. Now what? You can’t post the same thing again–not exactly–but you put too much time and money into it to forget about it. You CAN, however, re-package and optimize the current content to continue building loyal readers and authentically grow more traffic. Welcome to strategic content recirculation. 

Recirculation efforts aim to draw in an audience that will engage with and consume high volumes of your content. Readers who find more of what they love on your website keep returning, helping build a consistent revenue stream. Plus, recirculation makes less work for you and your content team! When you find a topic working for your audience, you can repurpose and spin it multiple times to maintain their interest. Perfect for slow news days.

In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of recirculation for publishers to help increase traffic and revenue streams. We’ll also give you a few tips for making it work for your brand. 

What is recirculation? 

The recirculation metric is essentially the percentage of readers who make it past the content that initially draws them in. It measures how many people visit an article compared to how many people navigate the site to new content. 

Unfortunately, at least 89% of readers who visit your website will click away after engaging with only one article. As discouraging as this feels, it’s not the end of your brand’s online success. Trust us. If anything, this stat shows how essential recirculation methods are when it comes to creating and distributing content. 

The importance of focusing on recirculation 

As a publisher, views online=money. You can put out as much content as you want, but it’s not a sustainable strategy if you only get one-time visitors each time. Recirculation strategies focus on quality and enhancing the reader experience with a consistent flow of tailored content.

There are three types of users: loyal, returning, and new. Publishers should seek to build more loyal readers over new or returning readers. Loyal readers are the ones who visit your site weekly, looking for more content. They have the highest recirculation rate and help you hone in on your audience. Loyal users are the ones who build your revenue stream and whose engagement will help open the door for similar readers.

Returning users are great, but they only visit once a month or so. And while you always want new users, you don’t want to risk losing your current loyal audience to grab more new readers, which could be temporary. 

Optimizing your social strategy with recirculation 

Recirculation efforts are essential to boosting your engagement online. More engaging content translates into more traffic. More traffic into excellent revenue potential. 

Some of the critical components of implementing recirculation into your social media strategy are similar to the ones we’ve discussed before for boosting referral traffic or strategies for audience engagement. Let’s take a look at how they factor in specifically when focusing on recirculation. 

Quality tailored content 

Yes, quality is essential. But make sure you focus on quality content concerning your current loyal audience. Stay authentic in your approach, focusing on human connections. Whatever tactic you used to grab the reader’s attention the first time worked, so don’t veer off.

Stay true to your POV, and don’t overextend what your team has the bandwidth to produce. If you use multiple media types (which you should be), always make sure to correctly format your content specific to each platform you’ll be publishing on. We have some great tips in this article for video content formatting.

Optimize with internal links 

Dropping links within your articles that take readers to different parts of your site keeps them invested. Make sure the links are valuable and related to the original article. You want readers to get lost in a rabbit hole of articles. A random link just to put a link will not lead to any positive metrics.  

SEO experts will tell you to put internal links above the digital fold– the section of your site immediately visible to your readers before they have to scroll. This often includes the header, image, and first few paragraphs. Links higher up on the article perform better, and links grouped closely together perform 2.5 times better than websites that spread out their links throughout the article. 

Use widgets on the desktop

Publishers are big on using widgets to steer readers to related articles, and they’re effective–on a desktop. Ensure you consider the number of readers you have using mobile devices. Studies show that roughly 57% of Americans get their news from a smartphone, as opposed to 30% who prefer a computer/desktop. Widgets will appear on mobile devices, but most often at the bottom, and your audience may not make it that far every time.

Consider using a mix of widgets and internal links that highlight the same related content. Meet your readers where they are and how they consume their news to ensure you optimize the entire audience. 

Avoid content deserts

Content desserts exist when a reader finds one article they are interested in and then nothing else. No matter how good the first article was, they aren’t likely to come back or subscribe to your content for more if there is none.

If you find one article attracting your target audience, figure out how to create a repackaging train. Publish more articles related to the first one that readers will be interested in and expecting. You can do the same for social media, creating several posts and different content types that draw readers into similar articles that lead to more and so on.

Focus on evergreen content 

Evergreen recirculation is the ultimate goal all publishers should aim for with their online strategy. These posts tend to be your highest-performing pieces and don’t have a shelf-life. You can repackage this type of content repeatedly, attracting more of your target loyal audience to create a vault of information they can continue to access. 

We have more tips on creating evergreen content your audience will love to help you build an endless catalog of content to redistribute. 

Avoid ambiguous links 

Your readers should click on links, knowing precisely what they are getting into. Using ambiguous links is no longer fun for readers. By hiding links or misleading readers, you’ll likely open the door for your readers to distrust you. Labeling links clearly is best so readers don’t miss the related content they’re looking for.

Utilize multiple platforms

You never want to put all your eggs in one basket. Your ultimate goal is to get readers to your website for a consistent revenue stream. This can be done by utilizing multiple platforms, and it doesn’t take recreating content from scratch.

Repackage your popular content outside of your website on different social media platforms. Multi-platform social media exposure gives you access to new demographics looking for your content. Experiment with recirculation by posting at different times in various forms (video, photos, stories) to draw in more loyal readers.

Remember, not all platforms serve the same demographic. When you repackage and distribute, cater to your loyal audience on each. For instance, on Instagram, you may go for more of a beautiful aesthetic when posting an image or video. On TikTok, more informal storytelling posts are popular, so you could make a behind-the-scenes of you MAKING your Instagram story or post as your content.

Succeeding in content recirculation strategy with TA

Before you can try to implement recirculation strategies, you must know your audience and what they like. You can’t make more content for your audience if you don’t know who you’re talking to. You can’t repurpose popular content if you don’t know which posts are the highest-performing. 

True Anthem is setting a new standard in social media automation to help publishers succeed in their recirculation efforts without much effort at all. Using advanced AI, True Anthem can help publishers grow their traffic with data-driven posting by leveraging real-time data from your website. Our tool tells you who your loyal audience is, what they like, and which posts you should be honing your recirculation effort on for optimal results.

See how we can help boost your traffic and revenue stream firsthand by requesting a demo.