How to Repurpose Others’ Content the Right Way?

Why plagiarise when you can repurpose others’ content? If you are not bothered by the ethical angle, let me give a good reason not to plagiarise. You will be penalised. Both legally and by the Search Engine. I can't tell you much about the legal aspect, but I can surely tell you about SEO. Search Engines like Google rank an original piece of work higher and plagiarised content lower. Sometimes it removes plagiarised content completely from the rankings. 

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So you are allowed to get inspired by others' content but not steal it. Even if you are allowed, you shouldn't. If you don't want it to negatively affect your SEO.

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Here are a few ways to repurpose other's content the right way:

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Sharing a post on social media

You would have noticed this on LinkedIn - Hundreds of people with the same emotional story. The exact same! Here's an example:

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It might not be a big issue if your audience is coming across such a post for the first time. But if not, they will start considering you as a content thief. So what will be the point of content stealing if you will lose your audience? 

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If your excuse is that you have gone through something similar or relate to the experience. Then you can simply share the post and add your viewpoints, opinions, experience and other things. This way, you give credit to the original content creator while adding your thing, and you get a new piece of content for your page as well.

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Using others' content as the foundation for new content:

There is so much you can do here without plagiarising. Here's an example of Social Samosa. It is an online publication reporting trends, insights and breaking stories on social media marketing. Check out these posts from Social Samosa:

Here they have simply just shared what other brands are doing. That's it. It can be that simple. 

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Look at this example.

Let's say you came across this infographic. 

You can write a blog or article and make a video, podcast, or social media and much more. Using all or some of the information in the infographic as the foundation of your new content.

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Like for the first section where it just states that attention span has reduced from 12 seconds to 8.25 seconds, you can do an in depth research and talk about what are the reasons for decreasing attention span.

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Here's one more. Let’s say you listened to a podcast about - How to dress for an interview. You can explore different angles - The Dos and Don'ts of interview dressing, How to dress for a college interview, how to dress for a job interview, and so much more and create content in the same podcast format or other formats. 

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Using images available on the web:

Let it be for your social media, blog, email marketing or anything else; we all are guilty of using images from the web without giving credit. The least we can do is add the source of the image. 

You can take it one step further and just use those images for inspiration and create a new version of it. 

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The baseline is when you are using others' content, make sure that you ask for permission formally or informally or give credit to clarify that you are using their content as inspiration. This way, your audience will also view you as someone who creates original unique content and not as just a random content creator.

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