Sixty Seconds for Social: It’s Alive! Social Media Hacks to Bring New Life to “Dead” Content

Is “dead” content haunting you? You know what I’m talking about. It’s that great piece of content you put out months ago, and after a great few weeks, it’s just sitting there lifeless on the Internet, waiting for a mad scientist (or marketer) to breathe new life into it.

Not every brand has the time and resources to constantly be putting out new, entirely original content. But you can restore life and interest in your old content, and you won’t need Dr. Frankenstein to pull it off, just a little imagination, and a few simple tools.

Make Content Immortal with Images

Have an old infographic with still relevant facts, or some old images from a blog post or Instagram shares just sitting around? Why not add a quick factoid or inspirational quote and jumpstart the conversation again. This is what’s great about evergreen content, it rarely goes out of style. This technique is also perfect for sharing old videos too. Just grab a still shot of your video, square the dimensions and you’ve got a great share for Instagram.

This can be done with any number of tools, our favorite is Canva, which allow you to quickly and simply create great images with text for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Here’s an example from a recent blog post on native advertising by Tier One’s Laureen Sanderson:

With tricks like this you’re not only bringing new life to an old image, but also to the content you’re highlighting. In this case it’s a blog post, but this could be done with industry data, studies, and more.

Up the Voltage of Your Video

New features on Vine and Instagram have made it ridiculously easy to make the most out of longer video content. Both apps now allow users to upload videos and edit them down to 6 (for Vine) or 15 seconds (Instagram). Check out how Toyota repurposed its Super Bowl video on Vine, getting 3 great shares out of one commercial:

Vine

Side note: Vine and Instagram video are great ways to tease longer pieces of video content as well, leading up to a launch or premiere.

Now, back to resurrecting tired content: You don’t have to be Toyota (or the Muppets) with a vast collection of television content to repurpose to take advantage of this. Old explainer videos or product demos can make great social clips and create new sharing opportunities for your brand without creating a whole new video.

Flip this on its head and turn great Vine videos into full-length commercials, like this great example from HP:

You can get more info and tips on both of these video options in recent Tier One blog posts on Instagram and Vine.

Raise Content from the Grave with GIFs

GIFs are another great way to make the most of videos (and images too). American Express has done this with their successful series of television commercials featuring Tina Fey:

This new social format has given these already well known pieces of content a new life on Tumblr in this case, and online in general.

Tools like imgflip can easily convert bits of the video into little shareable clips. You can even add text to your clips, like you see in the example above. This recent Tier One blog outlines several great tools for creating your own GIFs.

The important thing to remember when resurrecting old content is make it fresh. Don’t panic the villagers with content dejavu. Choose your content and package it wisely, and avoid the torches and pitchforks altogether.