The way the world works, everything changes constantly. From the kind of clothes that is on trend, the music, and the information that drives the constant changes in the world. That means things get outdated, yes, music and clothes still hold a special kind of relevancy once they transcend to the vintage; but the same is not true for information and marketing. Once you are out of trend, you are basically old news.

As luck would have it, updating your content to fit the time is actually fairly easy. By doing this, your content can continue to become relevant especially the content was already high-performing in terms of popularity in the first place. Plus, it saves time because you would not need to create another one from scratch.

However, you might think it is probably easier for blog articles to be updated than video. Honestly, in most cases, it is actually true. But here we will discuss about how you can approach updating your video and the ways in which you can do it. You are going to have to apply a little elbow grease,as is the case with other marketing techniques, but hopefully you will be able to get the hang of it and apply it to your own videos.

Repurposing vs. Revamping

First, let us get certain confusions out of the way. There is a difference between repurposing and revamping content. You might not think that this is a big deal, but the difference actually dictates what you are going to do to your content and how you are going to promote it again.

Repurposing videos mean that you are changing the format of the content. It could be from blog article to video to infographic and so on. The purpose behind changing the format could differ, too. Let us say you wrote an article promoting videos to social media, but you also want to create a podcast about it. You can tailor the content to fit the new format, the same is true if you want to create a video out of the same material. By doing this, you are trying to reach people who prefer different kinds of formats. The other reason would be to extend your reach to a different audience. Maybe you want amateur video marketers to check out your work for this specific topic, or you probably want to start a discussion with people who are more advanced. That is what repurposing is for, getting the attention of a different segment of people

Revamping, on the other hand, the goal is to continue using it for the same purpose you created the material in the first place. But this time, you just want to update its content so that it remains to be relevant to your viewers. Using the same example, for instance your article on promoting videos on social media became very popular. Upon studying the current trends you found out that the techniques you have listed on your work is already a little outdated, and so you decide to update the information by editing it and putting an author’s note at the start or at the end of the article. The purpose of revamping is to get the attention of the same segment of people.

Differentiating this will help you figure out what you actually want to do with your content. But now let us delve into one of those content editing techniques for your videos: revamping your content.

Why you need to update your video

The best question is, why should you care about updating your video, or any content for that matter? It is old content anyway, buried deep within the archives, why would should you bother?

It is simple really: it still drives high traffic.

Content that stays useful regardless of the season is called evergreen content. If your content remains to be evergreen it still holds an SEO value that some of your newer content may not have. This just means that whenever a person searches for something, there is a high possibility that search engines will prioritise your older content because it ranks well. If that person is new to your page and have not checked the date you published your video, they might get information that is already outdated, and therefore not very useful for current trends. You do not want to break people’s trust, especially if it is their first time checking your work out.

By updating your content, you are extending the life of your content as well as give it a chance to rank even better on search engines. Plus, it is easier than creating a post from scratch, and it is certainly a time-saver. Of course, not all of your video content can be updated.

What makes content evergreen?

• As the name suggests, it should be everlasting. Regardless of season or year, the content should provide useful information and will need little to no editing at all.
• You should make sure that the content within are top quality that people notice it the first time you have published it. Remember that f your content is not valuable in the first place, people will not bother reading it so you cannot expect your updated content to get as much views.
• Evergreen content usually take time to make because it is your best practices, some definitive guide or an expert piece on a certain topic. It is usually a very detailed content explaining these things than on other topics.

Making sure that your content remains evergreen is important not only because it guarantees SEO traffic, but also because it is one way for you to create a certain level of trust to a viewer revisiting your post or someone who is new to your content.

When to update your video content

It is very easy to figure out when you need to update your video content because as marketers, you are constantly studying trends and different techniques that apply to you. If you found something new, study it and decide whether this new idea/trend/technique works really well but seems to contradict your previous post or not. If you think your post is still relevant because it is still better than this new thing you have found, then you do not need to change anything, but if it is the contrary, you better dig up your content and start updating it.

To help you, here are examples of evergreen content.

• How-to guides for topics that have a fixed process (e.g. how to create a Google My Business page)
• Frequently asked questions both of the company and the industry it is in
• Historical timelines (e.g. the evolution of advertising)
• Curated content (e.g. 9 best tools for video editing)

On the other hand, here are what is not considered evergreen content:

• Time specific or event specific posts
• Anything that provides data and statistics
• Editorials or opinion content
• News

Identifying the type of content can help you after learning about trends so that you will know if it needs to updated or if its current form is still pretty relevant. Remember that the lifespan of evergreen posts are usually one to two years, even then new things come up that might need to show up on your video. So just keep these in mind and you will be okay.

How to update video content

The first thing you need to understand is if something is not broken, then you do not need to fix it. It is true for evergreen posts, and it is true for any other post that can be considered long-lasting. Here are a couple of things you can do when updating your video content.

Audit your video content

Like what was mentioned previously, not all content can be updated. You need to create a short list of videos that need to be updated. To do these you can consult Youtube analytics or analytics of the video platform you are using. Check out which ones are getting top views and which ones are not. Now that you have done that, the next thing to do is to check out which ones are ranking well, and to these you can use a keyword metrics

By doing this, you will have a list of evergreen content that you can update to

Update content

Here comes the difficult part: actually updating the video content. With Youtube, you can always add annotations on the video, this way people will know on a specific timestamp on the video that there is some new development in the industry regarding an item that you are currently talking about. But what if the update is longer?

This is where multiplatform publishing comes in, and some marketers are doing this already. When you publish a video content, write a post about it. It could be a summary of the points you were talking about on the video, or a bulleted list of things. This way, you can put annotations on the video and add a longer update on a post that you have written. Plus, the goal has always been to lead the viewer to your actual website, putting an annotation that a longer update is included on a post in your website will get them to visit it.

Update call-to-action

In relation to the previous point, you can put new links for people to visit so that they will not miss out on new information. Make sure that your CTA catches attention, put it in the first fold of the description box or make sure the color of the CTA annotation is noticeable.

Make sure it is optimized

Yes, your content is already ranking on search engines, what else can you do? Well, you can always rank it for other keywords, especially now that you have updated it. Maybe you can add new video tags and maybe someone who used certain words on their search might stumble upon your video.

Create more everlasting content

Think about what other topics have not been touched on in your industry, or maybe something unique but still related to your business. Evergreen content is the best way to drive traffic from your video to your website and can certainly help conversion rates, so continue creating them.

Updating video content is a bit harder than updating written posts, but never forget that you can use them both. Videos are still the best way to get a message across since people are more visual nowadays, but it is always helpful to have a way for you to edit your content other than putting annotations on the video. It is hard, and you might need to get into the nitty gritty of things, but it is definitely worth doing in the long run.