The Ultimate Guide to Repurposing Content Like a Boss

• Updated on: 2023-11-04
• Read original article here

Think of all the effort that goes into creating one piece of long-form content—whether it’s text, audio, or video. Forming a strategy, executing on topics, interviewing experts, making rounds of edits, promoting on social media, etc. Given all the people, sweat, and occasional tears involved, how can you get the most out of your great content?

Repurposing content means repackaging one asset into multiple formats. If you’re looking for ideas on how to repurpose content and get every ounce of value from it, we have a few tips for you.

For example, you can write one blog post and summarize the critical elements for a Twitter thread. Or you can edit the same blog into an infographic or share pull quotes from the piece on social media. All these iterations fall under content repurposing. The benefits are simple and plenty:

The problem? Content repurposing isn’t as simple as copy-and-pasting your blog’s highlights to your social media. You don’t want your audience to feel like your content is repetitive across all channels.

Here’s the thing: Despite all the advantages to content repurposing, not every piece can be recycled and reused.

“Each asset should serve a unique goal, audience, channel—or else all you’re doing is creating a lot of noise without a lot of value,” says Natalia Dinsmore, Senior Content Marketer at Balance.

So, when should you repurpose content to drain every drop from your high-quality content?

Start with answering, “Why do I want to repurpose this content?” (Hint: “Because every marketing guru says so” is not always the right answer.)

Maybe you have a blog post written to bring in subscribers to your company’s newsletter. But you might be able to use the same content to nudge people to sign up for your online course. Repurposing is the right choice here because your goals for the same piece of content have changed.

Review your analytics to see which posts are performing well. A few questions to consider asking:

Repurpose high-performing content to squeeze every bit of juice out of your efforts and reach new audiences through varying mediums. Think about how you can repackage these pieces to provide a fresh experience.

But there’s a caveat: You don’t want to target content that received many shares simply because the topic was trending. They may or may not be relevant today.

Focus on repurposing content that would be useful for months (if not years). For example, an educational video about how to interview your customers would be beneficial in the long term.

On the other hand, avoid repurposing content that has a short life.

If you publish a blog post about a hot topic in the news, for instance, it will be old as early as tomorrow. It might get you many hits today, but repurposing it to an excellent LinkedIn post a week later might not get you the same results if you had posted about it in real-time.

Note: A caveat to this is for short shelf-life content that you can make evergreen. Do you have content related to the pandemic that still has value and purpose today? If so, give it a quick edit to reframe the content for a longer shelf life.

On the other hand, if the content is an educational piece (like a how-to post), add it to your repurposing checklist. It’s crucial to keep a repurposing and distribution strategy around every long-form piece your brand creates before you begin execution.

Blog posts—whether 500 words or 5,000 words—can be repurposed into various formats.

Organic video content is one of the top media channels in 2022, according to HubSpot’s latest The State of Media & Content Planning report.

Ross Simonds, a digital marketing strategist and entrepreneur, repurposed his LinkedIn blog into a YouTube video that has over 14K views.

YouTube remains one of the most widely used platforms for video marketing. But if your company is wary of having a YouTube channel, embed Loom videos on your website to show your product in action, add video content to your social media feed, or share snippets of videos in your newsletters.

Wrote an in-depth listicle or did a deep dive into a how-to post? Repurpose it into an interesting Twitter or Reddit thread, LinkedIn post, or Instagram carousel.

Highlight the main sections, add enough context, and redirect readers to your blog if they want to read more. If your blog post is thoroughly exhaustive, you can even make multiple social media posts covering each pointer in detail.

This one is a hat tip to Levi Olmstead, Senior Content Marketing Manager at Whatfix. The idea is simple:

“Once we have a wealth of content on one subject—i.e., multiple articles covering different aspects of a large topic—we pull that blog content out and repurpose it into large, ‘ultimate guide’ ebooks.”

Whatfix published three articles on learning and development—L&D strategy, L&D challenges, L&D trends—and then combined them into an L&D ebook.

Again, don’t simply copy-paste your blog posts and send a pretty PDF to your customers.

You have to form a coherent structure for your ebook and edit it to flow smoothly from one chapter to the next. It’s also important to modify your design—ebooks present the opportunity to frame your blog content in a different way by highlighting stats, adding more images, and visual data. You can even add more research or expert interviews to your ebook and create gated content.

If one of your long-form pieces is gaining tremendous traction, double down by repurposing it for another website that correlates with your niche.

For example, Semrush repackaged its social media checklist blog post into an infographic and published it on Social Media Today.

Repackage your long-form content into a different format (like Semrush), expand on the topic, or simply repost.

You build valuable backlinks (improving SEO) along with getting more mileage out of your content. The best part? You can now share the new format of your old blog post on social media as well—thoroughly squeezing the juice out of a single post.

Long-form content like whitepapers and ebooks are your company’s greatest marketing assets—made with labor, time, and a ton of effort. There are plenty of ways you can repurpose it, but here are the top four:

Similar to how you can combine similar blog posts into an ebook, you can highlight the main findings from your research report into a blog post.

Influencer Marketing Hub follows this method every year when they release their benchmark report.

Want to take it up a notch? Create a blog series on the main results—diving deep into each subtopic of the whitepaper or ebook.

Whitepapers and ebooks are full of data-driven or expert-backed insights that make for shareable social media quotes.

See how HubSpot shares insights from their research report [now updated for 2022] in an Instagram post.

Share the key results of your whitepaper or ebook in a video format. Discuss every data point in-depth or share snippets of experts you’ve interviewed.

For example, Biteable created a YouTube video to summarize their survey findings.

Want to nurture your email list? Give your email subscribers exclusive snippets of your long-form content.

Oliver Burkeman shared an excerpt of his book, Four Thousand Weeks, to highlight the pre-order offer to his newsletter subscribers.

You can also turn your whitepapers into an email course or email series—forming drip campaigns that automatically deliver each chapter or insight over a set number of days.

While not everyone prefers to listen to audio content, like a podcast, a growing number of U.S. consumers are choosing to tune in. According to a recent study by The Infinite Dial, over 209 million people listen to online audio content every month.

Repurposing your audio content—whether it’s a podcast, an interview, or anything else—is an easy way to reach the non-listeners without going through the hassle of producing new content for them.

When you convert your podcasts into blog posts, you not only get SEO benefits but also provide additional value to sponsors by another conversion-link-tracking opportunity.

But you need to do more than simply transcribing your podcast or writing show notes. Highlight the key takeaways, organize the content into different sections, and erase anything irrelevant.

For example, see how Freelance Writing Coach podcast creators turn each of their episodes into digestible blog posts:

Not only can Contently help you create the podcast in the first place, we can help you convert that podcast into a blog post or blog series.

Creating an animated video clip from your podcast is one of the easiest ways to repurpose podcast content for social media.

Terry O’ Rilley, host of the Under The Influence podcast, regularly shares snippets of his podcasts on his Twitter handle.

The best part? You can create these shareable clips in minutes using Audiogram.

One podcast episode can be a goldmine of social media content creation when done right. Justin Simon, Senior Content Marketing Manager at Metadata, got three weeks of content out of one podcast episode in a few hours.

Long-form video content is yet another goldmine that can keep your content engine from drying out. If your brand hosts webinars, publishes YouTube videos, or produces any other form of video content, here’s how you can repurpose it.

I turned a webinar by Dennis Shiao into a blog post by organizing the content into different sub-sections, adding more context where relevant, and highlighting the key nuggets.

Whether it’s an expert interview, a video podcast, or a social media live Q&A—you can turn the long video into a blog post.

Short videos have boomed since TikTok. Seventy-three percent of consumers say they’d prefer to watch a short video to learn about a product or service, according to a study by Wyzowl.

And marketers are starting to take notice. HubSpot’s 2022 Marketing Industry Trends Report found 31 percent of marketers are leveraging short-form video content in 2022.

The easiest way to create more short-form video content? Trimming your long-form videos to snackable clips.

For example, Deian Isac, Customer Success Manager at Service Provider Pro, repurposed his YouTube video into short LinkedIn snippets.

Use services like Milk Video to create these video snippets in the blink of an eye.

Creating a single piece of high-quality content requires a ton of effort and sometimes a lot of money. But repurposing allows you to work smarter and not harder by making wise use of a single investment.

“Good repurposing is taking the core of [a piece] content—the angle that makes it interesting—and making channel-specific versions of it,” says Benyamin Elias, Director of Growth Marketing at Podia. By making use of the repurposing methods highlighted in this article, you can reach new audiences and grow your online presence without creating anything new. The best part? You also save on the time and money required to create a fresh piece. Win-win.