The Quick & Dirty Guide to Content Repurposing

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**This is a guest post by Bailey Richert from BaileyRichert.com**

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Creating exhaustive, compelling and, above all, helpful content for your clients and potential customers is an essential part of any online business’ marketing strategy. You need to prove beyond a doubt, and better than anyone else out there, that you know your stuff and have information worth paying for.

The teeny, tiny, teensy problem? You’re only one person (or maybe a small team), and those blog posts can take up to 10 hours to compile. That YouTube video showing a screencast tutorial on your favorite tool takes 5+ hours to do after the recording, editing, rendering, and posting is complete. Don’t even get me started on podcasts that require scheduling interviewees, recording and editing, too.

When you’re a small operation trying to get the word out about your business and expertise quickly enough to keep it fresh on a weekly basis,

How can you realistically cover so many different avenues of content marketing when the time required to create the content is all consuming?

The answer: content repurposing. 

What is Content Repurposing?

“Repurposing your content” means taking some content (e.g. blog post, video, social media post) you’ve already created for one platform and sharing it in new ways. This usually means either sharing your content on new platforms and/or sharing it through new mediums.

Repurposing your content isn’t the same thing as reusing your content. To reuse your content would mean to post the same thing again and again on the same platform. Your blog readers aren’t going to stick around if you post the same “10 ways to do this” article every month. Rather, repurposing is about tailoring content you’ve already created to an audience that will consume it in a different way.

Why Should You Repurpose Content?

As alluded to above, repurposing your content is first and foremost going to save you a lot of time. For example, imagine you have a Facebook business page and a Twitter account whose feeds you like to keep full of your content. You could create entirely new posts for both accounts, ensuring that every single piece of information shared was unique. Or, you could take the content you created for your Facebook business page, and repurpose it for Twitter.

Remember, we don’t want to reuse content. Facebook and Twitter are different platforms with different rules, different limitations, different audiences and different ways to engage. When copying a post from Facebook to Twitter, you could shorten it to meet the 140 character limit, use hashtags, use shortened URLs, and add Twitter-size photos to make your tweet more appealing to your Twitter followers.

Secondly, repurposing your content saves you from running out of content ideas. Or, at least it keeps you from running out of content ideas as quickly. We’ve all been there, sitting in front of your computer when you know that your readers are expecting a new post in a day but unsure of what to write. You’re drawing a total blank because after writing 100 posts over the past 3 years, ideas just aren’t coming to you like they used to. Imagine trying to come up with unique content ideas for every single one of your platforms in addition to your blog. Between your social media channels, groups and communities, books, vlog, courses, and podcast, you’re going to need thousands of ideas. (Is that even humanly possible?)

Lastly, repurposing your content allows you to reach new audiences. Though it would be more convenient for us, the business owners, to have our leads all ‘hang out’ online in one space (either our blog, one social media channel or one group), it simply isn’t and will never be the case. By repurposing your content, you are opening yourself up to a higher possibility that new leads will discover you and your content because you are sharing it in a way that they are most happy to receive it. For example, it is possible that most of your blog followers may not care much for YouTube. But, there may be an audience on YouTube that would like to discover your business if you were to post videos there as well.

How Can You Repurpose Content Correctly?

When repurposing your content, it is critical to remember that there is a right and a wrong way to do it. Your target audience members who do belong to several platforms are going to get annoyed if they see the same piece of content show up in multiple places online at the same time. You need to vary it, tailor it to the platform where you are sharing, and remember to be strategic in your repurposing choices. Here are some tips for repurposing content correctly.

➽ Remember the audience of the platform where you are sharing, and keep in mind why they choose that platform over others. Do they like to read long posts? Do they prefer one hour tutorial videos? Tweak your content to fit the medium and style of the platform.

➽ Leverage the platform for maximum performance. Hashtags are extremely common on Twitter, but less so on Facebook, for example. If you have a Facebook post you want to repurpose on Twitter, consider adding a hashtag to help your content get discovered more. Use the platform and its capabilities to your advantage when repurposing.

➽ Choose which content you will repurpose strategically. Not every single content topic idea you have will adapt well to a variety of platforms. Maybe a checklist is better suited to a blog post but not a social media post. Additionally, you may want to consider only repurposing evergreen content (that is, content which doesn’t change often) so it doesn’t need to be updated in multiple places. Also, when repurposing content you may wish to start or simply stick to high-performing content. Why bother recreating content in another form no one seemed to care for in its previous form?

What Are Ways You Can Repurpose Content?

Between blog posts, presentations, podcasts, webinars, ebooks, videos, social media and more, the ways in which content marketers can repurpose content is numerous. To get you started, I’ve listed 25 ways you can repurpose common forms of online content starting today!

(BONUS: For most of these examples listed, you could simply ‘reverse’ the arrow and turn the latter piece of content into the former, giving you even more ways to repurpose! I didn’t list all those lest this post should become redundant.)

Blog Post Repurposing

1. Blog Post → Guest Post

Approach influencers in your niche, and ask them for the opportunity to guest post on their blog. Since you own the copyright to your original post, there’s nothing wrong with repurposing this content for their blog. However, to give your host that something extra they are looking for, and to avoid complications with SEO, extend your post’s content and add additional value.

2. Blog Post → LinkedIn Pulse Post

Are your LinkedIn connections reading your blog posts? Perhaps not, but you can be sure to get your content in front of them if you repurpose your original blog post as a post on LinkedIn’s publishing platform. Simply navigate to your profile, and click “Write a new post.” All of your published posts will appear at the top of your profile, above the Summary section.

3. Blog Post → Google+ or Facebook Longform Post

Were you aware that you can post statuses on Facebook up to 63,206 characters long, and up to 100,000 characters on Google+? That is between 1/9th and 1/5th of a full length novel! While the effectiveness of such long posts on social media may vary, you do still have the ability to share your entire post, or chunks of it, with your audience on these platforms.

Source: Facebook

4. Blog Post → Ebook

In today’s content marketing world, it’s no longer enough to write 500 word blog posts if you really want to gain your readers’ attention. Sometimes the exhaustive articles we pen for a blog have the makings of a great ebook within them. Simply divide your post into chapters, copy it into the appropriate template in MS Word, and upload to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. (New to ebooks? Check out my self-publishing course at SelfPubSkills.com.)

5. Blog Post → Paperback Book

Is your blog post so rich that you could expand it into an actual book? Perhaps your post was more like a tutorial or exercise-based article which walks the reader through a process that you could turn into a workbook. Creating a paperback book over an ebook may be a better choice. Thanks to Amazon’s paperback self-publishing platform, Createspace, you can now create one at literally zero upfront cost.

6. Blog Post → Email Course

Did you break down your blog post into convenient, easily skimmable sections? Take each of those sections and turn it into a single email in an email course you can deliver to those who sign up for your list. The perfect lead magnet!

7. Blog Post → Audiobook

You don’t need to have a ‘radio voice’ to turn your post into an audiobook. With Amazon’s ACX audiobook self-publishing platform, you can team up with professional voice artists and turn your content into an auditory masterpiece.

8. Blog Post → Forum Answers

Share your content with the masses by spreading it in forums where those that need the most help congregate. On internet forums like Quora and Reddit, provide helpful answers to people’s questions related to your content by pasting in sections of your post in your reply.

9. Blog Post Quotes → Social Media Quote Posts

Did any quotable nuggets of content about 1-2 sentences in length come from your post? Share these on social media with a link back to your post. BONUS: Include a “ClicktoTweet” button in your post to encourage readers to tweet out that quote themselves!

Presentation Repurposing

10. Presentation → Webinar

Use a slide deck you created to give a live or pre-recorded webinar presentation to your community.

11. Presentation → YouTube Video(s)

There are so many options available to you when considering turning your presentation into a video for YouTube. You could record your webinar and post it to your channel, or break up the presentation into shorter clips.

12. Presentation → SlideShare / SlideBoom

Post your presentation to an online community dedicated to share information via slideshows, such as SlideShare or SlideBoom. Keep in mind that these communities often have rules surrounding the use of links within the presentation.

13. Presentation → Keynote Speech

Similar to a webinar but delivered live in front of an audience, use your presentation slide as the foundation of a new keynote presentation you can share at conferences and events.

14. Presentation → Infographic

Presentation slides are often full of visuals, including diagrams, clip art, and beautiful colors. Combine the key points from your presentation into one shareable image as an infographic which can be posted to your blog and shared on social media.

Social Media + Image Repurposing

15. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. → Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.

Repurpose content that you share on one social media channel onto another social media channel. Remember how to repurpose content correctly. Leverage the platform itself to achieve the best results, keeping in mind the proper use of hashtags, length of post and image sizes. Keep in mind also that some content is not appropriate for all social media channels. Keep your lunch pics off of LinkedIn!

16. Infographic → Social Media Picture Post

Infographics are visual representations of data all crammed into one picture. These images are ideal for sharing on social media, especially Pinterest where users bookmark content that they can tell is useful at a glance.

17. Community Challenge via Social Media → Blog Post or Lead Magnet

With the rise of live video broadcasting applications like Periscope and Snapchat, it is becoming more common to see business owners sharing daily tips and tricks. Often, these can take the form of a community challenge (just like my 30-Day #BusinessCleanUp Challenge, for example). Round up all of the tips you share or steps in this challenge for easy reference for those who missed your video broadcasts in a blog post. You could also turn it into an email course which makes for a perfect lead magnet!

Audio + Video Repurposing

18. Video → Podcast

Do you share audio content with your audience, such as through a podcast? Extract the audio from videos you create for YouTube. Just add your show intro!

19. Podcast → Video

Hosting a podcast is no easy task, especially since many podcasts today are based on an interview style where the host has a chat with an influencer in the same niche. Take the work that went into producing that audio and create a video with it that you can post to YouTube. You could either add a still picture to show while the audio plays in the video, or outsource the creation of an animation to match the audio being discussed.

20. Podcast → Roundup Blog Post

Interviewing lots of influencers on your podcast? Do you have one question, or one topic that you always discuss with them? Take the responses from 10-20 of your interviewees, and craft it into a roundup post sharing the insights of these experts.

21. Video → Online Course

Have a long video you can chop into multiple short ones? Have a series of videos or playlist you created to teach a particular subject? Why not combine them in a more formal manner as a new revenue stream for your business: an online course. If you aren’t hosting your own courses on your website yet, you can always get started on a course marketplace like Udemy.com.

Other Repurposing

22. Client Success Stories → Case Study

Have you worked with a client that perfectly represents the kind of transformation you are capable of achieving in others? With their permission, assemble a case study or whitepaper on that person sharing specifically how they started, what they did, how you helped them and what their results were. If you’re collecting testimonials and data for your own business development purposes, why not use it to craft a compelling piece of content that you can share with your audience?

23. Statistics → Social Media Posts

Are there numerical facts that are either relevant to your field or data that you gathered in the course of doing business that you think would astound and intrigue those in your niche? Share this data through social media posts with your community. The clearer the statistic, the more profound the impact.

24. Testimonials → Social Media Posts

With their permission, share a quotable testimonial from a client or customer displaying how awesome you are at what you do! Bonus: when sharing the quote, link back to your Praise page on your website if you have one.

25. Personal Checklists → Blog Posts / Lead Magnets

Do you have any checklists you use in your own personal business operations that you think your audience would like to see? Turn these checklists into branded lead magnets or blog posts that you can share with your community. This repurposes those lists you already have created and also gives your followers a sneak peek into your successful processes.

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Do you repurpose your business’ content to save time and find new audiences?

Are the methods of content repurposing listed above any that you frequently use? What other ways do you repurpose content?

Share your methods with me in the comments below!

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Bailey Richert is a business coach who helps individuals launch profitable online enterprises as “infopreneurs”: respected experts in their fields creating value and profit by sharing their passions with others in a manner that supports their ideal lifestyles. Sign up to receive her free introductory infopreneur toolkit at BaileyRichert.com today!

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