There’s a little technique in content marketing that many people still don’t know about. It’s a technique that will save you masses of time but will make it look as if you’ve created a ton of juicy content. It’s called repurposing, and if you’re not doing it already, then here’s how to repurpose content.
What is repurposing?
In the simplest form, repurposing is a technique used to turn something old into something new and fresh. It’s not unique to content – you can repurpose clothing or an old piece of furniture, for instance. But it’s a technique that works so well with your marketing content that you’re going to be so excited to start using it! Think about it, even TV spin-offs like Frasier (from Cheers!) are a form of repurposing! And look how well that turned out!
So, why repurpose?
As I mentioned earlier, repurposing saves you shed loads of time. Mostly because you’ve already had the idea and written something about it. You just have to now reuse it in a way that works for another platform.
It also helps you to reach new audiences. Because as much as you’d like to think every person follows you on every social platform ever, we all know that’s not the truth. Some people don’t use Instagram, for instance; others are die-hard YouTube fans. So that means you can share the same piece of content in different ways across various platforms and reach a much wider audience! Now that’s an excellent reason for repurposing, don’t you think?
Finally, it uses every ounce of great content juice you can muster from one idea. And given the amount of effort involved in producing one piece of content, knowing you’re getting as much out of it as possible is always good news. I’m always way more impressed with one top or dress I’m able to wear over and over again than a whole outfit I can only ever wear once or twice!
What should you repurpose?
As much as I’d love to say EVERYTHING, you should be a bit selective about what you do and don’t repurpose.
Pick content that’s EVERGREEN. In other words, the information contained within it doesn’t age or go out of date. That means posts with a lot of facts or figures might not be ideal, along with every post ever about Facebook Ads! But an article you write about blogging techniques would work well, for example.
Also, choose your most popular content. If it’s popular on one platform, the chances are it’ll be popular on others. So take a look at what gets read most or viewed most from your existing content.
Some repurposing ideas include…
- Reading through old blog posts and pulling out ideas you wrote about but can now speak about in more detail.
- Take individual ideas from blog posts and create new social media posts about them.
- Turn a social media or blog post into a talk or YouTube video.
- Turn a Facebook Live into a video tutorial or several blog posts.
- Turn a series of blog posts into a Lead Magnet or Ebook.
- Turn testimonials into social media posts.
- Transcribe a podcast and create a blog post.
- Turn questions you get asked into new content.
Do remember to adapt the content to each format you’re creating it for. Just as you wouldn’t copy a post over from Instagram to Facebook with all the hashtags, the way you present your blog post is going to look different as a YouTube video, for example.
If you’re not sure what types of content marketing you can be using, do check out this post over on Backlinko for more ideas.
Need some content that you can repurpose? Drop me a message, and let’s talk!