Picture this. It’s a few days after Thanksgiving, and you’ve still got turkey, cranberry sauce, gravy, some roasted veggies, and leftover dinner rolls in the fridge. You could recreate the holiday plate, but you’re tired of that. However, what you’re not tired of is mixing the cranberry sauce with a little mayo, slathering that on the roll and then stacking it high with the rest of the leftovers. All the same ingredients, brand new meal!
We do this all the time with tasty leftovers, why wouldn’t you do that with the content you’ve already created for your blogs, newsletters, and social media posts? Like the sandwich, it will save you hours of fresh work and will make use of good things that you already have.
Some of the benefits of repurposing content include boosting SEO, expanding your online reach for that content, and saving you some brainpower that you can use for creating brand new content for another time.
Repurposing is not just reposting the same thing again. When you repurpose content, you need to rework it and make it into something fresh. This will definitely not be possible for every single piece of content, particularly items that are time-sensitive or deal with a very unique situation. You’re looking to repurpose evergreen content that will be just as relevant now as it was when you posted the original content.
You also won’t repurpose to every single channel. The re-work may tell you where it should go next; for example, if you take a blog post’s content, then make a video of it, you won’t post the video to your blog again. It would make more sense to use it on a more video-friendly channel, such as Instagram. Consider the platform when you’re working on a reworking of content. Sometimes it can inform how you make those updates.
Below are a few ideas of how to take something you created in one format and transform into something for another. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it covers some of the most common methods of repurposing content.
- Convert eBooks and research reports into blogs
- Take snippets from long form to post on short form platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn, or as community responses
- Turn info from blogs into graphics which work well on image-friendly platforms
- Long form blogs into videos for YouTube
- Convert long form videos into short form videos
- Turn sections from videos into written commentary
- Videos into blogs
- Videos or blogs into podcasts
- Images from videos into stills for graphics
- Social media text threads into Instagram image carousels
- Newsletter snippets into social media posts
- Insights from newsletters into graphics for Instagram
There are a dozen more ways you can reuse content and re-form it to suit other platforms. Most importantly, build it into your marketing plan, intermixed with new content. This will help you plan more efficiently, make the most use out of your content, and ensure that you don’t burn out in terms of original content creation. You can also work on rewording and updating old blog posts to make them current and reuse them that way. There are endless possibilities all stemming from that one piece that you originally created. Reworking old content can also be an inspiration for new avenues of original content that stem from you thinking through the rework of the old.
As for what to watch out for, there are a few things to consider when you’re repurposing older content. First, as we mentioned earlier, make sure that the content is still relevant. You won’t want to be trying to market yourself with outdated content that feels stale (some leftovers just don’t reheat, you know?). Secondly, repurposed content works best for channels you’re already very active in; you don’t want to branch out into a new channel with repurposed content. For those new ventures, you’ll want to use fresh content.
So how can you be ready to repurpose? Should you go back through everything you’ve ever done to see what you can do? It can generally work best when you’ve got an eye on the repurpose from the start. When you’re creating a new piece of content, give future you a head start by already setting out how else you’ll be using it. Writing a blog? Plan how you’re going to make a video, as well as the two graphics you want to make from the info in the blog post itself. By already knowing what you’ll do with the content in a rework, you’ll make sure you’re aimed toward courting your target audience. It can also help you structure the original to make it easier to adapt. Won’t future you be grateful?
Just the way you’re enjoying that Thanksgiving remix sandwich on Small Business Saturday. So give yourself the gift of repurposing content, and see how well it can help your marketing strategy!
