Repurposing blog content – what is it and why should I even consider that? A lot of you might ask. Well we are going to discuss here what exactly is content repurposing, why it is important, and what steps to take in order to repurpose content

What exactly is content repurposing?

Repurposing content simply means taking one asset and reusing it somewhere else. That sounds simple enough in theory, but it can get tricky in execution. To really make it work, it helps to produce content with repurposing in mind, so you can easily slice and dice it into different formats and into different platforms. 

Imagine being able to turn blog content into actionable podcasts or PDF files into engaging slideshow presentations. Imagine being able to create content that is fresh and fabulous from what you already have. That would be great, wouldn’t it?

Benefits of repurposing blog content?

It’s a smart way to get more content in less time, and also helps to drive coherence and consistency around a topic that you’re looking to build thought leadership around.

Simply put, when you take your content creations and repurpose them it adds more horsepower to your marketing strategy. It takes your content strategy further much faster than you could ever do on your own. It helps you to build up a fan base that you may have never known existed outside of your target audience. And, it does this without a lot of effort on your part.

How to organize your content? 

Before you start creating all this content it is really important to have it organized in a way that makes sense and that it will be easy to find it and know at what stage of creating each piece of the content currently is. 

And you can do this by creating individual folders for each of these items. Within these folders, you can create different subfolders to know the status of your content. So it would look something like this: 

1. Videos 
   1. In progress 
   2. Ready 
   3. Posted 
2. Social Media Content 
   1. In progress 
   2. Ready 
   3. Posted 
3. Social Media Content
   1. Scheduled
   2. Posted

So as you are working on a piece of content and you are making edits in the “In progress” folder. When you are done with all of the edits and it’s ready for posting, move it to the “Ready” folder. And finally, when you post the content you move it to the “Posted” folder. 

I find this to be the easiest and most efficient way to organize all of the content that I am creating. 

Now when you have these folders created, you are ready to move on to the next step and actually start repurposing the content. 

Ways to repurpose blog content?

Here are 8 ways that you can repurpose content for social media that have never been more relevant than in 2021:

1. Record a video 

Now that you have a written copy of your blog post, and you know what are the key points you want to start recording your videos that are anywhere from 3 – 5 min long. You can approach the creation of videos in a few different ways: 

Video creation styles

• Freestyle

Some people are just naturals in talking in front of the camera and don’t need much “outside” help to create amazing videos. 

If that is you – all you have to do is take your phone camera, put it on a stand, and go over all of the details that you have outlined in your blog. 

However, make sure that you stay on point and cover all of the key highlights that you would like to share with your audience. 

• Presentation style:

The presentation style helps you stay on point with a little help with slides and some beautiful photos and clipart to use in your slides. You can find royalty-free photos from sites such as Unsplash, Pexel, and Stock up. 

After you gather all of the source content for your video, it’s time to create the presentation.

You will need to include a title slide that reflects the title of your blog post, and then start creating individual slides and adding the text from the key points you want to cover. When you have your slides completed, you are ready to shoot your video. 

• Guided style:

Guided style videos will require you to use tools such as a Teleprompter, where you get to copy the exact script for your video. 

This is the easiest option especially if you are just getting started with video creation. All you have to do is to run the teleprompter, turn on your camera and read and record the script.

Edit Your Videos

The next step is editing your videos. This is an important step as you will be editing your videos based on different social media platform requirements so your videos can adapt and become “friendly” with each social media platform. Some things to keep in mind are:

• Submit your video to Rev.com to get the video subtitles 
• Cut the beginning and end of your video
• Trim the videos as per social media platform requirements 
  • Facebook: dimensions (720×720) 
  • Youtube: dimensions (1920×1080) 
  • Instagram: dimensions (720×720), timeframe 59 sec 
  • Instastory: dimensions (1080×1080); timeframe 15 sec
• Upload the videos to their respective folders

Create YouTube Thumbnail 

A great YouTube video has a great thumbnail. It’s the first thing someone sees before clicking your video. So it should have a “clickable” thumbnail. Luckily we’ll talk about some steps to take in order to do just that:

• For personal pictures, use close-ups images of your face 
• Use bright branded colors for the background/highlights 
• The text should be short and to the point (3-4 words maximum is the best) 
• Be consistent in your brand and thumbnail design  

2. Create Social Media Content

When we talk about repurposing blog content on social media, most people think that it is simply slapping up a photo and a link to their blog. Well, the truth is that it’s not exactly that. You must adapt your content by keeping in mind what works best on each social media network and when.

Frac.tl and BuzzStream analyzed over 200,000 different pieces of content from 11 different market verticals to try to understand what content gets shared most on social media. As it turns out, different types of posts across different social media industries do better in different months.

In this study, “what-posts” were blog posts that provided deeper information on a topic (comparisons, etc), while “why-posts” asked a question and provided follow-up by means of studies and insights and ended with a focused conclusion.

List posts were in the lead overall, with over 20,000 shares per month, or 22.45% social traction, narrowly followed by why-posts at 22.35%.

So the conclusion is that by reworking content or your blog post into a list, a “what,” “why” or “how” post or even a video can greatly increase the number of social shares and comments that you get versus the more traditional photo-and-link.

You might be thinking “How am I supposed to get started?” because all this might look like a mountain. But don’t worry, I’ll guide you through some basic steps to take in order to help you get started.

• Create at least 5 social media posts for each blog. For instance, if your blog title is: 5 ways on how to start a business, you can create at least one post for each of the points.   
• Select 5 corresponding images for each of the social media posts and include the primary keyword in the filename of all the images. 
• Create different variations for Facebook and Instagram posts
• Add emojis to your posts 

3. Create Quote Cards

Another great way of repurposing blog content is creating Quote cards. It’s amazing how one simple Quote can change your point of view almost immediately. Have you ever read a Quote that somehow stuck? Well, there you have it. I will guide you through some simple steps in order to create your Quote Cards

• Select images of yourself as the background for your quote cards for higher engagement and include a primary keyword in the filename of all the images
• From your blog pull out only the most important points that are short and to the point. 
• Upload and edit images in Canva and add the copy and design 

4. Create Infographics

One of the great advantages of repurposing blog content is that you can choose from your best ones. If you pick ones that performed well in the past, you can bet that they’ll perform well again.

You just need to bring your popular posts back in a fresh way. Almost anything you do to add value will drive more traffic to them.

One of the best ways to do just this is to add an infographic to the post.

According to a study from Venngage, marketers said that infographics performed the best out of any visual content they made:

• Infographics are one of the top-performing types of visual content that you can produce.
• Infographics were the best at driving high engagement rates
  

That means that if you add one to a previous blog, you can expect to drive huge traffic back to it.

There are tons of infographic-making tools to choose from, and each of them will help you get the job done.

Canva is probably the easiest and fastest free tool to use, so you can go ahead and create your free account to get started on creating Infographics

4. Create A Freebie

Another great idea to repurposing blog content is creating free content. In that way, your audience can take a look at your work. This will help them have a better look and ultimately decide to upgrade to the paid content. It’s like providing them with a free sample. Once your audience sees your work, they would want to look deeper and move towards the paid content for the full experience.

A simple way to do this is by taking information from the blog post and turning it into a freebie. Make sure to highlight only the key information you want to highlight. Be sure to create one freebie for each blog/topic. 

Let’s take a closer look at what a freebie is and what are some types of Freebies. 

A freebie is any piece of content that you give away in exchange for an email address. Your opt-in freebie could be a .pdf, checklist, guide, eBook, or any other digital product.

A Freebie often leads your viewers to a paid product or service, but if you don’t have that yet, don’t fret. You can use your growing list to offer your audience valuable information and get them to trust you so that when you do have a product or service, you have a nice little bunch of dream customers primed and ready to buy.

What you call your freebie is actually more important than its contents.

If you choose the wrong title for your freebie, it doesn’t matter how good the quality is, nobody’s going to download it.

One of the best ways to create the right tile is by using this:

“How To [WHAT THEY WANT] in [TIME] without [WHAT THEY DON’T WANT]”

In order to do this, you need to understand your prospect’s mindset and to know what they really want in the first place

Ideally, your freebie title should combine curiosity, desire, pain, solution, and mystery.

It needs to make a big promise, about what they’re going to get when they download it.

You need to show enough content to get them interested and intrigued, but not so much that they think they know it all.

Here are three freebie types in order to give you an idea:

1. Digital Freebie Ideas Using the Written Word

Creating freebies using the written word is technically the easiest way to create a freebie.

You don’t need any fancy software, technical experience, and you don’t need any equipment and it is also one of the easiest forms of content to digest.

2. Turning Videos into Digital Freebies

The biggest plus point of all to using videos is the connection it lets you make with your prospects, other than being face to face, nothing will build rapport quicker than a video.

People get to see you. They get to know you like you and trust you.

3. Offering Coaching as a Digital Freebie Idea

This is one of the best digital freebie ideas. The benefit of offering coaching consultancy or direct access to you as a freebie is it enables you to demonstrate your service in advance.

There’s no better way to convince somebody to do business with you than to help them directly. 

5. Create A Newsletter 

Now some of you might not know exactly what a newsletter is and you might be scratching your heads about it. So let me explain.

A newsletter is a tool used by businesses and organizations to share relevant and valuable information with their network of customers, prospects, and subscribers. 

Newsletters give you direct access to your audience’s inbox, allowing you to share engaging content, promote sales and drive traffic to your website.

Additionally, email campaigns are also easy to measure, which means you can track your progress and make meaningful adjustments that lead to more wins.

The purpose of an email newsletter is to give your audience updates pertaining to your business, products, and services. However, be aware that it’s not something that’s generally used for hard selling. An email newsletter should feel a lot more like an update from an interesting, helpful friend, rather than a pushy salesperson.

Newsletters are often the life force of your marketing campaign. Over the past decade, email marketing has proven to be significantly more successful than social media marketing.

Now that we’ve talked a bit about newsletters, it’s time to see what are some basic steps to take in order to create one

In order to continue repurposing blog content take information from the blog post and turn it into a short and informative newsletter that will send your subscribers to your content.  

• Create at least 1 newsletter for each blog/videos   
• Select the corresponding images and include the primary keyword in the filename of all the images (a great tool to use is Canva Infographic. It’s a free tool and has plenty of content to choose from)
• Add emojis to your newsletter

6. Turn it into a webinar

Webinars are another great way to repurposing blog content and garner traffic and sales for your business. In fact, the average webinar generates nearly 150 attendees, and the average webinar attendee will view the webinar for 50 minutes! It’s better than almost any other marketing format. The huge advantage of webinars is that they aren’t difficult to set up. You can also record your webinar and instantly double up on your content without doing the extra work. Afterward, you can write a blog post about your webinar, too!

Webinars are a great way to build engaged audiences and establish yourself as a thought leader and industry expert and if you use them, well they can show people that your content is the best available

They also drive unprecedented levels of engagement and higher conversion rates than advertising or search engine optimization. In fact, webinar landing pages have an average conversion rate of 30%, according to Leadpages, which is much better than your typical organic and PPC conversion rates

Webinars should be one of your go-to strategies when it comes to recycling content and bringing it back to the front line.

7. Turn it into an ebook

Ebooks are still one of the most popular ways that we consume content online

Since ebook reading is on the rise, it’s no wonder that they are one of the best lead magnets on the web, and also be aware that people love detailed, in-depth content about particular topics.

Long-form content always wins when it comes to providing value and converting leads and a great way to create long-form ebooks is to take multiple posts and turn them into one huge ebook.

An example is, if you have a popular post on search engine optimization that once drove huge amounts of traffic, you can use that as your base, and then you can take any related content, like blog posts on local SEO, and effective content marketing, and add them to the mix.

These additions will boost the length of the content and provide more value.

Be sure to include step-by-step tutorials that people can follow along with and implement on their own.

Adding tutorials will allow your audience to use the ebook beyond a one-time reading. They’ll be able to refer back to it whenever they need to optimize their content.

Producing ebooks is one of the best ways to bring life to your old content.
You can easily repurpose the content because you’ve already written it and you only need to format it, design it, and put the pieces together.

Use it to drive leads as a lead magnet or charge people to buy it.

You can increase your sales and leads quickly by recycling old content in ebooks.

Uploading and Scheduling Your Repurposed Content 

Now that you are finished creating and editing the content it is time for the uploading on various platforms. I personally use YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram the most, but you can repurpose it across any other platform of your choice. 

For scheduling my content I use Sendible to collaborate with my clients and teams to plan, post, and measure the success of content on every platform.

One thing to take into consideration is the time schedule based on your audience’s activity. For example, during rush hours people tend to be more active on social media so keep that in mind when scheduling your videos.

1. For YouTube some things to be aware of
   1. Optimize the video by adding keywords and tags to the video
   2. Adding a link that direct them to another social media platform or an opt-in page 
   3. Upload thumbnail design on YouTube videos

1. For Instagram & Instastory some things to be aware of are
   1. Keep your Instagram videos no more than 59 seconds long
   2. Keep your Instastory videos no more than 15 seconds long
   3. When you post your social media content on your Instagram, insert the YouTube link in your account bio. Every time you post a new post that is linked to a new YouTube video, you will need to update this link. 
   4. Be sure to include at the end of the post “Click on the link in the bio to watch”

Now that you have several ideas and content repurposing tips to turn to when it comes to your blog posts, it’s time to make a plan of action. 

You should take the time to decide which content or which blog post works well on different platforms and for which type of learner. Then, you should make your points and spread the word with your content marketing plan of action.

Not every piece of content will be worth repurposing in every possible way.  But, for those that do, you may very well reach a whole new audience that can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with next.

And to learn more about how to actually start getting traffic to your website and social media, check out our blog – Organic social media traffic hacks for maximum lead and dollar generation.

Now that we have reached the end, what are your thoughts on that? Have you ever tried content repurposing? If so, how did it turn out? I would love to hear your thoughts on that!