How to repurpose content 101
We recently wrote a blog about why you should recycle your content and why, if you don’t, you’re wasting time,energy, money and marketing opportunities. Now we’re back to tell you HOW to recycle it.
As before, repurposing content allows you to build on an existing idea and reshape it in a different way to expand its reach for very little effort and little to no cost. But the most important thing to note is that when ‘recycling’ or ‘repurposing’ content, it’s not about reposting exactly what you have already, in the exact same form. Google doesn’t like that, and it looks lazy.
Here’s a good example of content repurposing from us. We wrote a blog about AI tools in PR for our website. We shared it on social media at the time, to a good response. A few weeks later, we pulled out the key takeaways from the blog and created a carousel for Instagram. Same content, presented differently. It means we get to present our ideas again, plus they get a permanent home on our Instagram grid. It’s short-form content, easily digestible and shareable, compared to our blog.
You can also do it the other way. Bullet points from a LinkedIn post can be developed into something as long as an ebook, if they’re intriguing enough. A single piece of content can be repurposed in multiple creative ways depending on the context.
But for every great piece of repurposed content, there’s drab, senseless content out there which reek of wasted time.
So, here are a few DOs and DON’Ts:
DO
The first thing to ask is: is this valuable? If you’re just rehashing something that didn’t do well the first time, consider if it needs completely redeveloping.
Consider how to recycle content before you’ve even created it. Then, you can hold back small nuggets to make new content fresh.
Think about your platform - that 50-page whitepaper needs to be condensed into 30 seconds for TikTok or 5 pages for Instagram carousel, or no one will read it.
DON’T
Recycle content for the sake of it. Going back to the value-add, ask whether you’re sharing for value-add, or to fill a gap in your content calendar.
Don’t recycle too quickly! Repurposed pieces should either be posted much later or on a different platform, page, or channel.
Don’t just repost - it’s worthless and alienates the audience who have already consumed it. Trust us on this one! It’s easy to do, but pointless and can be damaging.
Please, please do consider repurposing your content and make it part of your content creation workflow - but just remember quality vs quantity!