As an owner of a portfolio of products/services, you must already know how difficult it is to create new content regularly. If not for new content, however, you may end up losing some of your clients to your competition. At this time of the year, especially when you may be planning your content strategies for the next quarter, let’s see how you could repurpose content for social media for greater marketing success!
What is content repurposing?
During the time in which you’ve been marketing online, you must have created heaps of new content. These may be directly about your offering or it could be indirectly related to it. At some point, you must have felt as if you are running out of ideas for original content.
This is a phenomenon I’m familiar with, myself. One strategy that has been very useful, in this process, has been the idea of repurposing content. Content repurposing is simply when you draw your existing collection of content and rework it to produce a whole new piece.
It could be one or multiple pieces of content to be published on different social media platforms. From blog posts to infographics or even podcasts, when you repurpose content for social media, here are some things you should never forget.
Things to remember when you repurpose content for social media platforms
If you’re an avid Gary Vaynerchuk follower, you’re probably aware of what he calls the “The Content Pyramid”.
For those who are hearing this for the first time, this is his model for creating fresh, new content using his existing “pillar content”. What he refers to as pillar content, here, is the source from which you could extract “micro-content”. It could be a vlog, a blog or a long podcast. But whatever the source may be, you should know how to create a better impact through your piece. So here’s a list of things you might want to keep in mind
- Align your content with the taste and preference of your audience
Every social media platform has its own unique style and way of presenting content. It creates an identity for the platform, drawing a unique crowd into it. It’s important, therefore, that you understand the style and tone of voice used in the different platforms when creating content for them.
- Use an appropriate approach when sharing content
Content shared on different social media platforms take different approaches, giving them a sense of uniqueness to the platform presented on. This is something you might want to consider when creating your micro-content. For example, if you are a business focussed on selling stationery items online, sharing a podcast on Facebook about the importance of staying organised might not necessarily help. Instead, sharing an infographic on how to organise yourself might engage more people.
- Avoid content duplication/content spinning
When you repurpose content for social media, it’s not just about rephrasing it to sound a little different or converting it to a completely different format. Turning a blog into a podcast by reading it, for instance, isn’t going to cut it.
This is why it’s important to understand the meaning of micro-content. Here, you extract only what is necessary from your existing source of pillar content and present it, fresh, to your audience. You’ll thereby be creating original content inspired by an existing piece.
So, how do you repurpose content for social media sharing?
Let’s break it down into two simple steps:
- Choose the right piece of content to repurpose
I recommend that you begin by identifying your evergreen content, especially pieces that have made the most number of impressions. This will be the pillar content you’ll be focusing on. As Neil Patel suggests in this post, leverage Google Analytics to determine which posts have been performing well. This will make it easier for you to identify your pillar content instantly.
On the other hand, evergreen content will also spare you from having to brainstorm ideas for your pillar content, given its nature of being a sustainable and recyclable form of content. Based on this, you can create different pieces of original content!
- How to repurpose content for social media
After selecting the content you want to repurpose, next, select the social media platforms you wish to post on and what type of content you want to create. Whether they are videos, blog posts, slideshows, infographics or podcasts. Make sure to align this step with the points I mentioned, earlier in this post.
Then, extract pieces from your pillar content that’s relevant for audiences on each of these platforms and rewrite them. Remember, that your content must sound original – I suggest that you avoid spinning it for better SEO.
Let’s look at a real-life example that demonstrates this concept in action.
Jay Baer, a motivational speaker on marketing, happens to create three-minute informational videos as a practice. To promote this content on social media, his team repurposes the content according to the selected social media platforms.
This includes separate blog posts for his Convince and Convert website and Medium, LinkedIn Pulse posts, and iTunes audio podcasts. This way, Baer and his team never worry about running out of content ideas for different social media platforms. They repurpose content for social media using the videos he creates and constructs more pieces of micro-content.
As you can see, every piece of long content, such as a blog post, a video or a podcast that has a significant, long-lasting value can be used as the base for content repurposing. By doing it based on pillar content, you also ensure consistency within your social media posting practices.
If you don’t have the time to repurpose content for social media or even create the pillar content you want, give my team a shout out – we have a team of experts, ready to help you with your content strategy.