What Does It Mean To Repurpose Content?

If you’re building a business online most likely you’re creating some type of “content”. Content is a widely used term and can be applied to any number of things in your business including: blog posts, YouTube videos, Instagram posts, emails, captions, the list is almost endless. 

With an endless list like that, it’s easy to get stuck in a content creation hamster wheel where you can’t catch up and get burnt out easily. Especially if you are creating unique content for each platform every single week. 

At Social Fox we are all about working smarter, not harder, and want to encourage you to do the same! Making strategic choices on how you spend your time and how you create your content can make all the difference between thriving in your business and being totally burnt out. 

Repurposing content doesn’t apply to one specific technique, rather to the idea of making a piece of content that you create work harder for you in multiple ways. The technique we are discussing today focuses on taking a core piece of content and using that to fuel multiple different platforms.

Why Repurposing Content is Important for Marketers and Solopreneuers Alike

Before we dive into the nitty gritty details on repurposing content let’s talk about why you should implement these strategies into your business. 

There’s a lot of pressure in the digital marketing realm to be present on multiple platforms… sometimes there’s pressure to be on all the platforms. Now if you have a marketing team, or you outsource your marketing and content creation efforts, this is a breeze, right? 

But what about those of you out there that own small businesses without a huge marketing budget, or maybe you’re a solopreneur?

It’s likely that if you fall into either of those categories, you’ve felt the pressure of being stuck in the content creation rat race and a strategy focusing on repurposing content could be exactly what you need. 

Put simply, repurposing content allows you to increase your reach, with a lot less effort on your part. By creating one piece of high quality content and then splitting that up into other resources, you’re easily cutting the time of creating original content for each platform in half. 

This not only frees up more of your content creation time so that you can re-allocate that into your zone of genius, but cuts down the stress of showing up on every platform with fresh content each week. 

Want to streamline and simplify your efforts even further? Utilizing an all-in-one marketing tool like Social Fox can keep all your marketing efforts in one place [including social media post scheduling, blog posts, newsletters, etc]... but more on that later.

Your Plan for Repurposing Content

At this point, I’m sure you’re ready for those nitty gritty details. So… How do you actually lay out a plan for repurposing your content? We’re so glad you asked!

At Social Fox we are big supporters of prioritizing content with a longer shelf life than just your average Instagram post [which is about 48 hours, FYI]. Depending on your individual marketing plan and where your ideal client hangs out online, this means you want to put the majority of your effort into something that can be found organically through keyword searches. Two great examples of this type of content are blog posts and YouTube videos. 

Think about it, how many times have you searched for something online and ended up reading a blog post or watching a YouTube video about it? Now how many times have you searched and arrived at an Instagram or TikTok post? 

This is not to say that when you’re repurposing your content you can’t include those platforms, you absolutely can and should! We’re just saying it’s a wise choice to have a more permanent and SEO driven form of content that lives on the internet for years instead of days. 

For this example of repurposing content, we’re going to use a blog post for the original main piece of content and we will build out other platforms from there. When you’re working on your blog post, you want to make sure that you are writing about topics that are in demand and that people are actively seeking out information on. 

If you’ve read one of our posts here before, you’ll know that researching and preparation are key to the success of your business efforts, and content creation is not immune to this mentality. Do your research to find out what and how people are searching for topics in your niche. Then use that research to write a blog post to answer the questions that they are searching for. 

Once you have that base piece of blog content that you’ve researched and written, you can now start repurposing content for other platforms. Here’s how we would do it…

Long Form Video

Depending on whether you are more geared towards video or written content, your primary piece of content could really be a blog post or a long form video like what’s found on YouTube. Either one of these options has a much longer life on the internet and provides excellent opportunities for repurposing. 

If you start with a blog post, you can adjust the copy that you wrote for the post into a script or talking points for your YouTube video. Alternatively, you can take the transcript from your YouTube video and turn it into a blog post [with a bit of editing to improve the flow for written vs spoken word]. This is a really easy way of repurposing content from video to written formats and then you’ve created two search engine friendly, long shelf-life pieces of content for your brand.

Short Form Video

It’s nothing new to hear that short form video is the latest trend on all social and search platforms today [if YouTube is jumping into this arena then you know it’s here to stay]. So repurposing your content for short form video is a smart move. 

This can be done by taking your talking points for your blog post and making short videos further explaining these ideas. You could even use ideas that didn’t make it into your post if you wanted to. The research is already done for this topic so why not put it to good use in the form of short bite-sized video content. 

You can easily pick out five different ideas from your blog post to discuss or explain and then you’ve got five days worth of reels, TikToks, or YouTube shorts ready to go. 

Bonus points for recording these short form videos when you record your YouTube video content and getting all the camera work done in one go! Once they’re recorded, you can continue your content repurposing by cross posting these videos to multiple platforms.

Static Posts

Static posts are a great way to educate your audience and can help to drive traffic to your main form of content [in this example, your blog post]. If you’re repurposing content, simply pull out a single idea, or utilize a carousel style post to outline your blog topic, make your graphic and use that as a static social media post that then drives traffic to your blog. 

The goal here is to create curiosity with your audience so they’re eager enough to learn more on your topic that they’ll click over to your blog for more details. 

Graphics and Infographics

If we are talking infographics, then you most likely know which platform we are repurposing content for now: Pinterest!

Pinterest loves catchy graphics, in particular infographics, and is an easy way to drive traffic to your main piece of content. In addition to this, people on Pinterest are consumers and are more likely to make purchases than users of other social platforms. 

So for each blog post you do, plan to create five Pinterest pins to cross promote. Pinterest falls closer to the search engine category (like Google and YouTube) and on average has a longer life span for content than platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok which makes it a great option. 

They are now also jumping on the short form video content train with their Idea Pins, so you can use that form of content that you’ve already created on this platform as well!

BONUS: Newsletters

Repurposing content doesn’t have to stop at social media platforms. Make sure you’re using that same content to nurture your email subscribers as well! 

After all, you put a lot of effort into that blog post, so get as much mileage out of it as possible!

Take this opportunity to create a weekly newsletter to keep in contact with your current customers or your warm leads. Use your blog topic as a springboard for your newsletter and be sure to link your blog post so that your current subscribers get the benefit of the knowledge bomb your blog post is about to drop on them. 

This also has the added benefit of boosting your blog site visits which increases the overall engagement on your site. It’s really a win-win for you!

At this point in the game we’ve taken one well researched blog post topic and repurposed that content into: a YouTube video, five short form videos [which can be cross posted across at least three platforms], static or carousel posts, pin worthy graphics or infographics, and your newsletter so that you can drive even more traffic to your blog post. 

Now, we aren’t saying that this content repurposing isn’t work. Even with one main piece of content, there is still some additional time for repurposing content across multiple platforms but what we are saying is that this gives you an approachable framework for setting up all these pieces of content to benefit from one another. Therein lies the magic of repurposing content.

How to Use Content Repurposing to Drive Sales for Your Business

As we touched on earlier, the goal with focusing on repurposing content is two-fold: free up your time and increase your content reach. With any good marketing plan though, we know the purpose of content creation for a business is to drive traffic and bring new customers into your business. 

This is best done through pulling those potential customers off of social platforms and bringing them onto your email list. If you missed our post laying out the step-by-step process of setting up a lead magnet for your business, this is a good time to check it out. We go over [in depth] the why’s and how to’s of setting up a lead magnet for your business. The magic here is once you have a potential customer’s contact information, you can continue to provide them value and nurture them into a sale. 

Freeing up your time is about more than just adjusting your content creation process and focusing on repurposing content, though. Streamlining your marketing system as a whole can gain back precious time in your business as well. 

Social Fox offers an all-in-one marketing and customer relationship management system in one place [and under one login]. What this means for your business is that you can host your blog, house your website, create landing pages, schedule customer email sequences, track your Facebook and Google Ads reporting, and even schedule your social media posts from one place. 

No more having to piece together multiple different platforms in order to make your marketing system functional. It’s 2023, let’s just agree it’s time to simplify your marketing efforts so that you can gain back time in your day!

If you are curious how Social Fox can help to streamline your business efforts and make your content repurposing even more effective with an all-in-one marketing tool, we’d love to chat. Schedule a free demo with us and we’ll brainstorm how to kick your business into high gear!