Why and How to Repurpose Your Content to Maximize Its Potential

Your Dream Business

English - August 12, 2018 21:50 - 15 minutes - 15.6 MB - ★★★★★ - 34 ratings
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Previous Episode: 5 Questions to Ask Before You Hire a Social Media Consultant

Next Episode: 5 Tips for Building a Personal Brand

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTRepurposing content is taking a piece of content you already have written or recorded and reinvigorating it. It means packing it up in a different way to remind your audience that it’s there.Finding content ideas is hard! Your audience probably hasn’t made the most of the content you already have. There is still opportunity for your content and more room for others to take advantage of it.Evergreen content can be repurposed. This type of content is content that is relevant now and in the future. Blog posts, videos, webinars and even your interviews can be repurposed into something new as long as it’s evergreen.What content has done well previously for you? Which blog post is the most read post? Which video received the most views? These are the ones you want to repurpose first!For blog posts, you can create multiple social media posts, a live video to link back to your blog, and create a checklist or workbook for people to download. The opportunities are endless!Round-ups are also an option. What are your top five blogs? Share those through an email and on your social media.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Create less, promote more! Your content has much more life in it than you think. Look at your content as a whole and brainstorm ways in which you can repurpose it. Do you have a series of videos? Turn it into a course. Do you have a blog you can turn into an infographic for social media? Share it on Pinterest. Get creative!HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSWhat is repurposing content? – 03:59Why would we want to repurpose content? – 04:46What kind of content can you repurpose? – 05:57How do you repurpose your content? – 07:31
Transcript below

Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the Social Media Marketing Made Simple Podcast. I am your host Teresa Heath-Wareing, and I am super pleased to have you here with me this week. So every time I start my podcast, I always really struggle with knowing how to start it. I'll say good morning, good afternoon, have you had a great week, and then I think to myself, "Well, I don't know when someone's listening to it," so I don't know whether it's morning, afternoon, whether it's a Monday, a Friday. So I always struggle beginning my podcast because I don't actually know what to say, which sounds like a really stupid thing, but I end up saying the same thing every time. I've tried to do a bit of research and go back and listen to the podcasts that I listen to, to see what kind of things they say, but again, I think they have the same problem that I do and they end up saying the same things as well.

But anyway, if you've got any bright ideas, then please feel free to let me know because I would love to hear them because I'm struggling with the beginning a bit. I really do appreciate you listening to me, although I apologise for rambling on. Today's podcast is going to be a really good one because one of the things that I get asked all the time is about content and creating content, and there's a really big thing about you've got to be good at content, you've got to be imaginative and engaging, you've got to put lots out there, and it's really hard to keep coming up with stuff.

I know I'm really bad for this because what I should be doing with the podcast ... And I've tried a bit ... is I should be planning out, okay, for the next six weeks this is what I'm talking about, but I don't. I do tend to get to a podcast and think, "What should I talk about today?" And today I was struggling, which is ridiculous because I'm talking about social media, which is such a huge subject. However, sometimes your mind just goes blank and you think, "I don't know what to post, what to write about, what to record on a...

Also, I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel like there is just so much content. I was looking at a course the other week that was available to purchase, and it was huge, and they had all these upgrades that if you paid more, you would get this bit and that bit and this cheat sheet and this checklist and this email thing, and all I could think about was that's just so much stuff, and actually, am I going to get to read it all? Am I going to get to go through it? Because I have to say, in the past I have purchased courses and I've not completed them. Big massive courses that cost me thousands, and I've not finished them because there was just so much content.

So sometimes I feel like we are overwhelmed with how much stuff there is out there and how much stuff we've already put out there, which got me thinking about today's subject. So today I'm going to be talking about repurposing content for social media, and I think this is a really good subject, and one that actually everyone can probably take some benefit from because if you're having to produce any content of any kind, finding a way in which you can put more content out without actually having to think of a million new ideas has got to be a good thing, and I'm hoping you agree, which I'm sure you do.

So today I am going to talk you through what is content repurposing, first and foremost. Then, why should you think about doing it? Then we're going to look at what is really good to repurpose, what kind of content is good to repurpose, and then I'm going to give you some ideas on how to take a piece of content and ways in which you can repurpose it. So today should be a really good podcast episode. I'm so glad I've got you here along with me. Let's get started.

What is repurposing content?

Okay. What is repurposing content? So basically it's taking a piece of content that you've already written or recorded or have somewhere in some format, and it's basically reinvigorating it. It's giving it a new lease of life. Doesn't necessarily mean you have to change anything on that content. It just means packaging it up in a different way and putting it back out there so that people can see it again or they're reminded that it's there again. So for instance, if you've got a core bit of content such as a video or a webinar, a blog post, whatever it might be, it's about using that content that you've already put out once and you've already shared once, but putting a new spin on it, putting a new lease of life, and sharing it again.

Why would we want to repurpose content?

Why would you want to repurpose content? Well, as we've talked about before, finding content ideas is hard, and actually, you've probably produced so much content already and people have not made the most of that content. When you go and look at, say, your Google Analytics and look at how many people are landing on your blogs, on your website, it doesn't matter whether 500, five thousand, or fifty thousand people have read that blog post. There's still opportunity for other people to read it that maybe haven't read it already. Also, have look at your video views on Facebook or YouTube. Again, there's always room for more people to see that content.

Also, as I said, there is so much content out there already, and I am sure that people have not made the most of the content that you've already put out. So therefore, looking at how you can re-put it out there, put a fresh spin or a new light on it, is a great way to make sure that people are really making the most of that content. Basically this is the ethos of create less, promote more, which for me, someone that has to produce a lot of content, sounds like a brilliant idea.

What kind of content can you repurpose?

Okay, so we're convinced that we know what it is and we want to do it because we know why we should do it, so what kind of stuff can you repurpose? Well, one of the first things you need to think about is, is it evergreen? And by evergreen, I mean does it matter whether it comes out today or in 4 months, 6 months, 10 months time? Because actually, there's no point in me trying to repurpose a bit of content that talks about Instagram's latest updates because after a month it's not going to be the latest updates. However, when we're talking about how to build an audience profile, then that's evergreen. That doesn't matter whether I do it today or in six months time, the principles are still the same.

So then the next thing we're going to think about is what type of content can you repurpose? Well, it's anything that's been produced already such as a blog post, a video, a webinar, an interview, anything that you've got a really good strong piece of core content that provides a really good value to your audience. That's the sort of thing you're going to look at repurposing.

A great tip you can use when trying to decide what to repurpose is look at what has gone down really well previously. So for instance, if you look at your Google Analytics again and you go and see all your blog posts, which is the most read blog post? Which are the videos that got the most views? Then obviously that's really good content because people were interested in it, so those would be the ones that I start with first.

How do you repurpose your content?

Okay, so you've identified some key pieces of content that you think were really well-received the first time round. Maybe it's a blog post that was written 12 months ago, a video that you did six months ago, and you're now looking at how you can repurpose that content. Also, I should mention that it doesn't have to be old content you repurpose. It could be something that you produce tomorrow and then just find multiple ways in which you can put it out and to promote that bit of content, or use that key core of content to produce more content. I'm saying content like a million types in this podcast, but I do feel like it's necessary so I apologise.

Okay. So now we've looked at why we want to do it, how you get started in terms of finding the content to repurpose. Let's think about now actually how we repurpose things. So I'm going to give you some ideas on what sort of stuff you can turn into other things, and because I know I'm going to be firing lots of ideas at you, and if you're like me, you're listening to this while driving the car or getting ready in the morning, I've put together a handy guide with all my ideas for repurposing on it. So if you head over to the show notes or go to teresaheathwareing.com/25, then you'll be able to download it from there.

Now we've got that sorted, let's get on with the ideas. Let's start with a blog post. If you've got a blog post, the very first time you put it out, the very first thing I do is I create at least three social media posts about that blog post, and I will make them all different. So the first one, for instance, might be the title of the blog post. The second post might be something like a key fact, or something like that, that's in the blog post. Then the third post might be a surprising fact or a surprise question or an answer to something that people might want, and I would create memes or some kind of graphic out of all of these as well. So that's on a very basic level. So when you've written a blog post, you put those out, and you share it on social media a number of times.

You could then take that blog post and do a live video about it or do a video full stop. Now, you don't have to do a video that's the entire of the blog post. You could just do ... Let's say if you were doing five ways to do something, you could just give away tip number one and two, then direct them to the blog post to read the rest. If the blog post talks about tips and tricks, you could then turn that into a checklist or a workbook and provide that for people to download. And of course, if you have someone super creative on your team, then why not turn that blog post into something like an infographic and post it on Pinterest? And of course, it goes without saying, if you have a podcast, then use one of those old blog posts like I did last week to then talk through it on your podcast.

Okay, so let's say that your core piece of content is a video. This is a really good one to repurpose. One of the first things you can do is have an audio version of the video, so you can actually just pull out the audio depending on how you recorded the video and you can have that put up as a podcast or as an audio download, something like that.

The next thing you could do is to have that video transcribed. So I've talked before about rev.com that I use. So every time I do a video or a podcast, I send them the file or a link to it and then they transcribe it for me. And with my podcast, I literally just have this transcription put on the page, but if I wanted, I could then take that transcription and tweak the content, because obviously someone talking to how someone would read that is quite different so you would need to tweak it, and then you could turn it into a blog post and put that on your website. And of course, as I've talked about, you would then market that blog post out by promoting it through posts social media.

With the actual video itself, you can either chop this up into chunks and do a video series with it, maybe through email, something like that, or you could take a small section of the video and put it up on Insta Stories or Facebook Stories. So you literally get a clip, 15 seconds long, maybe get three of them that show the kind of highlights or the really good bit of the video, and put them out on your Insta Story so that you direct people back to the full video, whether that be on YouTube or Facebook. Of course, you can also record a small trailer for the video and put that on Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else that you can think of in order to, again, direct people back to where that video is to watch the full version.

If in the video you mention stats or facts, then you can turn each one of them into its own meme that you can put on social media that, again, you would add a link back to that video. Another really good idea to think about when recording the video itself is all those bloopers and outtakes. Oh, man. If you could hear how many mistakes I make on this podcast, I swear to God, it's probably twice as long by the time I finish recording and then we have to remove all my errors, all my sos and ums and getting things wrong. Anyway, on a video, some of these can be quite funny and quite human to watch, so again, think about keeping those and maybe putting together a small blooper reel of funny things that you did while recording it.

Also, if the video that you did was a live video, then after you've actually done the live and it's up on Facebook, then don't forget to download it and you can then use that video in other places. So either you can upload it to YouTube if you have a YouTube account, or you can put it on your website and then send people to that.

Also, don't forget to think of your content as a whole, as in don't just think of one blog post. Is there a series of blog posts that you could turn into an ebook, or maybe a series of videos that you could turn into a mini course? So try and think of overall what you have from a content point of view and how you might be able to repurpose that to give you something new or fresh or a new way in which to promote it out to your audience. And if you're looking for something just a bit quicker and simpler, then why not do a roundup email or some roundup posts of your top five blogs, or your top favourite episodes on your podcast, or your top five most watched videos, and then send out an email to your list letting them know about these, or make up some posts to go on social media where you draw people's attention to your favourite blogs or podcasts?

I really hope this has been a helpful podcast and that you've got lots from it and lots of ideas in which you can use to use some of that already really valuable content that you've come up with. Also, don't forget to go to teresaheathwareing.com/25 to download that list of ideas that I've put for you there as well. So I really hope you've enjoyed today's podcast, and if I could ask a favour, I would love it that if you enjoy this podcast and you know other people that might enjoy it too, or other businesses that it might help, or other social media people that might find it useful, then I would love it if you could share it. You can just put a link to it on social media anywhere that you like, tag me in so I know you've done it, and I would really, really appreciate it.

And also, while I'm asking for favours ... I know, I'm being really cheeky today. If you're listening on iTunes or you have iTunes, I would love it if you could go and give me a review. One of the ways in which you increase your visibility on iTunes is by getting lots of reviews, and therefore, if you would be happy enough to go and give me a positive review, I would be so very grateful. So like I said, thank you so much for listening and I can't wait to see you again next week.