Everything you need to know about content repurposing
Content is the heart of many online entrepreneurs. And content can come in many forms: paid content such as online courses and ebooks, but also free content such as podcast episodes, YouTube videos, and blog posts. All of it together equals a lot of time spent creating content, and it can be hard to manage, especially if you’re a small online entrepreneur without a team behind you. One of the best ways to manage your workload when it comes to creating content is by utilizing the content repurposing strategy.
What is content repurposing?
Content repurposing or otherwise known as content recycling is a strategy of taking a piece of content and repurposing it into multiple different formats in hopes to expand its reach.
This includes turning a blog post into an infographic, social media post, or podcast episode, or taking a long-form video and turning it into short social media videos or a podcast episode. The possibilities are endless when it comes to content recycling.
3 reasons why you want to repurpose
There are multiple reasons why you, as an online entrepreneur and online course creator, might want to utilize a content repurposing strategy in your business, but here are the three most important:
1. Less new content to create
The main reason why content repurposing is great for content creators like you is that it allows you to create less new content. Instead of creating a new blog post, Instagram post, IGTV video, YouTube video, and a podcast episode, you can create one piece of content and draw all the rest from it.
This takes a lot of stress off your shoulders and allows you to focus on other aspects of your business. This brings us to the next point.
2. Saves you time and creative effort for other things
While content is the most important part of your business as a content creator, it’s not the only one. You have to also do admin, business management, and marketing for your business to thrive. The more time you spend creating content, the less time you have to spend on all the other parts of your business.
You should be spending 20% of your time creating content. And the remaining 80% should be spent marketing and getting your business out there. While the percentage can be flexible here (70/30, 90/10), the sentiment that you have to be marketing more than you’re creating is true.
Content repurposing allows you to plan your time better which is crucial for the effective growth of your business.
3. Maximizes the ROI on your content
As an online entrepreneur, you always have to be measuring the success of strategies you’re implementing to see whether they’re worth your time and effort. Content repurposing can help you maximize your ROI on your free content in a few different ways.
First, it helps you boost your SEO rating as having multiple different pieces of content targeting the same keyword gives you more opportunities to rank higher in search engines.
Some entrepreneurs worry about Google penalizing them for repurposing the same content, but marketing expert Neil Patel explains that it’s not how it works:
“There’s no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. <…> With repurposed content, you are only trying to increase the awareness of your brand—so you aren’t violating Google’s guidelines.”
Another way repurposing increases the ROI of your content is that it helps you reach different audiences—different people prefer different forms of content, and content recycling allows you to reach and serve them all.
How to repurpose content
Now that you know all the important benefits of content repurposing, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty details of how to do it for your business:
1. Create 10x content
CEO and Co-Founder of Moz, Rand Fishkin, explain the phrase 10x content: “Content that is 10 times better than the best result that can currently be found in the search results for a given keyword phrase or topic.”
The first step in utilizing content repurposing in your business is by creating a piece of 10x content that’s going to serve as the pillar for the rest of your content needs. This content piece is going to be the powerhouse of your knowledge on the topic, which will make it very easy to recycle in different forms.
According to Fishkin, the qualities of 10x content are:
- A combination of high-quality, trustworthy, intellectual, useful, and interesting.
- Responsive to any device people are consuming it on—mobile, tablet, laptop.
- Different from what consumers can find in other places on the same topic.
- Solving a problem that the consumer has and makes them feel something emotionally.
It’s also best to keep your content evergreen when you’re thinking of repurposing it. Content that’s seasonal and has a shelf-life doesn’t work as well because it’s urgent, and in most cases, it takes a lot of time for content marketing to generate visible results.
2. Break down your 10x content into smaller chunks for different platforms
Once you have your 10x piece of content ready, it’s time to see how you can repurpose it and re-use it on other platforms. You’re going to want to break it down into smaller chunks and create multiple smaller posts for different platforms, or you can simply use that one piece of content and turn it into a different format.
For example:
You wrote an in-depth tutorial in the form of a blog post on how to plan your monthly budget on a single income. You can now go on and create a carousel post on Instagram outlining each step in the tutorial. Then, you can film a quick and snappy video for Reels and TikTok, going over the same process.
On Twitter, you can create a thread, where you once again share the same process in a step-by-step style, one tweet at the time, linking to the initial blog post at the end of the thread. If you have a YouTube channel or a podcast, then you can use your blog post as an outline for a video or a podcast episode (or both) and record the video/audio for those channels.
The magic of content repurposing is that you don’t have to create content on multiple different topics for different platforms. Instead, you take one piece of content and transform it to fit multiple platforms, and it’s way easier to do because you only have to change the format instead of coming up with the same information again and again.
Give students a taste of what you have to offer by getting specific. A mini-course allows you to repurpose your course into bite-sized content that won’t break the bank. Get our free “mini course creation checklist” here.
3. Re-visit your old content
If you already have a library of content on your blog, it might be useful to go back and go over your old content. Analyze your analytics and social shares to determine which content is the most successful and popular and use those pieces in your content repurposing strategy.
The chances are that if people enjoyed your posts on your blog, they’d enjoy them on different platforms in different formats as well. It’s also a sign that those topics are also what people want to see more from you, so it might be wise to come up with more content on those topics.
Marketing educator Jenna Kutcher has used this approach to her content as well when she saw that one topic, in particular, did very well with her audience:
“For example, my posts about motherhood have always done really well on my blog, so we try to come up with more similar topics to serve the mamas wanting to read about my experiences with a new baby and parenting.”
Your old content could also be used as a lead magnet either in an ebook format or a free email course. If you have enough posts on one topic that tackle a similar issue, or better yet, if you have done a series of posts in the past, then it’s going to be very easy to repurpose it all and turn it into a lead magnet to attract new audiences without much effort.
4. Use time batching
When it comes to executing and sitting down to work on repurposing content, we recommend using the time-batching technique to get things done quickly and efficiently.
When you’re recycling your content, you’re going to be doing a lot of similar tasks like writing, recording, and creating graphics. Instead of going one piece at a time and writing, recording, and creating social posts for each, try batching similar tasks:
- Dedicate the time block for writing blog posts
- Put all of your video/audio recordings on one day so that you only have to get ready once and get them all done in one sitting
- Dedicate the time for creating social media posts and use templates to faster create graphics and short videos.
5. Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself
One of the most common concerns that content creators have when it comes to content repurposing is a fear people are going to get annoyed at them for repeating the same content. But, there’s no need to worry about that.
Those who are interested in your business won’t be following you on every single platform. And the chances are they’re not going to be seeing the same content from you multiple times. (Only superfans of your brand may follow you across all platforms.)
But even then, the way algorithms function on different social platforms might not surface the same content from you on Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube. And if it does, it’s still not an issue. Often, an audience needs to see or hear things multiple times to take action.
So, in reality, repeating yourself on different platforms benefits your followers: They’ll be more likely to take action after hearing the same information multiple times. And you’ll be more likely to make a sale.