While it’s no secret that content boasts an excellent ROI, one of the biggest challenges businesses face is making enough of it. You need to stay relevant, consistent, and – above all – keep the quality high.
The question is: How do you stay consistent without diminishing the quality of the content? Who has that much good stuff to say?
The answer? Repurpose your content.
What Does it Mean to “Repurpose” Your Content?
Much like repurposing old scrap materials into new building materials, repurposing content is the art of taking old content and applying it to a different platform or medium.
This has a host of benefits to take advantage of, such as:
- Expanding your reach
- Building brand visibility and omnipresence
- Improving your SEO if you add keywords to the mix
- Dramatically increasing your lead generation
- Saving an incredible amount of time populating different platforms
With all these benefits of repurposing content, it’s still not exactly the simplest endeavor. There are a ton of different ways to do it, and it can feel really confusing if you don’t have any guidelines to follow.
Luckily, we’ve created a list of the different ways to repurpose content to give you some great ideas.
#1. Video Repurposing
Video has become incredibly popular online ever since the rise of YouTube. When live-streaming was added to the mix, it became even more popular. And with almost every social platform now adding video and live-streaming capabilities, you’d be remiss to not take advantage.
What it boils down to is people loving to view their favorite brands in action. If you’re not making videos already, you should get started ASAP. It could be as simple as breaking out an iPhone and recording yourself showing and discussing the benefits of your products and how to use them.
Then you’ll be ready to repurpose. When you do start repurposing, you’ll start gaining more reach and getting leads hooked on what you have to offer on every platform. The key is knowing exactly how to repurpose the videos.
How to Repurpose Video Content
Use Videos as Blog Posts
Blog posts are great for SEO content and getting seen, but they don’t have to only be written.
Think about it. Blog posts with images perform far better than blog posts with just text. The visual advantage is bumped up more than a few notches when you exchange standard feature images with engaging, valuable, high-quality videos.
The only caveat is that some of your viewers will truly be there to just read (and not have to listen to) the content. With that being said, you’ll want to make sure you put at least a summary of the video or a complete transcript below it in the post. This way your visitors are bound to love having the medium they’re consuming no matter what.
Pro Tip: Including a transcript below the video is a great way to weave in those relevant keywords. This can help out your SEO efforts on your building materials business website. Not only will the video be a high-quality piece of content that you can use for nurturing you audience, but it can then be a lead generating machine for expanding your reach.
Turn into Social Media Posts
If you follow social media masters like Gary Vaynerchuk, you’ve seen this in action. Have a Virtual Assistant pull out “golden nuggets” – quotes, or high impact short snippets of longer videos – you’ve produced and put them in the social media cycle.
This method allows you to turn one 30-minutes YouTube video into five or more social media posts. That way, you’re getting days worth of content from one project. Whether you post a 2-minute snippet on your followers’ feeds, or grab a 10-second video quote for your Instagram Story, this should always be top in your arsenal for video repurposing.
But How Do I Know What To Pull?
This can be up to your discretion. As far as anyone can tell, Gary Vaynerchuk’s video crew uses their opinion to find and pull pieces they feel impacted by to repurpose. They’re producing such a high volume of content, it actually behooves them to not overthink it and test everything to see what hits. But you don’t have to totally go blind.
When uploading your long-form videos, pay attention to which parts of the video your audience is commenting on. Do they have a positive reaction to any value bombs or products you showcase? You can use their feedback to guide how you repurpose your content.
#2. Old White Papers and Case Studies
White papers and case studies have long been used for promotional purposes. White papers are great for bringing awareness to your product or service. Case studies are great for converting leads into customers by showing your leads the experience and results they’ll have on the other side of the payment line.
But can they be repurposed? The answer is, simply, yes.
Blog Articles
You can easily take a white paper or case study that you’ve been keeping locked up away from your primary platform and repurpose it as a blog article. You can use it as a blog article on your own business website, or as a guest post for a major publication – preferably in the building/construction niche.
Remember to apply SEO to the post, and make sure it’s not only demonstrating your value but also delivering actionable content to your audience.
How-To Guides
Usually, your audience is looking for how to accomplish something.
For example, they may be looking for instructions on how to modernize their kitchen, how to find a trustworthy contractor, or how to work with an interior designer to beautify their home.
With that, the words “how to” can be magical for attracting leads. Not only do these tend to be highly searchable terms, but they are also usually high converting as well.
That means that the right how-to guide will be enticing enough that users will be willing to hand over an email address to get it – or a few bucks for an ebook if they believe it will show them how to solve a big problem they’re facing.
You can easily hire a writer and/or designer to transform your white paper or case studies into how-to guides for your audience. From there, you can turn it into a long-form article, repurpose it as an ebook, or create a downloadable PDF to grow your email list.
Mini Posts for Social Media
Just like you can pull snippets out of a video for social media, you can easily pull quotes and excerpts out of white papers and case studies just the same.
Here are three ways you can easily repurpose your white papers and case studies on social media:
- Using hard-hitting, interesting, or curiosity-provoking one-liners as memes on platforms like Instagram
- Grabbing visuals from case studies to turn into image-driven posts summarizing the results from the case study (while adding a link to the full case study somewhere in the post)
- Taking specific points or smaller sections of the full document and repurposing as short value-posts for social media
If you take your white papers and case studies and simply apply these three methods to each of them, you can turn one simple post to a multi-faceted slew of posts for social media in no time.
Email Marketing
You’ve heard it before: “the money’s in the list”.
And while we have several different ways to build our lists, the only method we actually own is that of email marketing. So, you’ll want to keep quality content flowing through to your email list to keep nurturing leads.
An easy way to stand out in the inbox is to turn your white papers or case studies into a “How To” email series. If they’re long-form, it’ll be easy to break it up into a few different days to send snippets per day. The result is a sort of email course that keeps potential customers engaged (and rearing to buy).
This will add days to your email sequence, help you convert leads, and save you time on creating fresh email content.
#3. Project Images from Past Projects
Let’s say your clients use your products to renovate kitchens. And while they do that, you receive a lot of images of these kitchens looking fresh and amazing. You could easily re-use these images in a multitude of ways.
Long-form Design Ideas Post
Keeping with the aforementioned example, you could easily take your images and do long-form design ideas posts such as “Best 57 Kitchen Designs of 2018”. With this idea, you can even double it as an ego bait post. Not only will you include your images, but you can shout out those who actually did the renovations and optimize the post for search engines, to boot.
Many of the people you shout out in the post will be existing customers who will happily buy from you again. Some will be leads who will then convert to customers once you build a relationship with them. It’s a win-win all around.
Instagram Posts
Instagram isn’t just an image-friendly platform – it’s an image powered one.
People use Instagram to see beautiful pictures and visually appealing content, so if there’s anywhere you want to repurpose images this should be your first pick.
Keep a backlog of your images in a Google Drive or other cloud folder. Then, when it comes time, you can schedule them out on Instagram for the week. You can even do a double repurpose by grabbing blog or written content to use as captions for the images if necessary.
Otherwise, it’s easy enough to add a quick description that’s highly relevant to both the photograph and your followers alike. Following it up with some niche-related hashtags, like #consutruction, #homeprojects, #DIY, etc., and you’re good to go.
#4. Blog Posts Across Multiple Platforms
You’ve been blogging to up your search engine traffic, but you can easily take that content and use it to engage your audience in other ways across different platforms.
The cool thing about blogs is that they’re written, which makes them even more flexible than plain video and image content. And the more impactful the message, the more you should repurpose it.
Facebook Notes
Most people think short-form content works best on Facebook. They also believe that sharing links to their blog is going to get them engagement. The funny/sad thing is, they’re wrong on both counts.
The truth is, if you share links on the platform, Facebook will automatically reduce your reach. This is because Facebook wants people to stay on Facebook. But there’s a feature dedicated to long-form content that’s simply not being used enough. Most people don’t know about it, and if you share long-form content through this feature, Facebook will reward you with higher reach.
Here’s how to get started:
From your personal account, pop down to Notes on the Explore menu to the left.
Once you’re inside Notes, you’ll see Facebook has a blogging feature of its own – housed right inside the platform. You can copy and paste your entire blog post over to Facebook – images, formatting and all – to give it more reach natively rather than sacrificing reach through link-sharing.
Now, if you use your profile for purely personal interactions, don’t fret. You can create the note, make it public, and then share it from your business profile to show it to your professional connections and followers.
LinkedIn Blog
LinkedIn used to just be the place people go to house their resumes. But over time it’s started to transform into an excellent place for B2B marketing endeavors. Why? Because the platform started putting social content first. Now it’s a great place for building manufacturers to reach accounts of all sizes.
LinkedIn’s blogging platform – formerly known as LinkedIn Pulse – is a huge bread and butter opportunity for B2B marketing. Just like Facebook, LinkedIn houses the platform natively. You repurpose your blog post directly to the platform, and it’s shown to your connections through their feeds.
LinkedIn is Great for SEO
Not only that though, LinkedIn’s also great for SEO – both on the platform itself and on Google.
If someone’s searching for the answer you’re providing through your post, you can easily get it seen on LinkedIn by your existing network and new connections waiting to be made.
It’s easy to find the blogging platform. Just click “Write an article” where you would normally post a status.
From here, you’ll be taken to the platform where you can copy and paste your blog post, adding whatever images you want, and publish it to reach a highly targeted audience through your connections.
Pro Tips for Publishing on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a special unicorn of social media sites, but luckily Noah Kagan and his team at OKDork analyzed 3,000 articles to see what works and what doesn’t.
Here are some of the biggest takeaways you can use:
- Keep the title between 4- and 49 characters
- Use a lot of images (OKDork quoted about 8 images per post)
- DON’T use video for these
- “How-To” and List style titles work best
- The data suggests dividing the post into 5, 7, or 9 sections
- Check your readability score (make sure it’s “easy”)
- Publish it on a Thursday
- Share it on social platforms to boost initial reach and gain momentum
If you keep along with these guidelines and write actionable and/or inspiring content, you’ll have winning blog posts on LinkedIn in no time.
Again, make this a priority. It fits snugly with your SEO endeavors and has a highly targeted reach of purchasers looking for you.
Social Snippets
Just like with videos, you can pull sections and quotes from your blog posts to share as micro value posts on social media. This is an easy way to stay relevant, interact with your audience, and even drive people back to the post itself to convert into customers.
You could even mix and match these repurposing tips by pairing up your images with blog post excerpts to make for visually impactful content that also doubles as actionable value or inspiring content.
Recap
By now you see the power and ease of repurposing content. It’s the most effective way to grow and maintain your content output without the pressure of creating fresh content day in and out.
With all of the different ways you can repurpose your content, you might feel like it’s a lot to remember. In a nutshell, just keep these general rules of thumb in mind:
- Almost all platforms support video, and your videos can be chopped up and distributed everywhere
- Your website’s blog isn’t the only blogging platform you could – or should – be using
- Grabbing excerpts and quotes from long-form pieces of content is a great way to make short-form social media posts
- Use your pictures!
- Your white papers and case studies aren’t dead. They’re just guides waiting to be published
- You can hire a virtual assistant who specializes in content marketing to do the repurposing leg-work for you, saving you even more time to run your business
If you remember these key points as you create, you’ll have no shortage of great ideas for how to repurpose each piece of content you create.
