7 Steps to Repurpose Content

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What does it mean to repurpose content?

Simply put, it refers to the practice of taking one piece of content, and presenting all or parts of it in different formats, adapted for different platforms.

Think logically: As a small business owner, you took the time to create an awesome blog post, or a great information page on your website, or create an explainer video. You may even have paid someone a substantial amount of money to create it.

If you can use the same information again and again, it will not only mean that you get more value for your money, but it also means that you can reach more people in more places.

Let’s dissect how you can make the most of any given piece of content…

How to Repurpose your content in 7 steps.

1. Identify your best-performing content:

Look at your blog posts, website pages, social media posts or videos. Which of them received the most traffic, shares, likes and comments.

Diving into your analytics – and the engagement – will help you determine which pieces of content your audience found useful or insightful.

Aside from repurposing your best pieces of content, you could also use them – or sections of them – as starting points or foundations for future content pieces.

For instance, a blog post could become the foundation for several other closely related posts.

2. Pick your formats:

Repurposing your content into new formats not only allows you to reach more people, but different formats also allow you to reach different audiences – because the audience demographics on each destination are different.

What are your options?

Well, from a single blog post you can create a number of pieces of content:

You can change a blog post into an email newsletter or back end email, a video script, or a PDF. You can even turn it into an infographic or an Instagram carousel.

You can also take extracts from the blog post and create graphics, short video clips, and a multitude of short social media posts.

If the initial piece of content is a video, you can extract a number of shorter videos from it, which you can then use on several platforms, including Youtube shorts, Instagram, Tiktok, X, Facebook reels and Piterest.

If you have the video script, you can turn that into a blog post, or multiple social media posts.

If you held a webinar, you can – aside from uploading it to Youtube, also extract short clips, a checklist or summarize it in a blog post – from where you can then once again have a number of repurposing options.

To avoid overwhelm, you may want to start out using just one or two formats.

3. Use old content as the basis for new content, or update it:

By simply updating an old piece of content with new visuals, adding some more info, or update the statistics you mentioned, it can become “fresh” content again.

You can also use the existing content as the basis for a new, updated version of the original article or blog post. For instance, having written about something 5 years ago, you can now write a blog post about what changed since then.

Of course, regardless of whether you simply update old content, or use it as the basis for new content, the new piece of content will be available for plenty of other repurposing options.

However, since you won’t be starting from scratch, it will likely require less time to produce the “new” or updayed content.

4. Tailor your content to each targeted platform:

As you would expect, given that each social network or syndication platform has a different set of user demographics, each of those have their preferences when it comes to content types, lengths, and even topics.

For instance, Linkedin requires a more professional tone, and their audience values insights which will help them grow their businesses or forward their careers.

Facebook is more conversational, with an emphasis on communities.

X is a fast-paced conversation. Posts with graphics to well, but timing is everything, since post longevity is non-existent.

Instagram is more visual, and users seem to prefer more “bite-sized” highlights.

Tiktok is mostly younger people, while Youtube is more of a wide demographics spread. As such, Tiktok may require some adjustment to your content.

In email newsletters, you may want to bring it across as “insider tips” or a “personal” summary.

On each platform, you may need to adjust your tone, visuals and content length to match audience expectations.

5. Upscale your content:

Instead of breaking content down into smaller pieces, combine content pieces to create downloadable guides, ebooks, or a video short course.

For instance:

Let’s say you have a blog about marketing. You can combine several articles aimed at beginners as a “starter guide to marketing your small business”.

In fact, when Yaro Starak started his blog at Entrepreneurs Journey many years ago, he planned his content in such a way that a number of blog posts could be used directly as chapters in his ebook, Blog Profits Blueprint.

He then offered the ebook as an optin offer to get onto his mailing list.

If you have some longer videos out on Youtube, you could embed each video into a landing page, and offer it as a “video e-course”, with each email containing a short intro and a link to the page where the video s embedded.

6. Create a schedule, and reuse content strategically:

Now that you know what is possible, consider creating a calendar to recycle old content.

You can update or recreate old but evergreen content with some updates, and then repurpose the content to the platforms that work best for you.

For instance, every six months or so you can update your best performing posts among those older than six months or so, with a few small changes and a new introduction.

Side note: Doing this will also notify Google that you are attending to your old content, which will help your search rankings.

7. Track your results, and adjust as needed:

Using your platform analytics and Google Analytics, determine what works best. Where do you not only get the most views and engagement, but the most growth, clicks and sales or signups?

Once you see what works well, double down on it. Step away from that which does not provide a return on your time or expenditure. This way, you will not only get more done, but you will also do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t.

Common mistakes you may want to avoid:

a. Avoid simply copying and pasting content – word by word – across platforms. Use AI to rewrite it, or at least use it to rewrite descriptions if you use the same video clips across multiple platforms.

b. Don’t ignore visuals when converting your blog post to social media posts. Posts with noteworthy graphics stand out a lot better, and are much more likely to stop someone from scrolling past them.

c. Don’t forget to link back to your original content, or to a landing page on your website where you want people to go – or if you share extracts on Facebook or Linkedin, you could even point them back to the original piece of content on your website or blog.

In conclusion:

While content repurposing may seem like more work, it’s actually about working smarter. The whole idea is to get the maximum possible return for the time and effort – or money – that you put into it.

While it will mean more work, you can – with the help of some basic AI tools – turn one blog post with just 5 points into 15 pieces of content (5 text posts, 5 graphics posts, and 5 short video clips), which you can distribute to Facebook, X, Instagram, Youtube shorts, Tiktok and Pinterest.

When you calculate all of the options on each platform, you can get up to 50 social media posts from that one blog post, or even 65 if you sell to businesses.

And that doesn’t even include the options to convert it into a PDF, or reposting it on Medium.com (once it is indexed by Google).

Let’s say it takes the same amount of time to repurpose the blog post as it took to write it – assuming it is a decent, in-depth blog post which took a few hours…

For the same amount of time, would you rather have two blog posts, or have one post with 50 additional pieces of content?