Constantly finding new and interactive ideas for your brand’s social media post can be very time-consuming these days, when the schedule of a social media manager becomes busier and busier.
Especially in those moments when inspiration does not seem to knock on the door anytime soon.
Luckily no social media manager must reinvent the wheel with every social media post. Sometimes looking back at older posts that performed well may be a great source of inspiration.
Repurposing content from successful blog posts, for example, has turned out to be a great tactic.
Because you already know your audience loves the theme, now you only have to find a catchy and creative way to wrap it up for social media.
Below you’ll find the most popular creatives marketers use for repurposing, in case you need some inspiration for your strategy.
Let’s jump in!
Repurposing content 101
1. Why should you repurpose content?
The benefits of repurposing are many.
First and foremost, what is great about a content repurposing strategy is that it helps you save precious time for your social media posting, for example.
And it also has the potential of giving you a significant SEO boost.
Generally speaking, great content will bring more traffic to your website, that is a fact.
But through repurposed content - like guest posts and infographics - you can also get some quality backlinks for your website, which only translates into even more exposure and help in increasing your traffic.
So, in another train of thought, repurposing content is a little secret some marketers use to keep traffic on their sites.
Content repurposing increases your chances of being heard, especially when coupled with a little content promotion. It's a proven fact by the marketing expert Dr. Jeffrey Lant who says in his book, 'The rule of 7', that:
Your prospects need to come across your message at least seven times before they notice it and take action. - Dr. Jeffrey Lant
In other words, your target prospect needs to see your content multiple times to become familiar with you.
Below you’ll find some tips Amy Woods, content repurposing expert, gave us in a webinar during the Social Talks Conference, powered by Socialinsider.
Moving on, among the many arguments on why you should repurpose content is the great advantage of reaching a new audience.
Multi-channel marketing is, after all, how all the major brands have succeeded in gaining their brand awareness.
Think of it like this: your desired buyer personas are scattered all around the internet, and the many channels you use to reach them, the more you’ll get on your side.
Seems fair, right?
Now, doesn’t the idea of having a repurposing strategy start to look more and more appealing?
Also, what is most appreciated when it comes to repurposing content for social media, is the easiness of finding inspirational ideas, that are known to resonate with the social audiences' interests.
You can be sure this is a tactic often used by social media managers when deadlines are knocking at the door, because of the opportunity of saving some time in content creation process.
2. How to repurpose content?
There are many ways to repurpose, each being more appropriate to the type of objective you want to achieve.
But, of course, not all content is created equal. So, how do you know what should make the cut?
Here's a tip: make sure it’s evergreen.
Evergreen content refers to those topics that are not related to specific events, or campaigns, and that can be easily squeezed into a packed social plan or used in a pinch to cover a content gap.
Therefore, the very first step when repurposing content should be identifying your most popular posts.
If you want for example, to repurpose content for social media, you should check your Google Analytics to identify your most successful blog posts and pages with increased traffic, and start creating social posts around those topics.
Once you’ve decided which posts will make it back into your social feed, it’s time to think about how to convert them.
And there's, of course, the other side of the coin.
You may have run into some interesting questions your fans posted in your social media groups, or answers to your social media polls.
This is a clear evidence of interest in a certain topic.
And while your social posts are usually short, and meant to spike curiosity, you can go and write an explicit blog article about a certain subject, in which you give your audience full-researched responses to their questions.
You can do your research regarding the best performing posts on social manually, going through all your posts and taking a look at the number of likes, comments, and shares, or if it's too time-consuming, you can use an analytics tool, like Socialinsider.
All you have to do is add the profiles you want to analyse into the dashboard, select the time range needed, and you'll see a list of top 3 posts in no time.
Make a list with those posts, and let's find out how you can repurpose that content and get more exposure and engagement.
Regardless of how you want to play with it, remember there is no strict receipt of how to repurpose.
A. Transform your blog posts into catchy visuals for social media
If you’re looking for repurposing ideas, the most important thing you should know is that you can get as creative as possible.
However, you must think what is more appealing for your audiences nowadays.
On social media, for example, catchy visuals are the ones that stand out more easily in the endless scrolling of the feed.
On social everything is about visuals these days. Not to mentions videos. Which are certainly the most interactive type of content.
Also, if we go backwards, from social media to blog articles, we should mention that both your content strategies should be aligned. Any brand must create, above all, unity.
Which is what a content repurposing strategy does successfully.
That means with a little effort, long-form pieces of content can convert quite well into a shorter format, because they’re already in your voice and geared towards your audience.
If you want some examples of repurposing you can always take a look at how we, at Socialinsider repurpose content on social media. We also make use of this strategy as well.
Important to mention is that leveraging social channels has been shown to have a direct tie to increased organic traffic and conversions such as downloads, purchases, email entries.
While social mentions do little in the way of search engine optimization within Google itself, they do help establish positive brand sentiment.
B. Play with interactive videos
As many social media studies have shown, video content is without any doubt, the future in social media marketing.
Video content is a great way to refresh blog posts in an engaging format, as well as capitalize on emerging trends in content consumption.
That is why we can say videos are one of the most successful ways in which you can repurpose your blog content. By transforming your blog posts into a video, you will evoke more emotions and attention.
In an era in which people are always in a hurry, watching a video is more accessible than reading an article.
You don't need more than one minute and a couple of slides to tell a story. Just find the most important ideas in your article, add an image that fits, an excellent soundtrack, and your 1-minute video post is ready to go.
Maybe you released a new feature, or you recently launched a new product, or you just want to talk about social media strategies that will help other people grow their business.
For all the above, you can create a webinar session.
Webinars are a great way of repurposing content in a humanized and authentic way, and are often found to be described as very insightful for the social audiences.
On Facebook, for example, according to our Facebook videos study, live sessions generate double the engagement of pre-recorded videos.
So, next time when you're thinking about repurposing content, take into consideration hosting a webinar and see how it goes.
C. Create a fabulous infographic
One of the first things you should do when you want to repurpose a piece of content is to create a fabulous infographic.
Why is that? Because infographics are content pieces that tend go viral more easily, especially when some major publications show interest in re-publishing them.
For example, as you could see in the above picture, one of Socialinsiders' top posts was an article about how to create an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy.
And because of that, we decided to create an infographic for this article, which led to the following results:
- our blog post gained more reach & engagement.
- people shared the infographic on social media, mentioning us.
- Neal Schaffer (digital and social media marketing speaker) used the infographic in one of his articles.
After you create an infographic, you can use it in many ways:
- Add it to the article
- Share it on your social media accounts
- Send it in your weekly newsletter
- Use it in a video, etc
D. Write an e-book
If you end up doing enough articles on a specific topic, you could try to compile them into an e-book.
Here's what Andy Crestodina told me in an interview:
- Start by outlining everything you know about a topic. (table of contents)
- Next, fit all the content you’ve ever published on that topic into that outline.
- Find and fill the gaps by writing and posting new articles.
- Finally, when the shape is mostly complete, start fitting the pieces together. Rewrite chapters to make it flow. Update anything that’s out of date. Remove anything redundant.
- Write the intro, then send it to an editor and a designer.
- Print!
Take a look at your blog articles, and maybe your first e-book is just around the corner.
E. Create a podcast
Sometimes you don't always have time to read an article, but while you are doing different things, you can listen to a podcast.
Great, right?
According to Oberlo, nearly six out of 10 US citizens listen to podcasts, consuming on average seven episodes per week.
Therefore, this is quite a window for you to get in front of your targeted audience - by learning how to record a podcast. You can repurpose content from your blog posts or videos you’ve recorded and integrate them into a podcast for maximum conversions.
If you're short on your budget, podcasts can be actually a good alternative to videos, not implying the productions costs for professional created videos.
Final thoughts
And there you have it. A lot of creative ways to repurpose content, for both social media, as for outreach campaigns, in case your brand can benefit from them.
In repurposing it's all about thinking outside the box and getting creative.
Now it's time to give it a try! Pick up your best blog post and try repurposing it in whatever is more suited for your brand and business objectives.
