Let’s be honest. Coming up with new ideas for content week on week is hard.
We’ve all heard that we need to produce valuable, in-depth content and that ‘content is king’.
And that’s absolutely true. But if you tried it in practice, you also know how time-consuming content creation and can be. Plus, let’s not forget that your prospective customers and clients are busy. Just because you’ve shared a piece of your awesome content once, it doesn’t mean they’ve seen it!
So here’s something a content strategy you may have not considered – content repurposing.
In this blog post, we are going to share 6 different ways for you to repurpose a blog post (and save yourself a hell of a lot of time in the process!).
But first thing first…
What is Content Repurposing?
Content repurposing means taking a piece of content that you’ve previously created and turning it into something that you can reuse and re-share somewhere else. Easy, right?
Repurposing can take many forms. You can record a YouTube video or a podcast episode and turn that into a blog post. Or you can take sections from a blog post and share them as a series of social media posts. You can even pull out interesting quotes from a piece of content and create beautiful graphics, memes, or infographics out of them. That’s repurposing too!
When it comes to content repurposing, you have plenty of options, but we always recommend that you start with a blog post first.
And here’s why…
Why Repurpose a Blog Post?
We tell all our clients and members to have a ‘website first’ mentality.
Are you now wondering what that even is? Well, fair enough.
It’s simple, really. It means you create content for your website first and then slice and dice it however you like and repurpose it into different pieces. And once you have repurposed it, you can share it in different formats and on other platforms, like your email list or social media, for example.
But why start with your website?
Because the more content you share on your website, the more chances you give yourself to rank on Google for different keywords. And that gives you opportunities of being found by your ideal customers or clients.
Pretty cool, right?
We think so.
Because if you don’t publish content for your website first, you’ll miss out on all those search engine searches that could easily land more and more people on your website. If you want to read more about how creating content helps you drive traffic to your website, head over to our article, SEO For Beginners: The Ultimate Guide.
But the blog post is the foundation of your content strategy – it’s where it all starts.
So now that you’ve got some amazing blog posts, what can you do with them?
1. How to repurpose a blog post onto LinkedIn
The great thing about creating a longer piece of written content first (and that’s your blog post!) is that you can then easily take sections of it and create 5-10 individual posts that you can share on social media.
We use this method from Content Writer Sara Bussandri to repurpose our blog posts on LinkedIn, but it works for Facebook or your Instagram feed too.
All you need to do is to grab a section of your blog post (a teaching, a lesson, or a key point you want to share) and ‘dress it up’ for the social media platform you’re sharing it on.
Using Sara’s method, to put your post together, you need:
- A ‘hook’ – an interesting line or question that will stop people in their tracks. You want them to quit scrolling and read your post.
- A short introduction to your topic. Why are you talking about this today? Why does it matter to your audience?
- The lesson or point you want to make. This can be taken directly from your blog post. If it works, copy and paste. If not, rephrase and summarise.
- A conclusion or question to encourage your audience to engage with your post. You want people to comment on your post, as that tells LinkedIn that your content is interesting and popular. And in turn, it will be shown to more people.
- And finally, some hashtags. These work as keywords. If someone searches for a particular term or follows the hashtags you’ve used, they will see your content pop up in their feed.
LinkedIn posts are limited to a maximum of 1,300 characters, so you’ll have to break your blogposts down and repurpose the content.
An Example of a Blog Post Repurposed into a LinkedIn Post
Below, is an example of how we turned a blog post about creating a lead generating website, into a LinkedIn post. The main part of the LinkedIn post (the 3 key steps to get leads on your website) comes from this blog post. Every time we write a blog post we also write up 5-8 LinkedIn posts too. This is because the blog post is fresh in our minds and it makes it a much faster process!
Repurposing Your Blog Post Into A LinkedIn Article
But nothing stops from you sharing longer articles on LinkedIn.
You can either create a LinkedIn article out of your entire blog posts or use parts of it and encourage your readers to go and read the full version on your website. Publishing articles on LinkedIn can help with your brand awareness and visibility. And it’s also a great way to build relationships with your connections.
If you want to find out more about creating LinkedIn articles, our awesome member Louise Brogan wrote this piece: How to Create LinkedIn Articles That People Will Read and Share.
Repurposing your blog post into a LinkedIn Carousels
We don’t ordinarily see LinkedIn as a visual platform. But this recent article from Content Repurposing Expert, Amy Woods at Content 10x, was really interesting! Amy talks about how you can repurpose your content into a ‘LinkedIn carousel’ which is multiple images that you need to swipe through. These images tell a story or explain something. And they work incredibly well on LinkedIn. This isn’t something we’ve tried before but it’s on our to-do list after reading the article!
2. How to repurpose a blog post on Instagram posts and Stories
Compared to LinkedIn, Instagram is a much more visual platform. So if you are going to repurpose your blog post content for Insta posts or Stories, you need images!
When we repurpose content for our Instagram account, we create graphics out of the content. We use templates from Viral Marketing Stars to help us, which can be customised with your brand colours and fonts in Canva. They’re designed to generate engagement and grow your following and have been working really well for us.
Obviously, if you’re posting on your Instagram feed, you also need some written content to go with your image. The graphic will capture your audience’s attention and stop them from scrolling, but the text in your post is your chance to encourage them to engage with your content and go and check your website.
So make sure you write a unique and engaging post to introduce your blog content. You don’t want to just tell them to click on the link in your bio! You can use the same tips we shared for creating LinkedIn posts to write your Insta posts too.
An example of how we repurposed a blog post to an Instagram Post…
Below was one of several graphics we made based on our blog post, what to put on your homepage. As you can see the image doesn’t just say, ‘hey we have a new blog post!’ It gives people some actual advice (such as the 8 things you should include on your homepage).
3. Repurposing your blog post into a Podcast
Your blog post can also be turned into a podcast. So once you’ve written your blog posts and organised all your thoughts on a particular topic, it’s easy enough to record a podcast episode out of it.
You can either record yourself as your read out your article like a script and then upload your audio file onto your podcasting platform, or you just use your blog post as a starting point and guideline. Instead of reading, you talk your audience through it naturally. And that will become your podcast episode.
Awesome, right?
If you don’t have a podcast show already, you may have a few other things to think about, including equipment, graphics, etc. To find out more about how to start your own podcast, check out this article from Colin Gray, a.k.a. The Podcast Host, How to Start a Podcast: Every Single Step for 2021.
And if you are a podcaster and your content creation machine starts with podcasting rather than with your website, you can fix that. Your podcast episodes can also be turned into blog posts that you can publish on your website to drive more traffic to it. For more information on how to do this, check out this blog post from Content Writer Sara Bussandri, How to turn your podcast episodes into blog posts.
An example of how we repurposed a blog post into a podcast episode…
We took a blog post on how to create the perfect website and transformed it into a podcast episode called: The 6 Elements That Make a Successful Website. Both contain the same 6 key elements that make a successful website. And both break these 6 elements down.
The podcast and blog post are both similar, only one is written and the other is spoken. So if you have blog posts and you’re planning to start a podcast, remember, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel! You have plenty of content on your blog that you can transform into podcast episodes.
4. Using your blog post within an email
Your blog posts can also be used to share content with your email list.
Again, we recommend that you don’t just send out an email that reads,
“Hey! I’ve written a blog post. Here’s the link. Go over and read it!”
Honestly? No.
You won’t get a lot of people who actually go and click on that link to read your awesome blog post.
Think about it – if someone’s trusted you enough to give you their email address it’s because they liked what they saw on your website, and they wanted more of it. So your email needs to deliver some value!
You want your lovely subscribers to learn something from your email, so don’t just ‘link drop’. When you put your email together, include at least some of the content from your blog post. Pull out the most important or interesting points, for example.
Obviously, you can still give them a link to it, but we’re talking about repurposing here. So ideally you want to use your blog content in the newsletter and give your audience the information they’re after.
An example of how we repurposed a blog post into an email newsletter
As we said, you can’t just link to your blog post in your emails. It’s good to actually give some content within the email itself. In this example, from our bi-weekly newsletter, The Jam Sandwich, we break down just one point from our blog post, The Ultimate Guide to SEO.
We go in-depth on this one point and ask people if they want to read the whole blog post. But the point is, they will have learnt something even if they don’t go on to read the whole post.
5. Create a lead magnet out of your blog post
Another way to repurpose your blog posts is to create content upgrades or lead magnets.
A content upgrade is a piece of content that you offer to your readers as a bonus or as additional information in exchange for their email address. It’s basically a lead magnet that goes with your blog posts.
Why add bonus content to your blog posts? Because that way you can capture email addresses and turn anonymous website users into subscribers. And once you have those people on your list, you can then nurture that relationship, offer value, and hopefully, one day turn that subscriber into a loyal customer.
Cheatsheets, checklists, or guides work really well as content upgrades, and you can create them yourself with very little effort using a free resource like Canva.
An example of how we repurposed a blog post into a lead magnet
You can find a content upgrade example in our blog post, The Ultimate Guide to Generating More Leads From Your Website. Right in the middle of our article, we have a call to action that invites our readers to download our 10-minute Lead-Gen Guide.
6. Use your blog post in a presentation
And last but not least, you could also repurpose a blog post into a presentation. Once you have a series of nicely designed slides, there’s a lot you can do with them.
For example, you could:
- Upload the presentation as a Document on LinkedIn.
- Give a talk at a networking meeting, an industry event, or inside a private membership.
- Share your content during an online webinar on social media (for example, in a Facebook live).
- Upload the slideshow onto your YouTube channel.
- Talk through it and record a Loom video that you can then upload onto your website.
- Use the content in a paid training session or workshop.
As you can see, there’s a lot you can do with your content, and it all starts from a blog post!
Want some help with consistent blogging?
Thinking up fresh new content for your website, social media, your newsletter, and any other marketing channels you might be active on is so difficult! But hopefully, you can see now why we advocate creating content for your website first. Repurposing your blog posts will make your life easier and save you time too.
And if you’d like some accountability, our next 90-day Content Challenge (or 90DC for the cool kids) kicks off on the 17th May 2021. We encourage you to create a fresh piece of content every week for 13 weeks. It can be any type of content you like, but if you create and publish blog posts, imagine how much you could get out of 13 pieces of content in terms of traffic to your website and repurposing opportunities!
When you join the 90DC you get:
- Accountability.
- A dedicated feedback channel.
- A Private community group.
- Weekly training.
- SEO and Content Marketing courses.
- Content Strategy Planning sessions.
- And even Canva blog post image templates.
All for only $297 for the full 90 days! Or you can join our membership for just $59 per month and get access to the challenge and so much more You can sign up for the 90DC here. See you there!
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