Repurposing Content for Social Media and More! 7 Simple Tips for Boosting Your Blog’s Reach
Repurposing content for social media is a great way to get the most out of your existing content strategy. All you need is some creativity.
Most savvy blog creators understand the benefits of letting your social media audience know when you release each new blog. Promoting each release on social is a great way to gain more blog traffic—for sure!
Perhaps you even take it a step further and copy a few sentences from your blog onto social. Repurposing content for social media is definitely an easy, efficient way to increase the number of eyes you get on your content.
But guess what?
There are MANY more ways than that to reuse that amazing content you created!
After all, you’ve put a lot of time into researching and writing your blog, so wouldn’t it be amazing if you could increase the value it gives back to your business?
Repurposing content can lead to more traffic, leads, sales, subscribers, and brand awareness. Plus, it is pretty simple! It just takes some creativity and reformatting to make the most out of your existing content.
The Role of Evergreen Content for Repurposing Content
Evergreen content is content that is always relevant for readers.
This makes it not only a high priority for creating but also a prime opportunity for repurposing.
Several types of evergreen content that are some of the best choices for repurposing are:
- How-tos
- eBooks and guides
- Case studies
- In-depth research pieces
All of these pieces are excellent choices for repurposing content for social media because they are so rich in valuable information—because of their evergreen nature.
This means that anything you repurpose from them will retain a timeless quality, making them highly sought after by your target audience.
Check out this list of simple tips that will help you with repurposing content for social media—and more.
1. Create Content for Social Media (Teaser-style!)
The first step in boosting awareness of your blog on social media is creating content that people want to share with their friends and followers.
The best way to do this is by using teaser-style posts. Teasers are short pieces of content that give readers a taste of something bigger. They can often be created by repurposing content.
First, you can pull attention-grabbing snippets of text from an existing blog post, then post it to your socials with a link to the full-length article included.
Consider adding a photo or an infographic in the post as well. Images and infographics capture your audience’s attention causing them to linger and, hopefully, click when scrolling.
Infographics are another fantastic way to visually represent complex ideas. They can help people understand concepts quickly and easily. Plus, they are usually quite engaging and highly shareable. The best part about infographics is that they are super simple to create. All you need is a graphic design program such as Adobe Illustrator or Canva.
Here is something to keep in mind when creating teasers: don’t get carried away and accidentally create clickbait. If you stick to repurposing a small snippet or excerpt from the content you are linking to you should not have any problems.
2. Reconstruct Content For a Newsletter
Another easy way to utilize the act of repurposing content is to create newsletters.
The idea here is quite similar to creating a teaser. You want to take the most essential or interesting points from your blog post and use it as the basis for your newsletter.
There are multiple ways to formulate a newsletter.
One very straightforward and easy way is to select a recent blog post. Then, distill the article down by choosing the most important topics you covered in the post to create an easily-digestible newsletter that will encourage your audience to click through and visit your site.
You can also use photos, graphics, and even videos in your newsletters. If you have a video that is related to your blog post, then by all means include it in your newsletter.
Newsletters tend to work best as emails to your mailing list but of course, they can be shared on social media if that would be a better fit for your audience.
3. Rethink Your Blog Into a Workshop or Webinar
One of the easiest ways to repurpose content is to turn it into a webinar or course module.
A webinar is basically a live presentation where you talk about a topic while sharing slides and other resources. It’s a great way to provide valuable information without having to write a whole new piece of content.
A workshop or course module is essentially a series of lessons that teach one specific skill. They can be anything from learning how to build a website to mastering Photoshop.
To begin this process, begin looking through your content archive and find all content that has a ‘how-to’ quality (as these will be the easiest to transform). Once you have selected your topics, simply walk through the information in the format of a course module or webinar.
4. Record Your Blog Into a YouTube Video or Podcast
YouTube and podcasts provide an easily accessible mode of information gathering or entertainment (sometimes both at the same time!). They can be enjoyed passively making an audience likely to engage with them.
To repurpose content into a YouTube video or podcast you have a couple of choices.
You can select a topic that you have already produced content about, then expand on it in one of these mediums by adding more details and information.
Alternatively, you can reuse what you have written in a blog post as a script. This second option is the most direct way of repurposing content because it takes advantage of your existing writing.
Once you’ve decided which method you’d like to use, record yourself talking about your topic. Make sure to keep it short and sweet and add a call to action at the end of each section. For example, at the end of recording a tutorial, try including a sound bite, such as: “If you liked this video please subscribe to my channel and visit my blog for more awesome content.”
You may also consider creating a video series or recurring podcast episodes to fully explore a given topic. Audiences tend to enjoy multi-part stories and segments much more than single videos or podcasts.
5. Repurposing Content for Social Media with Presentations on SlideShare
Breaking apart blogs into a slideshow to post on a platform such as SlideShare is another great way of repurposing content for social media.
The beauty of slideshows is that they allow you to share a lot of information in a very compact form. They are perfect for creating mini-presentations that are easy to consume and share.
To get started, select a topic from your blog archive and begin selecting the most important points you want to cover. Once you have them all laid out, it’s time to start formatting them into slides. You’ll want to aim for about 10-15 slides for a slideshow that is around 5-7 minutes long when viewed.
Creating your slideshow in Google Sheets or PowerPoint, then uploading it to SlideShare makes this method of content repurposing easy.
6. Repurposing Content Into an eBook, Ultimate Guide, or Other Lead Magnet
Another method of repurposing content for social media is to take related blog posts and stitch them together to create a lead magnet.
A lead magnet is a piece of content that offers free value in exchange for contact details. It’s usually a downloadable guide, eBook, checklist, etc. This type of content works well for B2B businesses where people need help getting their hands dirty with a new technology or service.
One of the simplest ways to create a lead magnet is to identify the most relevant existing blogs and combine them into a single document. Then, craft a compelling headline that entices readers to download and consume it.
Be sure to advertise your lead magnet strategically across your website pages, social media channels, or in other locations such as email signatures.
7. Break Apart or Combine Blogs into New Posts
For this advanced approach, take a large piece of comprehensive content such as an ebook or ultimate guide blog post and break it down into smaller pieces to form a new stand-alone single topic piece.
While you can take related blog posts and stitch them together you can also break them apart into many smaller articles or recombine them with others. To do this, you will need to look to your longest articles that discuss multiple sub-topic points.
From there, you can carve the blog into smaller pieces.
Each of these pieces can become a stand-alone article after adding an introduction, conclusion, call to action, and links to other pages. Using the same idea, you can combine the pieces that share commonalities into a new article. Again, you will need to add the important elements above before posting.
This is an easy form of content repurposing because it’s relatively quick to create. Plus, it helps to boost SEO by giving Google multiple pieces of content that link back to your other pages.
In addition, combining the pieces gives you a chance to add a new angle or bring in fresh ideas.
Limits on Repurposing Content for Social Media
While we have laid out seven easy methods for repurposing content for social media that can really maximize the content you create, there are some limits you should be aware of.
Copy & Paste Caution
The most important of these is that you should not copy and paste your old content into new formats. This can hurt your SEO and make it look like you’re not putting effort into your content marketing. You should take the time to make small adjustments and changes so your repurposed content fits its new format.
Adjusting formatting, headlines, images, etc. to fit the new format is an easy way to create effective content.
When it comes to sharing and posting across different social media channels, make sure that the tone and formatting fit the medium. An example of this would be trying to reuse a YouTube video for an Instagram Story. There is important reformatting that needs to take place before doing so.
Heeding Your Stats
Also, you should refer back to your analytics data if you want to maximize your repurposing efforts.
Using the insights from these reports can help you identify which posts are working well for you and which ones are not. That way, you can use posts that are valuable to your readers (and not repost any content duds) when repurposing.
Allocating Proper Attention
The final limitation of content repurposing is that it takes time to complete effectively. Creating these different pieces requires more than just copying and pasting. To get the most out of them, you need to put in the effort to make them shine.
However, if you’re willing to do that extra work, then the benefits can be huge. Not only will you be able to reach more people with your content, but you’ll also be improving your brand’s image and authority.
Final Thoughts on Repurposing Content
Repurposing content for social media is a great way to maximize your ROI and take some of the stress off of regular content creation.
There are many simple ways to repurpose content for social media if you have an already active blog.
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