Overview
Composing original content each day is difficult, especially for small business owners and social media managers who divide their time across various social media channels. Then there are those marketers with unused potential. After content is posted for the first time, a lot of marketers have unused blog posts, videos, or social updates. Instead of formatting content from scratch every single time, this content can be presented in different formats to different audiences. This conserves time and increases effectiveness of the marketing budget, as it maintains a consistent brand message throughout channels.
Repurposing Content
Repurposing content is taking content that has previously been published and reformatting it for another audience. One example of this is a content creator who has a blog. They can then make a short video, social media caption, or even an email newsletter from their blog post. Another example is taking a content video as a long form content weave. That can then be shortened to be posted on both Instagram and LinkedIn. The ideas stay the same; however, the audience differentiates how they like to digest content.
Repurposing is about using the same content, but not pasting the same content. Repurposing is using the same content, but effectively changing format to make the content relevant to the audience being served.
Benefits to Consider
This method has various advantages which explains the popularity. One of those advantages is time efficiency. Instead of doing research and writing from scratch, users gain time. Second, this method helps users reach their audiences in the place that audience spends time. Audiences do not only consume blogs; they frequent other platforms. Third, audiences do not often capture the message the first time and users have to reinforce messages. Fourth, users have the opportunity to repurpose and recycle old content which attracts new audiences to the content without the financial burden of new content creation. For agencies with several clients and a small staff, the difference in output and results is noticeable.
Challenges to Understand
While the positives of reusing older content are clear, there are also clear negatives to this method. Content duplication gets tedious to audiences and followers because the same content is posted in many places. Adjusting content to different formats and posting platforms requires editing skill because a video script will not work as a blog post. Also, repetitive content of older poor quality can lead to spreading poor quality content. Businesses should update older posted content to reduce the risk of content reuse of poor quality content and Assumption that content is still quality.
Building a Simple Approach
A simple method involves evaluating the resources at your disposal. Look at posts, videos, or guides that had good performance or cover timeless topics. Then determine the best formats for your audience, like carousels, short videos, or email snippets. Longer pieces should be broken up into shorter pieces. Not to copy and Paste Everywhere, update content by adding in new examples, statistics, and screenshots. After that, track the performance of each piece and determine the format and topic that you can expect the best performance from. This approach does not need to use many tools, even a simple content calendar can suffice with a little preplanning.
Where This Approach Works Well
This approach works best with businesses that have a good amount of quality content that can be easily repurposed, but have constrained budgets that limit the ability to produce a large amount of new content. Brands that sell furniture and decorate the home often include very informative guides for each product that include care instructions. This type of content lends itself very well to new formats, such as buying guides, tips for the different seasons, etc. that keep the information accurate. This same logic works in most other industries as content can be modified for new audiences.
Conclusion
Things are getting a bit quiet? That’s fine, just drop some honest feedback and some strategy decisions to attract new audiences to your content, and even some social media marketing love to your posts. It will help your business. It works anywhere from a small scale to big scales of social media management like agencies. Because of Content Repurposing Strategy, a few good quality content ideas can last for months.
