Give new life to old content
Are you running out of content ideas? Do you keep finding yourself desperately scratching around for something new to say about what you offer?
Relax. You have loads of new things to say – I know because you’ve already said them.
Just about anything you’ve already published can be brought back, revised and reused. It’s called repurposing content, and if you analyzed the most prolific social media writers, you’ll probably find they use this strategy to keep their online presence going. Social media is a hungry beast, and you must keep feeding it if you want it to work for you. Frequently posting on social media keeps you front and center in customers’ minds; no one’s going to bring their business to you if they’re not aware you’re out there.
I’m not talking about rerunning content – simply picking up what you’ve already published and reposting it. That’s a great way to send your followers clicking off to find something they haven’t already read. Of all the feelings you want to inspire with your writing, déjà vu is not one of them.
When you repurpose content, you take something already published in one medium and revise it for another. The idea being communicated may remain the same, but you’re offering it in a different form to different audiences.
For instance, I’m writing a speech for a client to deliver to the life coaches she works with. I’ll turn that into a blog post she can use to attract new coaches to her practice. I can probably tweet out individual points from the speech or turn at least one of them into an Instagram post.
And I won’t forget to get the actual speech on Facebook Live or YouTube.
5 ways to repurpose a single blog post
- Pull statistics from a post and create an infographic. You can find lots of easy to use templates at design sites like Canva.
- Turn that infographic into a series of slides for a live presentation.
- Record the presentation and post it on Facebook Live or YouTube.
- Convert one (or more) of those slides into an Instagram post.
- Combine the slides into an e-book and offer it as a free bonus for joining your mailing list.
Repurposing content pays off in new views and new readers whether you create new versions across multiple platforms now or you just bring new life to old content. And a year from now, we’ll probably have 10 new platforms to repost them on.