Creating content for all social media platforms is no joke. With video content becoming the “gold standard” for TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, if you then throw Pinterest pins and written content for Twitter and LinkedIn into the week… well, it’s easy to see why social media management is a booming business.
And I haven’t even mentioned blogging, e-mail marketing or podcasting.
But we can’t all afford a social media manager, and even brands who have one often find they need to come up with their content ideas first.
Sometimes, coming up with new content ideas is a breeze. Just this morning I threw together two LinkedIn posts, filmed a TikTok video and wrote an e-mail for my subscribers.
But out of all the different social media platforms I’m active on (seven as of right now), I’ve actually only come up with content ideas for two. So it’s still not enough.
And we’re expected to post every day on all these platforms to see the best results.
So what about the days, or weeks, when you can’t come up with a single idea? How long could it go without you posting on social media?
If this is stressing you out, don’t worry, me too!
But I’m here to tell you that there is another way.
A method that allows you to come up with ideas when you feel inspired, schedule content creation for times when it suits you and rely on repurposing content during the times that you’re not feeling it so much.
Sounds dreamy, right?
What is repurposing content for social media?
Repurposing content for social media is using the same content across multiple social media platforms. For example, you might write a blog post that you will then turn into a video to share on TikTok, Instagram and Youtube Shorts. You could also take snippets from the blog post to share on Twitter and LinkedIn.
By repurposing a blog post, you can create the following content:
- Create a YouTube video covering the same topic
- Take clips from the Youtube video for TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels and YouTube Shorts
- Send your blog post to your e-mail subscribers (either link it or copy and paste the content into the body of the e-mail)
- Take the best part of your blog post and created a LinkedIn post
- Repurpose that LinkedIn post with a Twitter thread
- Create a pin related to your blog post and share it on Pinterest
That’s seven social media channels covered, plus you’ve written a blog for SEO and kept in touch with your e-mail subscribers. You could even go on to film a podcast episode on the topic if you are a podcaster.
The whole process may take you a little while the first few times you do it, but you’ll get quicker the more you practice.
What are the benefits of repurposing content?
You are probably already considering the benefits of repurposing content if you’re here, but if you are on the fence about if this is a good strategy for you, here’s what I’ve found.
It saves you time
Instead of creating content for platforms individually, you are able to create all of your social media posts in less time using this method. You’ll also spend less time coming up with content ideas because one piece of content can generate many different social media posts.
It helps you show up on more platforms
Without content repurposing, I definitely wouldn’t have a presence on Twitter or Youtube. They aren’t platforms I put a lot of effort into, but as of November 2022, I have 1,700 Twitter followers and just under 200 YouTube followers. This has taken very little effort from me and helps to increase brand awareness.
It extends your reach
You might love Instagram but that doesn’t mean your target audience does. By pigeonholing yourself to one or two platforms, you are missing out on the reach you could have on other social media platforms. By showing up on as many as possible, you are doubling, tripling, etc. your chance of reaching your target audience.
What is the best way to repurpose content?
I’ve tried out content repurposing in lots of different ways. Before TikTok came on the scene, I only created content for Instagram which I would then repurpose for Facebook. This was child’s play, to be honest.
After I threw myself into TikTok and saw some success there, I decided to repurpose my TikTok videos into Instagram Reels. Again, child’s play compared to my process now but it is effective.
The great thing about these two methods is that I only had to create the content once and then just repost it.
Once YouTube Shorts came out, I started sharing my videos there too.
But then I decided I wanted to tackle LinkedIn where so far I’ve found video content doesn’t perform as well as written content.
So I started transcribing my TikTok videos to share on LinkedIn.
As you can see, the whole process started to get a little bit messy and it didn’t include all the platforms I was promoting on.
Now my content repurposing process for social media marketing looks like this:
- Write a blog post
- Condense the blog post into an e-mail for my subscribers
- Condense the e-mail (if needed) to create a LinkedIn post
- Film and upload a TikTok video on the same topic
- Use repurpose.io to automatically repurpose the video to Twitter, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and LinkedIn*
- Manually upload the video to Facebook Reels
*Video content doesn’t perform as well on LinkedIn but in order to post Monday to Friday, I upload two videos per week there.
Admittedly, my process is still a little bit more complicated than it needs to be because repurpose.io doesn’t yet work with Facebook Reels. If and when this feature comes out, it’ll be as streamlined as I can get it!
What is the easiest way to repurpose content for social media?
I’ll be the first to admit that starting with a blog post is not necessarily the easiest way to repurpose content (or the quickest) but if you want to include working on your SEO into the mix then it’s worth taking the time.
You also don’t have to do this for every social media post. Ideally, you’ll post a couple of blog posts per month and maybe send one e-mail per week to your e-mail list. But for social media platforms, you’re supposed to be posting every day.
So here’s the condensed version of what I do Monday to Friday, not including the days I write blog posts or send e-mails out.
- Film and upload a TikTok video on the same topic
- Use repurpose.io to automatically repurpose the video to Twitter, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and LinkedIn*
How to use repurpose.io for content repurposing
You’ve already seen how I repurpose content for social media platforms but you may have noticed I’ve mentioned repurpose.io a few times and be curious on how that looks behind the scenes.
In just a few clicks, you can have something like this working on overdrive to schedule posts ahead of time for you and repurposing content across different platforms.
Some of these automations are set up on autopilot so that I don’t have to do anything after I publish the video on TikTok. Whereas others are set to manual so I can go in and schedule them for the best times to suit the social media platform they are being repurposed to.
You’ll find your own comfort level with this. Initially, I had them all set to auto and then found better performance on some platforms for being able to tweak them to suit the times my audience was online.
Can you repurpose old social media content?
Yes! Repurposing old content is one of the best ways to use content repurposing to your advantage, especially if you have been posting on one social media platform for a long time already and you are ready to branch out to a new platform.
Here are a few different ways you can do this.
Post old Reels or TikToks
When I threw myself into posting on TikTok, I posted 3-4 videos per day… sometimes as many as 7. I know, I was nuts.
But that has given me a bank of 800+ short-form videos that I can now repurpose for other social media platforms.
You can also repurpose content on the same platform. Many content creators on TikTok will repurpose content that has gone viral several months prior to see if they can achieve the same success again.
Use customer testimonials to create carousels
Carousels perform incredibly well on LinkedIn and better than one-image posts on Instagram, so if you want to create non-video content that will generate engagement, carousels are a great way to do this.
And sharing customer testimonials are a great way to drum up new business!
Take snippets from old YouTube videos
YouTube videos are typically long-form content, meaning you can get several pieces of short-form video content out of one YouTube video. If you’re already creating content on YouTube then you should be a video editing pro, so all you need to do is change the aspect ratio and take out the best clips to repurpose.
Post audios from your podcast
For those of you who don’t know, I have a podcast called The Marketing Hive. We upload an episode every other week and on that day, my co-host Amy will share a snippet from the podcast on Instagram.
This is a great way to create engaging “video” content without actually creating or filming a video!
Turn video transcripts into written posts
As I mentioned previously, I used to do this with LinkedIn and I have also done it with blog posts. You will probably need to do some heavy editing if you go down the blog post route, but if you decide to transcribe a video for Twitter or LinkedIn, you can do this in a matter of minutes!
Pro tip: I use Descript to automatically transcribe my video content.
Repurpose infographics
If you’re throwing yourself all in with SEO, you may already be creating infographics related to your content. Similarly, you might be creating them for Instagram or LinkedIn carousels. However you are doing it, if you have existing content with infographics then you can be utilising those across multiple platforms.
Well, infographics work great for boosting your blog posts (and improving your chances of getting backlinks) and they generate engagement on social media posts. So if you’re creating them somewhere, start using them everywhere!
Streamline your marketing with content repurposing
However you decide to get started with repurposing content, the most important thing you should take away from this is that you don’t need to come up with new content ideas every day.
If you have existing content, you have a great opportunity to use that social media content on a different platform. And if you’re just getting started with content marketing then you will find this method essential for your marketing strategy moving forward.
