Recycle, repurpose and remix your content

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If you’ve been following Marketing + Margaritas, you may have seen the topic of repurposing content coming up. So, what exactly is repurposing? Think of it as wearing your favourite shirt - you know the one with that cool thingamabob on the front? Once you’ve worn it, are you going to throw it away? Probably not. You’re most likely going to wear it again, but with a different pair of shoes or pants. You’ll make it work for you but in a different way. Newsflash: the same goes for your precious content! Let’s dive in.

Why repurposing content is a good idea.

Saving time and energy is one of the main factors for repurposing content. As business peeps, there’s a lot on your plate. So, when it comes to the marketing of your business, you really want to be consistent and put valuable content out every time. Repurposing is a way of making life easier, to be consistent and on message, but also saving you time and energy in the way that you do it.

It’s also good for leveraging what you already have, to achieve other goals. For example, if you’re wanting to improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) by adding fresh content to your website regularly, then repurposing your content is a great way to go about it. When you are creating content such as blogs or infographics, downloads etc, then repurposing those and promoting them in other places will help bring people back to your website. Which will enable the user to see the breadth of what you’re doing, which also improves your SEO.

And, it’s useful for reiterating your message. Not everyone who follows you on Facebook or LinkedIn will see each post, your whole database won’t open every email newsletter - so it’s about having that consistent message across all of your platforms, and reiterating it to drive that message home.

How to repurpose content.

A good place to start is with a piece of long form content - such as a video, a blog, or a lengthy review on how a product works. It doesn’t need to be huge, but it’s all content that you can be repurposing for use on other mediums. 

Let’s use our podcast as an example. We might start with a question from a client, and use that to create a blog post. If we then noticed that the blog was gaining a lot of engagement, we could then create another piece of long form content and do a podcast episode about a particular part of it, or the whole topic. It’s repurposing the same sort of topic and creating something new from it.

Repurposing doesn’t mean that you must use the whole piece of original content, you can take a part of it and reuse that. Essentially you are cutting up something big and chunky into bite sized pieces and reusing that to share with everybody – rather than just one person eating the whole pig!

You can even share the same content multiple times, as people may have missed it. For example, a couple of weeks down the track you might pull out some quotes or strong statements and turn those into a graphic and post them. A good hook will then interest people in a different way, and they might be more likely to then click through to read the whole blog or listen to the podcast.

Repurposing in action.

We are going to use a previous podcast as an example to show how one piece of content can be repurposed across a range of different platforms and mediums. In podcast 10, we talked about our top three tips before talking to a designer.

Facebook lives and stories is one way we could use this content in a completely different way. We could create a small series of Facebook Stories where we’d focus on one tip in each. By creating a visual representation of the content, it will help people see it and process it in a different way. Or we could interview our designer to get their perspective on those tips, or set-up a Q&A session through a Facebook live.

In this same podcast we discussed the importance of putting together a clear brief. We could then quite easily turn that information into an editable PDF form that people can download for free from our website when they sign up to our weekly Wild Oats newsletter. 

Speaking of signing up to mailing lists, that’s another way of repurposing your content! We could put a plug to the podcast in there and include a quick summary on the three tips or with three different graphics. It’s about thinking what is the best way to communicate the message for the medium you are using.

Another great option is to create a FAQ reference. Using our example, the same types of questions will come up all the time when a customer first engages us for design work. You can create a page on your website answering those FAQs, which is great for increasing dwell time (which helps your SEO!), and in turn you have created another piece of content to make the user journey easier. So, the next time someone approaches us and says “Hey, I need a logo design. Can I get a quote?” you’re like sure, here’s a link to a podcast and blog with things to consider, here’s a link to a FAQ page and here’s a checklist for you to complete and send back to us. Not only does it help the client but it helps you streamline your processes and ensure that you’re the right fit for each other.

Instagram reels are a fun option for repurposing content. For this designer tips example. if we’re making a reel then we could do one of the team scribbling a mock-up to show how quick and easy that is to give your designer, as part of their brief.

If you have an interesting piece of content that’s useful and educational, you could potentially be using this to share with industry bodies. For example, we’re a member of Chamber so we could send the content to them and ask that they include it in their newsletter or on their social channels. It’s not promotional. It’s not like, “Hey, you should work with us”. It’s more “Hey, if you’re working with any designer, here’s some information that’s really handy to know beforehand”.

Email signatures are an area that often gets under-utilised.  Our design team could use their email signature to create a graphic that links through to the podcast.

Another great one is a video graphic slideshow. For example, if we used those same graphics we made for Instagram or Facebook, we could combine those different graphics as a video and put some examples in between them of what we're actually talking about. As a bonus, social media channels will definitely reward you for it, because they’re all pushing video more than any other type of content right now. You may or may not know this, but Google owns YouTube. Something as simple as uploading that video to YouTube, and then embedding that YouTube video onto your website - whether it's on an FAQ section on the home page, in your blog section, whatever it might be - really helps your SEO as well.

Using your social media cover images (eg Facebook or LinkedIn) is basically creating digital billboard that lives on your business page. This one is a great way to gently push people towards information that you would like them to see. It’s also a bit more of a fun and relaxed way to get your message across.

Memes, just like Instagram reels, are a great source of likable and super sharable content – which is what you want. For example, if we look back at our example of three tips before talking to a designer, we could make a meme on what not to do. As your audience shares your content, they’re essentially driving traffic to your page. Pair this content with some of information about your business services or offerings. For example, if you’re posting a light-hearted meme about working with designers, include some content on design packages you have available. It’s such a simple way to keep your audience informed and potentially build leads for your business.

It’s all in the planning.

Creating content is not as daunting as it sounds. Once you’ve been doing it for a while, you’ll quickly be able to see what kind of content your audience is interested in. Whether you use the analytics on your socials or on your website, you will generally be able to see a trend with regards to which topics people are responding to and what works for you.

To make it even easier, use a content calendar to play around and plan your content, and pick a style that works for you. Head back to episode nine to get a free download of our free content calendar.  

So if you haven’t already started repurposing your content, what are you waiting for? There are so many ways to reuse your long-form content, and now that we've given you a bucket load of ideas, go for gold!