Creating content is an incredibly important part of building a brand today.

But it can be incredibly time consuming. And frustrating – let’s not forget frustrating.

The thing is, that many of us are making it way harder than it needs to be.

And this is because we’re trying to create more, and more and more and more content.

When what we really should be doing is taking one piece of high-quality content and doing more with it.

Welcome to content repurposing.

Here’s how to do it well.

What is content repurposing?

Content repurposing is using the content you create in more than once place.

It’s not about copious amounts of repetition – it’s about taking one, long-form, high quality piece of content, and using it over and over again in your marketing in different ways.

If you have a blog for example, you can take this piece of content you’ve create and use elements from it to create a tip sheet, and a series of social media posts, and some Instagram reels and a LinkedIn PDF sequence.

Repurposing Content Using the Foundational Content Approach

The simplest way to get started with repurposing your content is to use the foundational content approach.

This is where you choose one piece of content to be your foundational piece, and use it to create content for all your other marketing channels.

Step 1 – Choose your foundational piece of content

Ideally, this should be the biggest piece of content you create.

For me (at the moment anyway) it’s my blog.

For you it could be a –

Podcast episode
Masterclass or other webinar style content
A Vlog
Course Content

Whatever you choose for your foundational piece of content will depend on what type of longform content you’re creating already.

Or if you’re starting from scratch, make sure you choose a piece of foundational content that you find enjoyable and easy to create (remembering that you don’t have to do it all yourself).

Step 2 – Create a repurposing map

Based on your content strategy and marketing channels, you’ll need to create a repurposing map for your foundational piece of content.

Here’s an example.

Let’s say that your foundational piece of content is a podcast.

And that your other marketing channels are a blog, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Your map would look something like this –

Foundational Content
PODCAST

BLOG
Transcribe and edit podcast into blog

INSTAGRAM
Select appropriate content from transcript to turn into:
> Quote posts
> Tip posts
> List Reel
> Tips Reels
> Stats & Data Posts

LINKEDIN
Select appropriate content from transcript to turn into
> Step by step PDF sequence
> Did you know? Post
> Podcast Promo Posts
> Blog Article Promo Posts
> Quote posts
> Tips Posts
> How to Posts
> Data & Stats Posts

Step 3 – Create your repurposed content

Once you’ve created your foundational content, go ahead and pull it apart to create the elements on your map.

Schedule them in your content calendar and you’re done.

And here’s more good news. You don’t even have to do this part yourself. There are people out there who can help you with this. Marketing VAs (virtual assistants), social media managers, podcast editors, copywriters, content specialists and even transcribing services to help you get your first draft blog.

You might even find you’re even able to repurpose more than you thought

Simply by putting your repurposing cap on, you’ll find that there’s more ways to repurpose your content than you originally thought.

You could turn some of your best blog or podcast snippets into short video lessons on YouTube.

Or even take the steps out of a how-to process you’ve written and turn it into a downloadable resource, infographic or lead magnet.

This sounds great, but won’t my audience get bored with seeing the same thing?

Short answer – nope.

There are several reasons for this:

1. They aren’t actively engaging with you in every place you’re marketing. So, they’re not likely to see the same content repeated in every place you put it.

2. Even if they do see the content in more than one place, this isn’t a bad thing, because they’ll be happy to be reminded of the useful piece of content you’re sharing (because you’re making sure it’s high-quality content).

3. People typically need to see and engage with the content you’re sharing more than once. They might not have had the chance to engage properly the first time, but it also takes more than one interaction with the same information for it to sink in and make sense.

Content repurposing is smart marketing.

Once you discover the process of repurposing your foundational piece of content, you’ll find content creation to be a more streamlined process and it will be much easier to fill your social media feed and any other marketing channel you’re choosing to use.

When used effectively, content repurposing is a great time saving tool, will help you share more of your ideas with a bigger audience across multiple platforms, and makes for incredibly smart marketing.