Repurposing Content for Social Media: Top Tools & Examples
January 18, 2018 - 13 minutes read - Modern Marketing, Social Media MarketingContent creation takes a lot of time — time that you could otherwise be spending on high-level tasks for your business. And though creating valuable content is important, you want to make sure that the result of all your hard work makes the biggest impact possible. That’s where repurposing content comes in.
Repurposing content ensures that each piece of content achieves greater reach, longevity, and value. You can repurpose content you create yourself, or even content that you outsource to freelancers or white label agencies.
[easy-tweet tweet=”Repurposing ensures that each piece of #content achieves greater reach, longevity & value, says @MandyModGirl” quote=”Repurposing ensures that each piece of content achieves greater reach, longevity, and value. -Mandy McEwen” theme=”style3″]
But repurposing is different than just reposting the same content in multiple locations. With repurposing, you make minor tweaks that give the content new life, customizing it for a different platform or presenting it in a new medium. You get twice the content in half the time!
Right now, just 29% of marketers repurpose content — a number that will undoubtedly continue to grow as more discover the benefits associated with this content marketing strategy.
As Seth Godin says: “Delivering your message in different ways, over time, not only increases retention and impact, but it gives you the chance to describe what you’re doing from several angles.”
Repurposing Social Media Content: Why Do It?
There are a number of reasons for repurposing content:
- Get more eyes on your content. The more places you share your content, the more chances there are that people will see it!
- Increase engagement. People engage with content differently on different social networks. Though people might like a text-based post on LinkedIn, turning it into a video may fare better on Facebook.
- Provide multiple ways to consume your content. Not everyone wants to consume content in the same way. For example, visual learners might prefer an infographic over a listicle blog. By repurposing content, you can satisfy them both.
- Boost your SEO. Repurposing content helps with SEO by providing additional backlink opportunities and more mediums for your content to be seen.
- Schedule content in advance. Next time you write a blog post, prepare related content right away, such as an image using a quote from your blog. This way you don’t have to spend time revisiting your blog later when you decide to repurpose it, and you can schedule the additional content in advance.
The Best Content to Repurpose
When it comes to repurposing content, some types are more effective than others. Top picks include:
- Evergreen posts. These are informative posts that don’t “age.” In other words, this content will always be relevant.
- Old (but popular) content. Just because a post isn’t evergreen doesn’t mean you can’t repurpose it! For example, you could take a post from January where you shared your predictions for the year ahead and revisit it in December, turning it into a look-back to see if those predictions came true.
- Lists. Lists of top tools and strategies won’t be up-to-date forever. Try revamping these listicles with the latest tools or most current strategies, keeping any that are still relevant and removing those that are out-dated.
- Long-form content. If you spent time creating a particularly long blog post, or even an eBook, don’t just leave it at that! Break it down into smaller chunks that can easily be digested on social media.
Excited about repurposing content, but having trouble finding the time to write all these blog posts?
Discover our tricks to better blogs in less time! Download your free copy of “The Modern Marketer’s Guide To Better Blogs In Less Time” today.
Top 8 Tools for Repurposing Content
Convinced that you should be repurposing content? Here are some of our favorite tools for the job:
MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is a social media scheduler that allows you to automatically share content to Facebook (profiles, pages, and even groups), Twitter, and LinkedIn (personal profiles and company pages).
It is automated based on a weekly schedule that you set up. Rather than scheduling posts for specific days and times, you add them to “categories,” then add those categories to time slots on a weekly recurring schedule. MeetEdgar will then share your content each week at that time following a rotating queue from your content library.
At Mod Girl Marketing, we monitor our queue to make sure all of the upcoming content is still relevant, but since we have thousands of posts in our library, the social posts don’t become repetitive. Instead, MeetEdgar allows us to easily reshare older content that new followers might not have seen yet. You can even set expiration dates on posts — no more remembering to stop all winter-related posts once Spring arrives!
Buffer
Buffer is another automated social media scheduler that allows you to post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest.
Unlike other social media schedulers that ask you to enter a time for your posts to go out, Buffer will automatically add your post to the queue and share it at a time they determined is best for your account.
Plus, once you’ve posted something using Buffer, you can easily “Re-Buffer” your best posts.
Canva
Canva is the easiest way to create graphic content, from social images (with dimensions suited to the specific social site you’re eyeing) to infographics, and even business cards and brochures.
You can even create your own image templates. For example, if you post a “Motivation Monday” photo each week, you can save a template that includes the correct size, your logo, and even an overlay you always use so that any team member can quickly use it to create the next image.
Furthermore, you can customize your profile with multiple color palettes and folders of your images and logos, so you can quickly customize an image for your brand.
Animoto
Animoto is a video creation service that allows you to create video slideshows from photos, video clips, and music. It’s as simple as creating a slideshow, but in just a few minutes, it turns into a great looking video!
For example, at Mod Girl Marketing, we take many of our blog posts that contain lists and turn them into Animoto videos, with each item of the list getting its own slide. We just add background images, a free song (which you can find in Animoto), and a quick intro and conclusion, and then we’re done!
This repurposing tool is great for presenting content in various mediums. Some of our audience may not want to stop to read a 1,000 word blog post, but are happy to pause to watch a 1-minute video while scrolling through Facebook.
You can see an example of one of our videos we created using Animoto below:
Camtasia
Camtasia is another video creation tool that we use at Mod Girl Marketing. It is best for creating video tutorials and presentations directly via screencast or via a direct recording plug-in that works with Microsoft PowerPoint.
Besides recording capabilities, you can also use Camtasia as a video editing tool, with advanced features like adding moving text and watermarking your video with graphics (such as your company’s logo).
IFTTT
IFTTT (If This Then That) is a great tool for automating tasks based on a certain trigger. For example, our founder and CEO Mandy McEwen uses this tool to post photos from Instagram to her Twitter account with the photo attached. If she were to simply share directly from Instagram, only the link to the original post would appear — not the actual photo.
There are endless tasks you can automate with IFTTT. Check out collections of “Applets” that include options for marketers, the internet of things, and small business owners to find one best for your needs.
YouTube
Most people use YouTube to share video content that was created from other sources, but it’s also a great, free way to transcribe your videos.
To do this, the Mod Girl Marketing team uploads a video set to private. Then, we add YouTube’s automatic closed captions, download the file from YouTube, and edit it for any minor errors. The result is a quick, automated transcript that we can then use for eBooks, blogs, Facebook posts — anything!
Piktochart
Piktochart is a web-based software tool that allows users to create infographics. If you’re not comfortable using Canva, or want something with more features specifically for advanced infographics, Piktochart is a great option.
You can use Piktochart for repurposing content in many ways:
- Take a few recent Twitter polls and turn them into a graph-based infographic
- Show a timeline of milestones, collected from your Facebook milestones
- Turn your listicle blog post into an infographic full of icons to make each item stand out
Repurposing Content for Your Business
Repurposing content is a great way to drive traffic to your site and make each blog post, video, image, and post make a much bigger impact than it could as a stand-alone piece.
But even though repurposing content saves you time, it can still be hard to find the resources to devote to this content marketing strategy.
With strategic outsourcing, you can partner with freelancers and white label agencies to create content for you so you can work ON your business, not IN your business! Discover my secrets to successful outsourcing in my free video training today:
