Effective Ways of Repurposing Content For Social Media and Podcasts

Whether you’ve been following our series on repurposing content or are joining us now for the first time, you’re probably wondering how to get more out of your existing content. Creating content costs time, money, and resources – so it only makes sense to get the biggest bang for your buck.

As you can tell from our blog, Spring Insight uses theme months to plan a content strategy. As a refresher, content repurposing is when you take a piece of existing content and convert it into something new. Theme months are a content creation strategy that takes a broad topic and slices it into smaller pieces of content over the course of a month. It helps companies stay consistent and focus on subjects that resonate with their audience.

Still with us? Good. Time to put it all into action.

Let’s discuss the steps you’ll need to take to create a high-quality piece of content and reform it into social media posts, podcast episodes, videos, and various other materials.

Step 1: Brainstorm Topic Ideas for Content Repurposing

Before you can repurpose content for podcasts, social media, or anything else, you first need to create your content. If you’re struggling to come up with ideas, check out our guides on content grids and coming up with blog topics to get you started (or you could just have us create the content for you… but I digress).

For the sake of this example, let’s pretend you’re a mechanic. You want potential clients to trust that you know everything there is to know about cars, so producing high-quality content is essential to building up your reputation. After following our guides on coming up with topics, you have a few ideas for theme months:

1. Routine car maintenance
2. Vehicle care in cold months
3. Technology in new cars

Now that you have your broad themes, the next step is developing specific content that will work within these themes.

Step 2: Slicing Your Content

Let’s continue with our mechanic example. You decide your first theme will be routine car maintenance – so what kind of relevant content can you slice from that? We love starting with a blog series (welcome to the third in our current theme month, by the way.) These blogs could be listicles, “how to”s, answers to common questions, or just straightforward educational information.

Here’s what we came up with for our mechanic:

1. The ultimate car maintenance checklist
2. How often should you get an oil change?
3. 7 ways to keep your car running like it’s brand new
4. The difference between regular oil and synthetic oil

See what we mean? Having a broader topic helped jumpstart our content ideas.

So, what’s next? Well, now it’s time to write the content.

Step 3: Writing Content with the Intent to Repurpose

In addition to optimizing your content for search engines, you should also write with repurposing in mind. Make it easy for Future You to pluck sections of content from your blog and paste it onto a different medium.

For our mechanic example, we can quickly turn our “7 ways to keep your car running like it’s brand new” blog into an infographic for social media. Your email list may love a newsletter with your ultimate car maintenance checklist.

The “How often should you get an oil change?” topic could turn into a YouTube video, walking viewers through the same info you’ve already put on your blog. Of course, these are also evergreen articles, so they’re relevant no matter the time of year.

Instead of figuring out how to mold blogs into something else after the fact, you should write as if you’re creating the other pieces simultaneously. Then, by the time you’ve finished your blog, you will already have a solid plan on how exactly you will repurpose it for social media, podcasts, or videos later.

Step 4: Repurpose Content For Social Media, Podcasts, and Other Mediums

Now it’s time to get into the good stuff! Once you have your long-form content written, the hard work is (mostly) done. What’s left is to repackage and repost it to round out your content strategy fully.

However, while the content will be the same, you’ll want a slightly different approach to each form of media:

Repurposing Content for Social Media Posts

Repurposing content for social media is one of the easiest ways to get the most out of your blog content. Platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram absolutely thrive on endlessly providing bite-sized pieces of content, and it’s time for you to join in.

How can you effectively repurpose content for social media? First, stick to the main points. Ideally, you want to focus on only one point per social media post to keep within the recommended character counts. Keep it clear and concise.

Secondly, you want to make it visual. You want your post to stand out among the hundreds of others your audience will be scrolling through. So take the main point and turn it into something that will catch people’s eyes immediately. For example, a well-designed infographic on your car checklist would be just the thing for our mechanic. Or, if you’re in a B2B industry, pull quotes on a branded background could be what you need to get those shares and likes.

Repurposing Content for Podcasts

Unlike social media, which is mainly a visual medium, podcasts are all about audio. So how can you turn your repurpose your content for a podcast? The good news is that your script is virtually written for you already. The bad news is that you can’t simply just read your blog. No, you’ll have to work harder than that to repurpose your content into something worth listening to. 

Again, stick to the main points. Take each subheading of your blog post and use that as talking points for your podcast episode. That way, you’ll speak more naturally and engage listeners. You also want to add elements that make your repurposed content feel like a podcast. Intros, outros, midrolls, and music make your content feel fresh and new. Just make sure to sprinkle these elements in without getting too carried away.

Repurposing Content Can Be Endless

Repurposing content for podcasts and social media is highly effective for developing your audience, but you can also utilize so many other mediums. Before you start repurposing, determine how your target audience prefers to consume information – Videos? Whitepapers? eBooks?– and what topics work well on each platform. Check the analytics of your platforms, and make a content repurposing plan.

We mentioned earlier that blogs could be converted into videos, but the inverse is also true. If you host a really great webinar or podcast on a topic of interest, why not turn that into a series of blogs? This creates powerful SEO content while presenting that information to consumers in a way they may prefer. And, of course, social media posts can be created from that content as well.

See what we mean by “endless”?

Step 5: Revisit Your Older Content

It’s never too late to repurpose content. Older content, especially when it’s evergreen, can be refreshed and repurposed for social media, podcasts, or videos at any time. Even seasonal posts can be updated and reposted each year. So once you’ve implemented your repurposing strategy for new content, it may be time to do the same for your older stuff.

Update Existing Content

If you’re keeping up with your SEO strategy, your content should continue to work for you long after it’s published. That’s why it’s critical to update and refresh content regularly. Maybe technology has changed, or industry standards have shifted, but the last thing you want is your potential customers stumbling across outdated information you’ve published.

Make it part of your content workflow to revisit old content and check for timeliness. Determine what has changed, and adjust the information as needed. It may also help to update the post with new examples to keep them relevant.

Republish and repromote content

Once your existing content has been updated, republish it with a new date – this will let potential clients know it’s recent and relevant. You should also promote this revived content on your channels because there’s a good chance that even long-time followers haven’t read or implemented all of your expertise.

Updating old content also presents you with (yet another) opportunity to repurpose. Take your brand new content repurposing strategy and slice it into new pieces to your heart’s content.

So You’re a Content Repurposing Expert Now

Now that you’ve reached the end of our content repurposing guide, you’re ready to jump into action. And although our repurposed content series is coming to a close, we’re always here to help if you have questions or want to talk more about how you can elevate your content strategy. Reach out to us today.

And, yes, you’ll likely see this blog repurposed on our other platform, but that’ll be our little secret.