In today’s crowded social media landscape, social marketers know how challenging it can be to get their brand’s content to rise above the noise. Trying to identify relevant content for multiple social networks all the time is exhausting, so now you can repurpose your content for social media.
When it comes to social content creation, it pays to “work smarter, not harder.” Instead of constantly coming up with new ideas, social marketers should look at what they already have and repurpose their top-performing blog posts, videos, reports and more.
Why it pays to re-purpose content
Besides the obvious allure of recycling (less work, more time saved), there are a number of strategic benefits to repurposing your content for social media including:
- Reinforcing your brand’s messaging
- Giving content an SEO boost
- Reaching audiences who missed a piece of content on its first round of promotion
What to consider when re-purposing content for social media
Before you dive into recycling your content, you should know that not all content lends itself to this particular art form. Put your best foot forward, as the saying goes: Prioritize content that performs well and will meet your needs and goals. Having a goal in mind makes it easier to determine which metrics you’ll use to evaluate what content to include in your curation strategy. Goals can include:
- Raising brand awareness in a certain industry
- Driving organic traffic back to your website
- Supporting leads or trials
Next, ask if the content you want to repurpose is evergreen or time-constrained. An article that performs well year-round may be easier to repurpose right now, while event-specific or seasonal content may need to be carefully scheduled before posting.
Repurposing content for social media also means you need to consider where it will be posted. The right channel makes all the difference—how you tell the story is equally as valuable as the story itself. Consider which of your networks are most active, how your audience uses each of them and what format you’ll be able to repurpose content into.
A three-minute video based on an eBook may work well for YouTube but is likely too long for Twitter. And as always, know your audience. Think about what your audience on each network expects to see from you.
How to re-purpose high-performing content into a social media post
After compiling a list of your best pieces, it’s time to repurpose your content for social media!
Here are some ideas to help kickstart your creativity and turn any piece of content into an engaging post for your networks:
Post Twitter threads.
WordPress now has a feature that automatically publishes blog posts simultaneously as Twitter threads with just two extra clicks. Talk about two-for-one content! You don’t need WordPress to repurpose posts this way, of course. A little copy-paste work (and some copyediting) makes this option accessible to any social media manager.
Cross-post your livestream.
Extend the life of your live stream event by saving and uploading videos to YouTube, sharing snippets to Twitter, or trimming clips for an Instagram post. Screenshots and quotes can be used for non-video posts to capture your audience’s attention or to tease what’s to come in the future. The possibilities for repurposing live streams are endless.
Turn a webinar into a video.
Can that educational blog post be reformatted into a LinkedIn live or a YouTube video? Repurposing written content into something your audience can watch and listen to isn’t just easy, it’s also likely to reel in followers who prefer webinar formats over long-form reading.
In conclusion, if you already have high-performing content, it’s time to leverage it across channels. With a little creative reformatting and thoughtful placement, social media marketers can make the most of all their brand’s greatest content and reduce the workload of content generation. It’s a win-win!
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