3 More simple & creative ways to repurpose your content

Repurposing is a super-efficient way to squeeze every last drop of useful life out of your content. When it’s done right, repurposing can turbocharge your results and significantly increase your return on the investment of time and effort you made in that content.

In this article, we’re going to share just how to do that, starting with three strategic tips, and then exploring three specific tactics you can use to transform your blog posts, graphics, webinars and more into wholly new and equally valuable pieces of content your audience will love.

• Start with an inventory
• Work with your content format, not against it …
• … but get creative
• Turn your webinars into video tutorials
• Transform social media graphics into infographics
• Repurpose statistics-driven posts into social media graphics

Start with an inventory

Source: TeroVesalainen / Pixabay.com

If you don’t already have one, create an inventory in which you list out all the content you own and what format it’s in. A spreadsheet is an ideal way to track this information. Why take the trouble to do this? Well, it’s important to first figure out what you have before you can figure out the best use of your time in repackaging and repurposing it.

Note the content format (i.e. video, blog post, social media image, presentation, etc.), title, URLs, where hosted, length (i.e. word count for written content, length of video, etc.), and its subject / keywords and the date it was published or created.

Going forward, keep the inventory updated. Every time you post a new blog post or article, publish a social media image, or upload a video to YouTube, add the details to your content inventory.

Work with your content format, not against it …

Working with, not against, the original content format type can help save time and effort. For instance, turning a series of blog posts into an ebook is a natural fit. You’ve got a shorter format that’s built using the same “bricks” (i.e. words, sentences, text) as the longer format.

What’s more, the shorter format quite naturally “builds up” into the longer one, since longer blog posts could easily be transformed into chapters. Assemble enough chapters together, add some transitions, and that book really does write itself.

Now let’s say you have that same set of blog posts but you want to turn them into a series of infographics. You can do that — especially if the blog posts were well-researched and contain accurate statistics and data, which are crucial elements of well-designed infographics. But you’ll be working against type, so to speak.

Why? First and foremost, the infographic’s building block is visually based, not text. There’s an extra step in there you’ll have to take. And depending on your graphic design skills and access to software, that could double or triple the time involved.

… but get creative

That being said, don’t hesitate to think outside the box! If you’re not getting a lot of traction with text-based content but your graphics get shares on Twitter and Facebook, think about ways to repurpose existing posts into graphic-based formats, such as infographics, presentations, and even videos or screencasts. Do whatever works best for your niche and audience.

Another way to get creative with repurposing is to change the intention or slant of the content, or the intended audience. As we discussed here on the MH Themes blog earlier, sometimes repurposing content can be as simple as covering the same content from a different angle.

In fact, you can repurpose one piece of content into several different new formats, as illustrated in the screenshot from Hootsuite’s blog post on repurposing content below:

That being said, let’s shift gears and look at some specific, fresh ways to repurpose content.

Turn your webinars into video tutorials

Have you experimented with webinars in the past? They can be a terrific way to generate hot, qualified leads for your business and really prove your authority and expertise. Why let all that hard work stop producing results once the webinar is over?

Instead, take past webinars and transform them into a series of YouTube tutorials. Alternatively, you can use them as the basis for a video-format class ready to be monetized in a paid membership section. Depending on the topic, you may want to carve up your webinar into much shorter segments — for example, three to five minutes in length.

That’s because generally speaking, users tend to prefer shorter video how-to pieces over one longer video. This allows your users to master small bits of material at a time. It’ll also keep them coming back for more, earning you more return visitors, fans, and subscribers.

Transform social media graphics into infographics

If you’ve been creating individual social media images around statistics, quotes, or data relevant to your niche, you may have the makings of a great infographic.

Infographics continue to naturally attract high levels of traffic and social sharing, assuming they’re current, accurate, and visually dynamic. However, they are admittedly more complex to build, especially if you’re not a professional designer.

Fortunately, there are plenty of easy-to-use tools available on the web to help you create stunning infographics without mastering a huge learning curve or requiring innate artistic talent. CreativeBloq mentions ten free tools for infographics here.

Simply gather your raw data and individual image files, sort them into groups of data that can be organized under a common heading or theme, and play around with data to make sure you’re using the most interesting and useful information. Don’t forget to double-check and cite your sources!

Repurpose statistics-driven posts into social media graphics

Another way to carve up a larger piece into many smaller ones is to take data from any longer blog posts or white papers you may have on hand, then work a single data point into its own social media graphic. For instance, we could take a single data point in our recent post about Bitcoin payments and turn it into a straightforward graphic like this in a few minutes:

That’s just to demonstrate how easy it is, of course — you can undoubtedly do a lot better with a little more thought and planning. When you have your graphic completed, share it on Twitter with a link back to the original blog post.

Conclusion: Get creative to repurpose your content

Are you already repurposing the content on your WordPress website or social media channels? What’s your favorite content repurposing strategy or tactic? Share how you get it done and show us your examples in the comments below.