How to Solve Your Content Creation Problem Through Repurposing

My mom never let me waste food as a child. Like any good parent, she told me I’d be hungry later. Sure enough, even though I thought I was stuffed, I’d find myself pleading for biscuits just a couple of hours later.

Creating content for your business can be a similar experience. You spend hours on a topic, researching and writing a phenomenal piece, post it, and then you’re done. Right?

Or are you greeted by a tinge of panic?

Suddenly you remember you have to produce a post for Instagram that day as well. Also, the YouTube channel needs updating. And aren’t you supposed to Tweet? What will you write? You’re hungry for ideas and the cabinets of your brain are bare.

It doesn’t have to be this way. You can take the same content and find ways to use it anew. This way you will be feeding all your hungry followers without wasting a single drop of your great idea.

Man (and woman) can not live on ideas alone

If you don’t have a final draft you have nothing. So do the work you need to do to get that writing done. Unless you are the kind of person who just sits and creates, this might mean researching and outlining .
I won’t tell you how to write, this isn’t high school. But let’s pretend you’re done and I’m holding that polished blog post in my hand right now. We’ll say the title is, “How I grew my business from 1 to 1000 customers in just 1 month.”

Great, to the point, and so full of possibilities for repurposing.

Update your ever-important personal blog

Post that stunning piece on your blog. Those who check out your writing every day will run across it. Yet if that was the end you’d be mightily disappointed in the effort vs. outcome of your work. So now we’re going to take the post and use it on another platform.

Instagram is for images

Your piece was how you grew your customer base. Take all that info and turn it into some kind of image. That might mean making an infographic, or an illustration that encompasses the idea in an unusual way to drive people to the original post.

If you find a quote in the piece that you think will drum up traffic, do the classic Instagram move and throw it in front of a fun background. Hey, I didn’t make that an Instagram thing, it just is.

Add a small statement about the quote or the main idea behind it and then link to the full post in your bio.

Your content has now been used twice.

Use your blog post as a script

Get on YouTube and use your blog as a rough outline for your script. Turn it into “the top 5 ways to grow your customer base.” Easy to create, you literally sit in front of your phone or camera and talk conversationally.

Create some quick slides to go in-between list items that reiterate the points and provide easy transitions in the video.

Link to the original blog post in the YouTube description.

That’s three versions of your content and there’s still plenty left in the pot.

Post on Instagram stories or TikTok

Use those slides you created for your video and create a quick Instagram story. It’s like YouTube but faster and more forgiving.
Or, if you understand TikTok (and your customers are there), make a fun video.

A good example might be dancing to music while pointing at each topic that pops up on the screen. Yeah. That’s a thing.

Be careful though, don’t make the mistake of other brands; take the time to understand how and why TikTok works.

Tweet it!

Grab a quote from your piece or ask an open-ended question inspired by the post you wrote and tweet it.

Then reply to your own comment with, “Check out the full story here.”
When people respond to the tweet they’ll see the link to your blog as well.

Use the response to the post to create supplementary content

Readers love to leave comments when something strikes a chord. This could be below an Instagram post, under a YouTube video, in the form of a tweet, in the comment section of your blog, or via a private message.

Whether good or bad these words from your readers will be invaluable. With them, you can spin even more content from the main source.

For example, someone might have a question. Answer it via a new post or in your Instagram stories.

Does someone have a snarky reply based on misinformation? Create a “10 popular misconceptions about this topic” and use the general idea from their words and others like them.

Be open to comments and you’ll be amazed how many ideas they can inspire.

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There’s no reason why anything you create should be a one-and-done deal. This is content, not questionable relationships during spring break in Vegas. Often you can reuse the same source multiple times across multiple platforms to save you time and energy, and maximising the benefit from everything you create.