If you’re reading this article, you probably already know what content repurposing is, but here’s a quick recap in case you don’t.
The idea behind content repurposing is to take a piece of content that you’ve already created and find new ways to use it. For example, you might take a YouTube video and create shorts that can be posted on TikTok and Instagram, as well as a few “did you know” posts that can go out on Facebook and LinkedIn.
If you’ve got a piece of content, you might as well make the most of it. You wouldn’t buy a bulb of garlic, use a single clove and throw the rest away. Likewise, if you’re putting in the time and money to create content for your business, you must make sure you make the most of it.
With this in mind, let’s look at a few of the best content repurposing ideas for small businesses.
Content Repurposing Ideas
Here’s a list of the best content ways to repurpose content:
1. Convert Blog Posts into Social Media Posts
Turning blog posts into social media posts is arguably the easiest way to repurpose your content because you get to keep it in the same format. We’re not talking about turning audio into video or turning video into text, we’re talking about taking text and posting it somewhere else.
True, you might need to make some tweaks.
You’ll want to pick out key highlights from the post rather than sharing the whole thing, and you might want to add a call-to-action to encourage people to click through to read it.
Still, it’s so quick and easy that you’d be crazy not to.
Vary Content helps you do that with a single click. You can generate different unique variations for social media from a blog post. Try it today for free.
2. Turn a YouTube Video or Podcast into a Blog
People tend to speak at around 150 words per minute which means that a ten-minute video can usually be turned into a 1,500-word blog post – easily. A half-hour podcast episode can either be turned into a lengthier post or even into a series of different posts – often with minimal editing.
As with most examples on this list, you can also flip this one on its head and turn a blog into a YouTube video or a podcast. For example, Brian Dean turned a written guide about on-page SEO into a YouTube video which went on to get over 300,000 views.
Again, you can use our tool to automatically convert a YouTube video or podcast audio into content effortlessly. Check out how Vary Content works and how easy it is to generate content from audio and videos.
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3. Clip Longer Videos into Reels
Lengthy videos can be great for YouTube and Vimeo, and you’re going to find yourself relying on them a lot if webinars are an important part of your lead generation strategy. The problem is that not everyone has the attention span needed to watch a longer video from start to finish.
That’s why it’s a good idea to take those videos and create short clips that share the key insights in an easily digestible format. These shorter clips can then be shared on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts.
4. Turn a Blog Post into a SlideShare Presentation
SlideShare is one of the most commonly overlooked platforms out there. There’s much less competition than you’ll see on other sites, and that can mean it’s a lot easier to cut through the noise.
The only real downside to using SlideShare is that by definition, you can only post slideshows. The good news is that if you create a template, you can use that over and over again. That makes it an ideal way to repurpose your content on an ongoing basis.
You can instantly generate ready-to-use PPTs with Vary Content. Whether it’s a blog post or a video, add it to the platform and your slides for SlideShare will be ready in no time. Give it a try free of cost here.
5. Use Blog Posts to Make an eBook or Whitepaper
Ebooks and whitepapers are a staple for content marketers who use lead generation as a part of their strategy—which, let’s face it, is all of them. The problem is that creating this kind of long-form content can take a lot of resources, which is why it’s such a good idea to repurpose blog posts and bring multiple posts together to create a new lead magnet or a data-rich whitepaper.
Alternatively, do the opposite, just like Influencer Marketing Hub.
Every year, they repurpose their State of Influencer Marketing report into an article that shares the highlights. They end that article with a call-to-action to download the full report helping them generate more leads than they otherwise might have.
6. Write a Book with LinkedIn Posts
If there’s a member of your business who’s big on personal branding especially if they’re your founder or CEO, then the chances are they’ve thought about writing a book.
That’s where this little hack comes in.
With a little up-front planning (and potentially some help from a freelancer with some experience), you can come up with an outline for a book that can be further broken down into a series of blog posts. Then you just write the posts and repurpose them into a book once you’ve worked through the full outline.
7. Turn a Research Study into Infographics
If your business carries out original research then you’re already sitting on a goldmine of potential content. Research studies tend to be packed full of great quotes and interesting data making it super easy to pull those out of the studies and to repurpose them elsewhere.
Individual stats and quotes can be posted on social networking sites but the real trick here is to gather a bunch of them together and to use them to create an infographic. If you’re particularly clever, you’ll design the infographic in such a way that it can also be broken down into smaller images for social networking sites.
8. Turn Something into a Guest Post
Contributing guest posts to other websites is a great way to reach a new audience and to generate leads. At the same time, it can also play an important role in your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy by helping you generate backlinks.
The good news is that you can often simply re-post an existing piece of content on a third-party site, perhaps with a new introduction. Alternatively, you can look at taking social media content, video transcriptions, or any other type of content and find ways to turn it into a written piece.
9. Tweet Quotes
If you’re like most businesses, you’ll make a habit of asking experts in the industry to contribute quotes to the content you create. This can work well whether you’re using written quotes in your blog posts or you’re interviewing them for your podcast.
It’s also great for repurposing content because you can take those quotes and post them on social networking platforms either as text or by creating eye-catching visuals.
10. Turn Guides into Checklists
Written guides lend themselves nicely to checklists that people can print off and work their way through as they follow the guides from start to finish. Often, it’s as simple as looking at the headings in the guide and converting those to check boxes.
Sure, you’ll want to top and tail the checklist with an introduction and an outro, but that won’t take much effort to pull together. You can then take the final checklist and do what you like with it. Publish it as a blog post or turn it into a downloadable PDF to boost your lead generation efforts.
11. Create FAQs from Existing Content
Frequently asked questions can be a powerful way for businesses to tackle any questions or issues that might stop prospects from becoming customers. They can address any stumbling blocks before people even realize that they’re there.
To create these kinds of FAQs, go back through some of your content and look out for anything that could be used as an answer. You can often take a well-written paragraph and reverse engineer a question from there. Group together a dozen or so and you’ve got yourself a brand new piece of content.
Final Thoughts
You need to think outside the box to effectively repurpose content. Just because something starts life out as one kind of content, there’s no reason why it can’t be another.
The key is to have the right mindset. In the same way that an antique dealer can visit a flea market and pick out the few items that are actually worth something, a good marketer can look at a piece of content and figure out how best to repurpose it.