How To Repurpose Content: A Step-By-Step Guide 

How to repurpose content

So, what’s the actual process of creating repurposed content?

In this blog post, we’re looking at one specific way of doing it.

This is for you if you don’t give yourself enough time to do your content, so you avoid it and feel unhappy with what you write.

Let’s learn how to cheat time by repurposing one blog post into a month’s worth of brilliant content in one day.

Doing it this way will save you time and stress across the month by doing it in a single sitting, so it ultimately makes you feel organised and calm.

Step 1: take the guesswork out of writing content

It all starts with writing the initial piece of long-form content in the form of a blog post.

But before you even begin to create content, get clear on what you’re going to write about and whether it’s what your audience needs help with.

How?

• Conduct market research with your existing or target clients – use my survey or questions if you like
• Do keyword research using Google’s “people also searched” or tools like Answer The Public
• Look at the kind of topics your competitors write blogs about.

Step 2: block out the time to create the initial blog content piece

You are making a big commitment to yourself by doing things this way, and you’ll thank yourself for it.

But if you don’t prioritise your content and block out the time in your diary, you’ll likely end up rushing it, feeling overwhelmed, and you won’t see the results you want to see.

I like to do my content days in a coffee shop because it feels like more of a treat than my other work, and the change of scenery fuels my creativity.

Plus, there’s nothing like overpriced coffee to make you feel you need to get your money’s worth from the day out.

Step 3: get organised

Decide how you will plan out your month’s content and explore different workflow and organisational tools like Trello, Monday, Asana, or a simple spreadsheet. 

Step 4: write a blog post

Now it’s time to write your blog. 

If you need help writing and structuring your blog post, use this free template I made for you or use this guide.

Your blog should be split up into sections under different headers. The headers are questions for you to answer in the section underneath.

Using quotes, statistics, lists, tips, and bullet points also makes your blog post more repurposable (is that a word? It can be now).

Doing it this way makes it much easier to repurpose your blog post into emails, videos, and social media posts later on, as it’s already prime for copying and pasting.

Step 5: use your blog as existing content to create two emails

Next up in your example repurposing strategy, t’s time to turn your blog into two fortnightly emails to send to your database.

(Depending on the length and content of the blog, you may be able to create more than this). 

Because you structured your blog into different sections, you can use these as separate emails.

Step 6: break your blog down into social media content

Once a piece of evergreen content like a well-researched and written blog is posted onto your website, it’s already out there gaining visibility, traffic, and brand awareness for your business.

And now you’ve turned it into two emails, you’ll receive interest and interaction from your email database – often, seeing you pop up there will remind them to enquire with you.

But its potential doesn’t end there.

Now, let’s turn it into posts for your social media channels.

The bite-sized sections you used to write your blog post come in handy again, but we’re going even more granular for your socials.

Tips on repurposing content for social media:

• Break each section of your blog down into even smaller snippets than the emails for your socials
• Use quotes from the blog as a social media graphic with a simple caption: ‘do you agree?’ (quotes from other people and yourself both work)
• Use statistics as single posts – as a graphic or in your caption, e.g.: ‘did you know 40% of people are skim readers? Are you one of them?’
• Condense a longer section into a smaller social post
• Cut the number of tips down or post each tip as a single social media caption (e.g. TRY THIS TIP to feel more confident speaking in public)

On average, I can get eight to 12 posts out of a blog of 1,000 words.

Obviously, the number of posts you can create from one blog post depends on the length of the blog, but I would say even a 300 or 500-word blog will have at least five posts lurking ready to be unleashed on your chosen social media platforms.

Step 7: turn your social posts into visual content (e.g. video content) 

Finally, it’s time to milk your blog post even further by turning it into new content formats – videos and stories.

You might have time to do this within your content creation morning, or you may want to do this day by day as you go along.

Here’s how I do this.

I like to turn my social media posts into talking Instagram stories by reading out or paraphrasing the caption.

Package it like a mini-series on Insta stories or a single Insta video/YouTube video/TikTok, e.g. ‘three tips for writing a blog post’.

Or, use just ONE of the tips as a Reel or short video clip for LinkedIn.

This gives your social media content consistency and makes it nicely thematic, building your authority in this specific topic for your audience.

When they think of this topic, they’ll instantly think of you as the expert in it.

Step 8: post on social media across different platforms

Getting your emails and social media content all scheduled in for the month is an AMAZING feeling.

Once it’s done, you can bask in the glow of posts going live as you enjoy your morning gym trip or chill over a coffee while you reply to comments feeling fresh and energised.

I schedule my Facebook and Insta posts on Meta Business Suite and my LinkedIn posts directly onto the platform.

For emails, you can write and schedule them easily on platforms like Mailchimp, Flodesk, or Mailerlite.

Optional step 9: bonus way to repurpose blogs

Often, when I follow this process for creating a month’s content from one single blog post, I find my creativity flows and I end up adding extra bits to the social media captions once I’ve copied and posted the relevant blog section.

If these expanded captions are a decent length, I then turn them into short blogs.

Similarly, you might have old social media posts you can copy and paste into a blog, so it starts working even harder for you in gaining visibility on Google and driving traffic to your website.

Having multiple blogs around the same topic cements your reputation as the expert in this area, both in Google’s eyes, and in the mind of your audience.

And having authority in a specific area leads to more website traffic, social media engagement, enquiries, invitations, buzz, and referrals.

So, it’s win-win.

This process continues forever so you never run out of content ideas.

Outsource blog writing so you can repurpose your content with ease

Hopefully, this will spur you into action becoming a repurposing machine.

If you don’t have the time or headspace to create the initial blog post, fear not.

I’m Ali, a freelance SEO copywriter working with growing businesses and creative brands.

Outsource your blog writing to me and I’ll create Google-friendly articles that make you visible online and give you a bank of valuable long-form written content to recycle that positions you as the specialist in your field.  

Schedule a free 15-minute call with me to get started.