The Ultimate Guide on How to Repurpose Content Like a Pro!

The Ultimate Guide on How to Repurpose Content Like a Pro!

written by Houston Golden
Founder & CEO, BAMF Media
August 11th, 2021
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Content is critical.

All your digital marketing campaigns rely on it.

But, you can’t create original content all the time.

That’s not the efficient way of doing it.

You need to repurpose.

In this guide, we’ll let you in all our content secrets.

We’ll teach you how to repurpose content like a growth hacker, take existing content to the next level, and leverage one piece of content for multiple platform needs. We’ll even provide mini-tutorials for each.

Ready?

Why Do You Need to Know How to Repurpose Content?

There are three main reasons why great marketers repurpose content regulary:

It’s an Efficient Way to Leverage Content

Coming up with a piece of successful content is great.

It brings views, engagements, increases brand awareness, and also pulls in conversions.

But, here’s the problem.

Why only do that once?

By repurposing content, it can continue to work for you even after its initial lifespan is over.

If a piece of content has brought in a lot of conversions in the past a simple update that won’t even take two hours can revive that piece and allow it to bring in more conversions a second time around.

It’s a shame that a lot of good content is often forgotten because of new content that’s being released all the time.

Failing to repurpose content, is a failure in efficiency.

You want to do the most with what you produce online, that’s the growth hacker way.

It Saves Time

Creating brand new content takes time, you need to do research and there’s testing involved before you can put something out.

Repurposing content allows you to save some time in the content generation process.

This is especially useful during hectic weeks where creatives are fighting against deadlines and pushing content out for other platforms.

It Saves Creative Resources

Nobody is creative all the time.

And, content creation can get taxing on the creatives in your team.

That’s why sometimes, instead of looking for a new piece altogether, knowing how to repurpose content is a viable option.

It allows your team to relax, prevent burnout, and be more efficient with content creation.

Media-Type Conversion

One of the best ways to create “new” content is through media-type conversions.

This involves taking one media type e.g. an article and converting it through another type e.g. a video.

Media-type conversions are usually done with text posts and articles and converting them into more engaging formats such as infographics, videos, or slides.

Here’s the right way to do a media-type conversion.

  • Choose a post or piece of content that’s gained a lot of traction for you in the past. Look at engagements, views and backlinks – if appicable.
  • Pull the main ideas out of the post. It it’s a tutorial pull out the steps, if it’s an article pul out the main points the same way you would do for subheadings.
  • This next step is important. If you can, you should try and give the content a new spin. For example, if it’s a post for general tips, you can make it a post about tips for 2021; if it’s a post regarding hacks on Facebook Ads, make it a post regarding social media ads in general.
  • Analyze the data you’ve pulled out and determine how fast you want a viewer to consume the information.
  • Choose the media conversion type. Video, slides, infographics, are all great choices, especially for long form content.
  • Create the media type using the main points. If possible create two versions for A/B testing.
  • Get to posting. If it’s on a social media platform create a caption.
  • Track engagements and views to determine if it worked. If you created two versions, make sure you check which one got more traction and refocus your resources on to that version.

We’ve seen a lot of people just convert to a different type, but the true way to repurpose content is to make sure that you’re changing the subject matter even by a little bit.

Alternatively, you could do a combination of media-type conversion along with a content update.

This is a surefire way to create new pieces that aren’t only fresh, but relevant with your audience as well.

The Skyscraper Technique

The Skyscraper Technique is one of the most legendary content hacks out there, and almost every writer and SEO has attempted to try it at some point in their careers.

Why?

Because if you do it right, it can bring in a LOT of traction.

The Skyscraper Technique takes advantage of previously successful content, usually those with the most number of quality backlinks and ranking power.

Since the content it’s assumed that the content is already great in itself, it is updated with relevant information, copyedited, and updated to fit the needs of the current audience.

Once the new information is incorporated in the article, it is re-published for the world to enjoy it a second time around.

What we love the most about this technique is that it doesn’t allow good pieces of content to die a natural digital death, but instead it brings new life to them. It saves time on content creation, takes advantage of good backlinks, and it shows the audience that you’re striving to give value and support even to outdated material.

Usual “Skyscraper” pieces will have double the number of words, extra internal links to feed link juice throughout the entire website, and have updated graphics and facts.

But, don’t just limit the “Skyscraper” search to your own content.

You can also use it after a bit of competitor analysis or in your outreach campaigns.

Think of it as a modified “Skyscraper” campaign.

You instead improve on the work of other people using your platform as a medium.

Do you see a website with an outdated listicle that’s ranking? Offer to update it for them for a free backlink and credits.

Do you see a competitor with an article that’s just lacking power? It’s probably your chance to make a version of the article that can truly resonate with the audience.

Skyscraper-type articles aren’t for the faint of heart.

They require a heavy investment and they don’t always work if you don’t position them correctly.

Platform Conversion

Each platform is different.

  • LinkedIn focuses on professional networking
  • Facebook is more of a generalist social platform being the biggest out of all them
  • Email newsletters are more concise and are built to take users to a landing page
  • Twitter is designed for short pieces of marketing copy
  • TikTok deals with shortform videos that can convery “some” information
  • YouTube is for more general pieces of video

The list goes on and on, with Pinterest, Reddit, Instagram, etc.

Each platform has its own specialty.

And, each platform demands a different type of content.

When you start with an initial piece of content – say a blog post – for instance, you need to understand that it can easily be converted into a different piece altogether depending on which platform you want to post it in.

If you have a long-form guide in your blog, you can condense it into a quote for Twitter, an infographic for Instagram, and an article on your LinkedIn account.

how to repurpose content, The Ultimate Guide on How to Repurpose Content Like a Pro!
This is a LinkedIn article that was originally featured on our main website’s blog.

This is one of the best ways to repurpose content because you’re not only working with repurposing existing content, but you’re also personalizing it to meet the audience’s needs of a specific platform.

Due to personalization, the content becomes even more bespoke for the audience resulting in content that resonates and engages with the viewer.

Some marketers force to create different campaigns for each of the platforms that they’re handling, but sometimes that becomes too painstaking.

how to repurpose content, The Ultimate Guide on How to Repurpose Content Like a Pro!

The best advice – especially for startups?

Use one piece of content.

Repurpose it for all of your platforms.

We do this often at BAMF, we make sure that if we have great pieces they’re released on most of our social media channels.

This makes it easier for us to widen our reach while serving the needs of the different audiences that we have on each platform.

Audience Conversion

How about if you have content that’s centered for only one platform such as email.

Is there a way to repurpose content for one platform using a static conversion?

Of course, there is.

You change the audience of the content.

We often see this being done with outreach campaigns.

Here’s how it works:

  • You take an inital piece of content that’s designed to be for general purpose or for a specific audience.
  • You identify which parts can be rewritten.
  • Determine which ideal customer profile you’re writing for.
  • The content is rewritten for that audience.

So which parts can you change?

  • The delivery, is it going to be formal or casual?
  • The message, is it going to be an offer? Which package will you offer?
  • The industry, what parts of your content can be rewritten for highly specific industries?
  • The graphics and images, can you switch them out to make them more relevant for the target audience?
  • The folow-up messages, can you alter those, too?

Repurposing content for one platform is usually a static affair, you have to really work with the content itself.

We also don’t advise that you don’t do this much for posts and articles, the reason being you have to dramatically alter the wording and you run the risk of plagiarism if it’s not done right.

Audience conversion works well for content that you want to send out because it relies on personalization to get the job done.

When conducting prospecting using methods such as account-based marketing, you want to create hyper-personalized pieces of content to make sure you capture the audience you’re targetting.

Caption Conversion

One of the easy ways to repurpose content is through a caption conversion. This is applicable on any social media platform such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, but it requires that you already have an existing piece of media that goes along with the new caption.

As the name suggests, caption conversion means changing out the caption.

how to repurpose content, The Ultimate Guide on How to Repurpose Content Like a Pro!

Here’s an example.

Say someone posted a video in the past, and you want to use that video as your own piece of content – with attribution, of course – now what you would need to do is get the video and write a brand new caption.

Now there are two types of caption conversion.

Using other people’s shared media or posts, but writing your own reaction to the piece of media being shared.

Or using your own media that you’ve shared in the past, and resharing it if it’s more relevant.

Now caption conversion usually incorporates the principles of tone conversion, you want to own whatever piece of content that you put out.

So this means you have to write in your own voice while covering a theme that is relevant to your audience at the point in time where you’ll share it.

We find this to be a quick but more meaningful way to share posts on LinkedIn.

Use this technique for:

  • Sharing posts from another infuencer or thought leader
  • Videos
  • Infographics
  • Any other form of engaging media

Content Update

One way to repurpose content is to update it.

I consider this to be one of the best ways to repurpose content that you have.

By updating content you can make it more relevant and accurate. The two factors that determine if your content provides any type of value.

Now there are plenty of ways to go about updating content:

  • Procedure updates, these are common with tutorials that don’t work any longer or have newer steps
  • Time update e.g. from “Top Growth Hacks 2015” to “Top Growth Hacks 2022”
  • List update e.g. from “Top 10 Growth Hacks” to Top 99 Growth Hacks”

Here’s another pro-tip.

Regardless of the repurposing methodology that you use, you should always strive to update your content in any way possible. This makes your content “fresh”.

Takeways

I hate waste.

Real growth hackers are efficient with the things that they do.

And, that includes content.

You want to make sure that your good pieces don’t only live one life.

They should be able to help you out again, even in the long run.

That’s efficiency.

Also, your creative team isn’t a machine.

They need breaks.

And, sometimes repurposing content is the best way to take care of them.

Do you want to earn how to repurpose content?

Are you stuck trying to figure which ones you should repurpose?

Book a meeting with us today.

About the Author

The name's Houston Golden. I'm the Founder & CEO of BAMF — a company I've grown from $0 (yes, really) to well over $5M+ in revenue over a span of 5 years.

How did I do it? Well, it's quite simple, really. I've helped hundreds of business owners and executives get major traction (because when they win, we win), I tell all on this blog.

Growth hacking is a state of mind. Follow along as I explore and expose the unknown growth strategies and tactics that will change the way you think about marketing.
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