A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet

A guide to repurposing content

“Exotic Landscapes” by Brian Robinson, image credits: Doug Beckers, Flickr

Creating content is an extensive process: coming up with an idea, researching it, actually writing the content, and then promoting it. It takes a lot of time and involves different individuals with different fields of expertise at every stage.

A lot of people mistake the posting of content on their blog as the final step — but that’s not fair to your content. This creation takes a lot of time and effort, and posting it on one channel is a surefire way of ensuring that the content never reaches enough people — the probability of content reaching a consumer to whom it could make a difference is much smaller.

Repurposing content doesn’t just mean writing shorter tweets that summarise a long blog post. The trick to repurposing content in an intelligent way is to make sure that the content’s tone is consistent with the platform you’re repurposing it for. A tweet that expends 140 characters on the introduction to a case study is going to get zero clicks or retweets, while a two line post on Medium is hardly appropriate. If you do it right, you can turn one piece of content into at least 4 posts for 4 different social media channels — you don’t always have to start from scratch.

…you don’t always have to start from scratch.

Let’s say you have a well-written, well edited blogpost on your website. You posted at the right time, using all the right SEO techniques, and now it’s just sitting pretty there. How do you increase its outreach?

  1. Think outside the box.
    Okay, so you made a blog post. But that’s just a text-centric post. What about your target audience that prefers images, video or sound. Find ways to turn text into image — like an infographic — or into sound, by converting it into a podcast, or add simple animations and music to make an entertaining video. It’s all about the different mediums.
  2. Size matters.
    Maybe you don’t have the time or resources to turn your blog post into 10 different animations. That’s okay! Take an interesting snippet from your article and tweet it, or add a picture and post the link to the blog on your Facebook page. Repurposing can also mean showcasing the flashiest parts of your content on different channels so people can click and share this information.
  3. You can’t just tweet it.
    So you’ve posted on Facebook and Twitter. Where is the traffic? Traditional social media platforms are great because of the wide number of users you have access to, but don’t forget to focus on niche audiences. Websites like Quora or Slideshare, where people share information and resources is a great place to build your brand as a credible source. Think of platforms where your target audience would normally look for information — how can you increase your presence there?
  4. Don’t forget your roots.
    You did it! You repurposed the content into a variety of different channels. Images and videos that are versions of your original content have been well distributed on myriad platforms — but have you linked back to the original post? The infographic is great, but add a footnote with a link to the article on your blog. Make sure your audience knows that there is more than one way to digest and share what you’ve put out there.

How you can change the way you present images, text and sound online?

Be innovative when repurposing content. Think about the ways you use social media or different digital platforms and what tone would most fit the repurposed content on each of these channels — how you can change the way you present images, text and sound online?

Natasha Lorraine Menezes: www.thewordsedge.com

Written by

Guest Writer @Entrepreneur, @YourStoryCo, @DeccanHerald, @TOI, Author, Speaker. Content Marketer & Founder @The_WordsEdge. Ex: RIL, Myntra & WGSN.

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