6 Ways To Repurpose One Really Great Piece Of Content

Last week I read this fabulous post from Pushing Social that suggested creating a social media content campaign rather than a content calendar. It got me thinking about the different ways that I and others I know repurpose their content to reach different networks and audiences. It all starts with one great piece of content, in most cases a blog post. You should spend a lot of time creating, editing, reviewing and polishing it. Once it’s ready here are six ways you can re-format it in to reach further.

1. The Big Idea.

Great content always starts with a big idea. For the purpose of this blog I’m going to assume that the anchor content, the piece that is going to be at the centre of your activity is a blog post but depending on what you do it could be a speech you are making, a course you are training or a presentation you are giving. It does need to be strong though, you need to think about what insights it really holds and about the different ways that you are going to use it before you start. For example, I fully intend to follow my own advice and use this blog post as an anchor for other content. I need to be aware of the different purposes it’s going to serve whilst writing it.

2.Images & Memes

Now that you have created your anchor blog post you need to think about how it is getting shared. For some networks a link will suffice, others like Pinterest are highly visual so you need to think about whether your images have impact. Do your images work in their own rite? Do they serve a purpose when they are shared alone without the accompanying blog post?

I love what they have done with this recent post over on the Sage Ireland blog. The article is ‘Seven marketing Tips For Small Business‘, they have taken key quotes from the blog and created images from them. One of these was then shared over on their Facebook page and attracted a number of comments, likes and shares. These images work independently of the original post and as you can see by the Facebook share, create their own value by sparking interaction with the brand.

3. Create A Slideshow

I believe that Slideshare is a much overlooked social network, particularly if you are in the B2B sector. Just before Christmas I wrote a mammoth blog post on 10 Digital trends to look out for in 2013. It was huge and took me a long time to put together. Because of the length of the post I decided to use quirky images to illustrate my points and this is when it struck me that I could make a shorter and more digestible version of the post if I used these images to create a powerpoint slideshow.

If you are creating a blog post, with good examples and images it’s quite simple to turn these into a slideshow. My digital trends presentation has had over 700 views to date. I also link the presentation to my Linkedin profile, enhancing my personal brand as well as that of Spiderworking.com.

4. Create a video

Now that you have created your slideshow it’s one simple step to convert it into a video for YouTube and other online video sharing sites. The more up to date versions of PowerPoint allow you to do this directly from the application. If you aren’t a PowerPoint user or if you are using an older version you can use a video editing tool such as iMovie for the mac or Movie Maker for Windows, both allow you to drop in images and transition between them. Here’s one example I found from Rebecca Livermore.

5. Share quotes on Twitter

We talked about turning quotes into images but grabbing short insights from your blog and Tweeting them can also be effective. I’ve discovered that some of my most RT’d tweets have been snippets from speakers at conferences (see below). People love bitesized wisdom on Twitter and sharing really unique, common sense nuggets of information will always attract RT’s and followers. Bare this in mind when you are writing your blog and attempt to include two or three 140 character snippets for tweeting.

6. Create an Ebook

Ok so creating an ebook relies on more than one great piece of content but you can collect a number of blog posts on the same topic together for an ebook or report. Use this to generate more email leads or as a giveaway to attract more people to your site. Hubspot do this really effectively and share links to it not just via their website but on Facebook and Pinterest too.

Using these ways to repurpose one piece of great content means that the quality of what you are doing goes up, you will spend less time writing or creating a great quantity of work that maybe doesn’t come up to scratch. It gives you a way of reaching more people on different networks by tailoring your content to each individual platform.

I you have a good example of someone who repurposes content well, or if you repurpose your content in a way that I haven’t thought of do share your ideas in the comments.