When my new client brought up the idea of creating thought leadership content, my first instinct was to explore how I could repurpose her recent interviews and presentations so I don’t have to start from scratch. After all, why reinvent the wheel when you can just upgrade the rims?
And I was right because as I sifted through these archives, I uncovered a wealth of insights, stories, and expertise just waiting to be brought to life in fresh ways. Each piece presented an opportunity to craft a diverse range of content formats, from infographics to carousels, blogs, videos, and beyond.
Now, let’s explore some ideas on how to repurpose existing content.
Repurposing Long-Form Content
- Blog Posts from E-books: If you’ve written an e-book or a research paper before, you can take the various chapters of the book or snippets from the research paper and convert them into blog posts of your own.
- Social Media Snippets: Break down these blog posts into multiple LinkedIn or X (Twitter) posts. You can even create infographics or other visual posts to highlight key information from the blogs on other platforms like Instagram and Pinterest.
- Video Adaptation: Edit the blog posts into long YouTube video scripts (you know, we’re calling videos longer than 1 minute long videos these days), and while doing that, keep in mind the formatting of the video so it’s easy to cut these long videos into shorter ones that can be posted as Instagram reels or on TikTok.
- Email Campaigns: Break down the written content into a series of emails or a newsletter campaign, and share excerpts or summaries of the content in each email, with a call-to-action to read the full article.
- Comprehensive Guides: Compile multiple blog posts into an e-book or comprehensive guide on a specific topic. Offer it as a free download on your website in exchange for email sign-ups, expanding your email list and nurturing leads.
Repurposing Long Videos
- Social Media Highlights: Extract key snippets from your long videos to create engaging social media posts. Share insights or highlights from the video across platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter to drive engagement and interest.
- Webinar Expansion: Break down the content of your long video into smaller, focused webinars or workshops. Dive deeper into specific topics covered in the video and engage with participants through interactive Q&A sessions.
- Podcast Conversion: Convert the audio from your long video into podcast episodes. Edit the audio to enhance clarity and remove any unnecessary segments. Share these episodes on platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts to reach a wider audience.
- Slide Deck Creation: Transform the content of your long video into visually appealing slide decks or presentations. Condense the information into bullet points, graphs, and visuals for easy consumption. Share these decks on platforms like SlideShare or LinkedIn to establish your expertise and attract new followers.
These are some examples of how to repurpose your content, but the ideas are endless, really. And, of course, I don’t need to remind you to use AI tools to help you in the process. The first free ones that come to mind are ChatGPT and Canva, but many others can also be helpful. Ultimately, it’s not about the tool but the strategic process for managing limited resources and creating content for always-on social media feeds.