3 Easy Ways To Repurpose Old Content
AKA: How to have a consistent, quality marketing presence, even when you’re not feeling 100%
Most marketing and business experts are going to encourage you to post a lot. Make a lot of offers to a lot of people. Remind people of the awesomeness you have available to them.
It’s good advice. If you’re marketing on the Internet, it takes some effort to get your content seen by the right people enough times for them to know, like, and trust you enough to buy. The more you post quality content, the easier it is for your aligned customers to find you and fall in love with your brand.
But if you have just a small marketing team, or if you’re a solopreneur, the pressure to constantly be posting is… a lot. Too much actually. Especially if you’re a content creator with chronic pain, like me.
You Don’t Have to Constantly Come Up With New Content Ideas
When my migraines flair up, the pain blots out my creativity. And during the “migraine hangover” period when the pain is finally over, my body and spirit are exhausted from just having endured such agony. Needless to say, I don’t feel “camera ready” on these days. I’m also unlikely to have a bunch of brilliant new ideas.
To be real, I don’t post or market my business at all when I’m in pain, and I’ve had to do a lot of self-work to get to a place where I don’t feel guilty about that. I didn’t choose to have debilitating migraines, after all!
But, I have found a way to stay consistent with quality marketing even when I’m recovering from a migraine, going through something in my personal life, am super busy, or just don’t feel inspired to come up with something entirely new for my marketing that day.
In those times, I can still show up and marketing my business effectively by repurposing my old content.
You might want to consider repurposing your old content too when:
You don’t have a lot of time or energy available for content creation.
You just don’t feel like going on camera that day.
You have writer’s block.
You made some awesome marketing that you were really proud of that not enough people saw.
You’re experiencing depression, anxiety, self doubt, or imposter syndrome. (In other words, your mental health is asking for your attention before you go make new stuff.)
Really, the list goes on. There are plenty of times when it would be wise to make content creation as easy on yourself as possible. To help with that, here are my 3 favorite ways to repurpose old content.
Recycle, Reformat, Relax
Take an idea you’ve already shared and reshare it in a different format!
Here are a few examples of how you could do this:
Take the copy from an Instagram carousel and share it as a text overlay of some video footage you already have in your phone. Share it as a Reel and/or a TikTok.
Turn a blog post you’ve already written into a newsletter.
Record yourself reading a blog post you wrote and share it as a podcast or YouTube video.
Take the 3 main points you shared in your last Live and turn it into an Instagram carousel or a blog post.
You’ve already done the work of coming up with a new idea in the original content you’ve already shared. Amp the signal by repurposing it in a new format.
This also gives you the opportunity to hone your message! Maybe you’ll think of a way to rephrase the message that resonates with more people.
Take Snippets of Longer Content
Mark Twain once wrote, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”
Woodrow Wilson once said, “If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.”
It’s often easiest for us to get our ideas out when we have a lot of space to do it. When we can dive into nuances, go on tangents, tell the backstory, go into detail. Honing it down to the bare essentials is harder, and often takes people more time and focus.
But, here’s the good news. The first iterations of all your best ideas usually are in the longform version. Maybe a Live you did, maybe a long newsletter or blog post, maybe a full workshop you taught.
With every long piece of content you write or record, you can pull parts out and make new content from that!
So, here’s an easy way to repurpose longform content: take one idea from it. That’s the new post.
Where can you look for long content to pull from for new content? Here are a few ideas:
Any long captions you wrote on social media
Lives
Podcasts you were interviewed on
Workshops you taught
Your sales page
Blog posts
Newsletters
A super long comment you left on something you had an opinion on
Your last conversation with your mentor
Your last conversation with a client
Reanswer a Frequently Asked or Recently Asked Question
If you already have an FAQ page, great! You can just take one question from it and answer it in a new format- like as a social media post or a quick newsletter.
If not, no problem! Just answer a question that you got recently or are asked a lot. Pick one you already know the answer to without having to think about it too hard. That way, it should be easy peasy to come up with what to say. Because you’ve already said it.
Examples of where/how you could reanswer an FAQ:
Make a post with 1 question and answer from your FAQ page.
Take an answer you gave over email, verbally, or in the DMs and make it into a post.
Answer a question verbally in a Reel or TikTok.
Make a Top 5 FAQs blog post, podcast episode, carousel, or newsletter.
ProTip: These don’t have to be boring. In fact, since you don’t have to come up with something new to say- you can use your creative energy coming up with a cute way to share your answer!
Check out my client Ecdysiast’s adorable FAQ reels for inspiration if you’d like.
You’ve Already Done The Work
I hope that while reading this, you breathed a huge sigh of relief. I hope that you’re celebrating all the content you’ve already made. I hope that you’re feeling relaxed now that you have some easy, low-pressure ways to keep your marketing consistent even when you’re not feeling creative, energetic, or confident.
Tag me if you try one of these, I love to see it: @misamessaging
Want more ways to make effective content creation easy and fun? You’re going to want to join Club Content Cauldron- a 4-week creative container for folks who do their best work in community, with cheerleading and accountability buddies. It starts March 2023! Sign up now.
