From the moment you have a website (if not before), you’re likely to obsess over your content and where it ranks in SERPs. Getting your site visible is of paramount importance, and for that, you need content. Regular blogging is the name of the game, but we all know how annoying that can be. Writing your own blog takes a good chunk of time (which many of us don’t have, as we’re busy running a business!), while outsourcing your content can get expensive.
Either way, you’ve invested a substantial amount in your blog content. This begs the question: are you getting as much mileage from your content as possible? The savvy marketer understands that content creation is an investment and that every new piece of content is an asset for your brand. Those assets are not one-off things to be used and discarded. They can be repurposed – often repeatedly – into many other forms of content.
Blog posts are a veritable goldmine of content for repurposing elsewhere in your marketing efforts. From using them as the base of your weekly newsletter to editing a bunch together into a book, blogs are an endless source of marketing fodder once you’ve written them.
Social media content is generally the opposite of this; it’s short-lived, with a tiny shelf-life, and isn’t ordinarily much use elsewhere (beyond embedding the odd feed or board on your website or using your images in other content). And yet, social media marketing is super important for visibility, organic growth, and building an engaged audience.
The great news is that while social content isn’t of much use elsewhere, your blog content can create endless social media posts if you put your mind to repurposing it. If you’re smart about it, you will never struggle to think of a social post again.
So many businesses miss this trick and spend a fortune creating separate social content rather than repurposing what they’ve already made for their blog into social posts. So here’s my easy repurposing guide for turning your blog into all the social media content you need…
Video Content
While the written word will always rule the web (and the world) in my eyes, there’s no denying that video content is now the king of content marketing. This has been true for years, and video only becomes more prevalent each year. SEO still relies on words to understand content topics and rank pieces based on quality, usability, and ability to answer questions, but I see that changing in the future.
Until someone invents a new form of media that surpasses video, video content is critical to your marketing strategy – both on your website and social media.
The prospect of video creation and marketing is daunting to many, but it doesn’t need to be technical, complex, or time-consuming. Here are some quick and super easy ways to repurpose your blog posts into great videos for social media:
Record Your Blogs Posts As Vlogs
First, if you still need to get a YouTube channel, get one set up. Then, every time you write a new blog post, pop the text from it on a teleprompter (you can do this on an app on your smartphone or tablet for minimal cost) and record it in video (or vlog) form.
This full video version of your blog can be uploaded to your YouTube channel, optimised for the relevant keywords, and embedded into your blog post. Aside from being the most significant SEO boost, this will give you a whole new platform on YouTube or (if you’re already on the channel) a high-value weekly post to add to your schedule.
And this isn’t just an excellent video for YouTube. You can natively upload the full-length video to Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. It’s vital to upload natively to each rather than to share a link, as this will give you the best engagement and mileage and ensure you have this content asset on every platform. You may have to resize your video for Instagram so it’s in 9:16 rather than 16:9, but if you’re aware of the need to do this when you film, you can frame the wide shot so that it’s easily cropped.
For other platforms with a time limit on your video uploads, you may not be able to post the full video. If you can, do. If not, you can always split it into multiple parts.
Turn Actionable Sections Of Your Blog Into Tip Videos
For shorter videos to use on social, the easiest way to repurpose your blogs is to look at the actionable advice you give in them. Where do you have short snippets you can pull out and record as a quick tip? For example, I could easily use each section in this blog (video, images, stories) to create three videos, each containing three tips. OR, I could record nine separate videos with one tip in each.
The easiest way to do this is to look at the headers in your blog. If your blog’s been well-written and optimised, you’ll have plenty of headings and subheadings. While you won’t always be able to use every section as an actionable tip, you should find at least one or two that can be pulled out and repurposed into Reels, TikTok, or general videos for use on other platforms.
Film The Creation Of Your Content For Extra Behind The Scenes Videos
There’s a piece of advice in marketing that is incredibly powerful: film everything. Of course, it sounds absurd because there are so many aspects of business you assume people will find mind-numbingly dull, but you never know what they will find interesting.
Social media goes nuts for watching pimples being popped and verrucae being removed. So seriously, you never know!
One great way of repurposing your blog content in a fresh and original form is to film the process of creating it. If you’re DIYing it or have a member of the team doing it, just set up a camera in your office (or whatever space is being used), and film the whole process. You can ignore the camera entirely or talk to the camera through the process to provide a commentary.
If you’re outsourcing, ask your copywriter if they’d mind doing the same so you can use the footage for social media. They may say no, but they’ll often say yes.
Note: Any video content can easily be reformatted into audio content to use on a Podcast, or curated into audio books or downloads.
Image Content
Beautiful photography has been a huge part of social media in the past, and while there has been a definite shift towards video over images, having great photos for your social feeds is still super important. Use them sparingly – Instagram advises posting only three photos per week and creating the bulk of your content in video and story form. And Instagram was always the ultimate image platform (alongside Pinterest, which is also switching to video).
If you have a weekly blog post and don’t want to have to overthink your three images each week, here’s how you sort all three with nothing but your blog post:
Create A Carousel For Each Blog Post Highlighting Main Points
Every time you publish a new blog post, create a cover image, followed by several other images that each include a central point from your blog. You can easily make the graphics for these in Canva, or if you’re outsourcing, ask your copywriter to do it for you – I don’t have this listed as a service I offer, but if you ask, I’m happy to do it for a little extra.
This is an excellent way of creating engaging content for your social media and a fab way of driving traffic to your blog. While the videos you make from your blog are often quite detailed, these carousels give a high-level overview of what you’re discussing.
Tease it. Leave people wanting more so they’ll check out the full blog (or one of your video posts).
Create Quote Images
As you can pull tips from your blog to create videos, short quotes can easily be turned into eye-catching images. Again, you can use Canva or a similar app. By creating an on-brand template for quotes, you can easily create them each week with little effort; swap out the text and update any images you use.
Pull Stills From Your Videos To Use As Images
Once you’ve created a vlog version of your blog, it’s effortless to pause your video at an optimal point and pull an image from it as a still. If you’re smart when filming, you will take a couple of minutes to pose as you want and hold that pose, so you get good quality images. Doing this ensures you have an actual still of you rather than a snapshot of you mid-speech (not usually very flattering).
Since you’re filming and have gone to the bother of getting yourself camera ready, you can also take a few selfies or get someone else to snap a few candid shots of you. Use one as an image for the week and save any spares for future weeks in case you need them.
Story Content
Ah, stories, the ultimate in short-lived content. Stories are second only to Tweets when it comes to stuff you put effort into posting on social only to have it vanish from view. While stories remain live for 24 hours before they disappear, they have the potential to do a LOT for you in that time. Here are a few super easy ways of repurposing your blog into stories:
Tease New Videos In Stories
All those video ideas you already have? Tease them in your stories. This is a super simple way of giving you at least one story for every new video you post. Use a snippet from your main video as a story, with a link to the full video or reel (if you can include one).
Poll Controversial Questions
If you’ve raised a controversial topic or asked a risque question in your blog, pop it on a story poll and see what your audience thinks. If you have nothing juicy to poll, try doing a This or That? Essentially you take two options that relate to your blog and ask your audience which they prefer.
For example, this post covers three types of social media content; which do you prefer, “Video or image posts?” I might then ask for a follow-up, “Image or story?” You can then announce the answers as extra stories and ask if people agree. It’s a great way of getting your audience to engage with your content directly rather than simply watching or looking at it.
Link To Your Blog Post
One of the best new stickers to roll out on Instagram in recent memory is the link sticker. Instagram is notoriously annoying for not letting you include live links in your content. Unfortunately, TikTok has followed the same path, only giving users space for a single link in their profile.
This has made it tough to use these platforms to direct large amounts of traffic to specific blog posts. It relies on them looking for your link in your bio, clicking on it, and then either searching your website for the particular content you were talking about or selecting the relevant link from your Linktree (or equivalent). The latter is a better way of doing it, but you still need to update it each week with your latest post, then you may have people looking after it’s been updated again to the next blog post… it’s never been ideal.
The link sticker in stories allows you to link stories to specific URLs. That means you can announce you’ve just published a new blog and include a clickable link to it.
Repurposing Guide: Final Thoughts…
Speaking of which, when you’re repurposing your blog content for social media, remember to include link opportunities back to your site as often as possible. For example, YouTube videos can include links to the whole blog or related content. Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn allow you to easily include direct links to your content. And, as we’ve seen, there are ways of doing it on other platforms, even if it could be more convenient.
And, of course, if you need help with your content creation – in blog, video, or social media form – let me know. Content creation is my jam.