Managing your business, delegating to your employees, paying the bills and taxes—the list goes on and on. And at the top of that list is your social media content! So what to do when you’re feeling overwhelmed with everything you have to do? 

One thing you can start doing right now is recycle, reuse, repurpose! 

Recycle:

• use again.
  "he reserves the right to recycle his own text"

Reuse:

• the action of using something again.
  "the ballast was cleaned and ready for reuse"

Repurpose: re·pur·pose

• adapt for use in a different purpose.
  "they've taken a product that was originally designed for a CD-ROM and repurposed it for the Microsoft Network"

When it takes so much effort to create quality content in the first place, why wouldn’t you make use of that content again to fill in your content calendar? 

Why Should You Repurpose Content?

Reach new people - Some people will never read a blog post and some people will never watch a video post. Reusing your content makes it approachable to new audiences. 

Dust off old content - You probably have some content that was popular before and still has some relevant information in it. Dust it off and give it an update and it’s likely to be popular again with minimal effort. 

Do the work once - Creating content once and being able to reuse it across platforms will save you time you can use in your business instead.  

Plan your content to be re-usable

My advice to all my clients and students is: “Know what you want to do with your content before you create it”

That means when you’re brainstorming your content for the week, month, or year, ask yourself what you want to do with that content in the future. Do you want a piece of content that is evergreen (aka search-optimized content that is continually relevant and stays “fresh” for readers over a long period of time) or do you want to create content about timely events and occurrences?

Do you want to write a blog post but use it elsewhere? Then make sure there is lots of information that can be used for other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

You are filming a video? Think where you want to use it—does it need to be filmed vertical or horizontal? How long does your video need to be for Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, etc.?

Once you know what kind of content you want to be included in your strategy, you can look at how you can recycle, reuse, and repurpose.    

What can you reuse? 

This is where looking at your Google Analytics is so important! Have a look to see which of your posts are doing well and use your most popular content. 

• Have a webinar? Turn it into a video tutorial. 

• Old blog posts around a similar topic? Turn it into a mega post to share online.

• Have a presentation deck? Turn it into a Slidedeck on Linkedin. 

• Interviews from experts? Create an Expert Advice eBook. 

• Blog posts? Check Quora for relevant questions. 

• Interesting statistics? Create infographics. 

• Blog posts or podcasts can become interesting tweets. 

The list is endless. 

Pro tip: while you’re checking your content for reusable tidbits, also check for the content that’s not relevant or not popular and pull it. If it’s not working for your business, it’s gotta go. 

Save time in advance

While it is a few extra steps to figure out how you can repurpose your content in advance, it will save you lots of time in the end when you’re repurposing content on a regular basis! 

Here are some examples of how I’ve helped clients save time with their content: 

• A restaurant owner that has the same weekly specials? Write up amazing descriptions of the item, take multiple pictures and have them on rotation to save you time weekly.

• A food blogger? Take popular recipes and update them with seasonal ingredients and photos when things are too busy to come up with new recipes. 

• Services expert (like me)? Take snippets out of existing content to create infographics and social media posts. 

Maintain your content

What makes easy-to-reuse content is keeping it maintained in the first place. Knowing what content you have available and what you want to do with it. 

Outdated content should be removed or updated on a regular basis. Take a good, critical look at your content on a regular basis and decide what needs to be updated and what needs to go.

If you’ve been discouraged lately that you have nothing new to post, I challenge you to go back through your old content and give it new life! Add new pictures, find new quotes, update your past posts and re-share them!

Still not inspired or confused? Book a brainstorming session!