The Influencer’s Guide to Repurposing Content Like a Pro

As an influencer, your content is king—no matter what platform you cater to. Although influencers typically specialize in developing content for a particular platform, every great influencer has a social media presence across multiple platforms. Whether your goal is to get paid to blog or to get paid for your YouTube videos, repurposing is essential to your strategy. 

For example, travel influencer Court and Nate have a strong presence on Instagram, but a much smaller following on YouTube. Similarly, travel vloggers Eamon and Bec have a larger YouTube following than they do on Instagram. Still, both influencer duos understand the importance of creating content across different mediums. 

Just as it sounds, content repurposing is the process of re-using existing content for another piece of content. For instance, you might turn a blog post for WordPress into an infographic for Pinterest. There are several amazing benefits of content repurposing:

• Expands your reach: you can meet prospective followers, subscribers, and sponsors via a content medium that they prefer
• Creates additional SEO opportunities: when you create multiple pieces of content from one piece of content, you’re able to amplify its SEO efforts 
• Allows you to diversify your content and skill set: Instead of pigeonholing yourself into the same medium, you can communicate the same message across multiple mediums to demonstrate your potential in different areas
• Maximizes your efforts: Every piece of content influencers create is valuable. When you repurpose content, you’re able to increase your output without increasing your input

The most skilled marketers leverage repurposing efforts to put their companies in a great position and build brand awareness. Influencers should also treat their brand like a business and repurpose content to grow their influence and reach new markets. And with that in mind, here are a few ideas on how you can start repurposing your content like a pro: 

Create a Content Calendar 

The purpose of a content calendar is to help you manage your content creation efforts. Content calendars not only help keep you organized, but they improve your ability to brainstorm thoughtfully and reduce the risk of idea blockages. 

Many content calendars are created using spreadsheet tools like Google Sheet or Microsoft Excel. This makes it easy for you to outline your content efforts and plan with a high-level overview. You can use different columns to identify the status of a particular piece of content, publish date, topic, and much more. 

A content calendar also makes it easier to identify and track repurposing opportunities. For instance, you might use a field titled “Content Type” to note how you can repurpose various content ideas. 

You can download free content calendar templates from sites like Hubspot and Calendly. 

Collect Content for an Ebook

No matter what type of influencer you are and what platform you primarily cater to, e-books are a great way to not only repurpose your content into something meaningful, but to monetize your content. Bloggers can gather content based on a particular topic and use it as a starting point and foundation for an ebook, building out the repurposed content with new ideas and updated information.

Similarly, YouTube and Instagram influencers can gather their most popular video content ideas and turn it into video content. This can be particularly helpful for influencers who offer rich, useful information to their followers and subscribers and can benefit from curating those tips into one piece of content. 

For example, Sara & Alex James, a couple that converts cargo vans into mobile homes, offers tips on how to navigate a successful van conversion on their YouTube channel. They also curate the most helpful pieces of advice into a e-book complete with more detailed explanations, checklists, and sketches. 

Similarly, a YouTuber that manages a cooking channel might create an e-book that compiles their most popular recipes. An Instagram influencer that creates health and lifestyle content might create a dieting or summer workout ebook. 

Reference Internal Data

In any industry, data is king. As an influencer, you should treat your brand like a business. Collecting and analyzing data can offer a wealth of insight into how your content is consumed and by whom. You can use this data to make better content decisions, fine-tune your content calendar, and better connect with your target audience. 

You can also use your data to create additional content in the form of case studies or whitepapers (depending on your industry). For example, let’s say you’re an influencer who uses YouTube to share affiliate marketing and dropshipping advice with hopeful entrepreneurs. As you create different content and share your results, you can use your findings to create rich, original case studies.

Think about the type of data you collect and how you interpret it. Many of the metrics you collect can be analyzed and compiled into an interesting case study. Not only will it lend additional credibility to your status as an influencer, but it can humanize your brand and build trust between you and your followers. 

Turn Blog Posts Into Video—And Video Into Blog Posts

Most influencers focus on content or video. However, one of the best repurposing opportunities lies in reverse-engineering your primary content method. If you create videos, make a blog post that covers the same content in your video and vice versa. This double layer of content allows you to reap the core benefits of repurposing. 

The vast majority of Internet users enjoy video content. When paired with written content, you’re able to both cater to people who prefer video and/or text, as well as cater to search engines. This way, individuals searching for a particular piece of content can discover you in different ways and consume your content via their preferred method. 

A great example of this is Mr. and Mrs. Adventure, an influencer duo who primarily focus on blogging. However, they still create videos to accompany many of their blog posts. 

Incorporate Social Media 

Social media is an easy way to repurpose content and should always be a part of repurposing efforts. Many influencers use social media to promote content as it’s published. But you can also create quotes from previous content, publish testimonials and reviews, and re-visit older content relevant to today.

For example, let’s say you’ve written a long-form pillar blog post about Bitcoin investing. Then Bitcoin value spikes suddenly and becomes a central topic across news outlets and social platforms. Instead of creating a new long-form blog post, you can quickly address the time-sensitive news with social commentary and a link to your long-form blog post. 

Be sure to use social listening tools and pay attention to conversation happening around your industry and niche. This allows you to stay ahead of trends and participate in social dialogue in a timely manner. 

Create Podcasts

Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular in the media. According to data from a 2021 Statista study, 41% of the United States population claimed to have listened to at least one podcast in the past month, more than three times higher than a decade prior. 

Podcasts may not be an ideal repurposing strategy for some influencers, but it’s worth considering. Think about the content you’ve produced from a historical point of view and how certain pieces of content can be transformed into audio content. 

For example, if you interviewed a thought leader in your industry in a video blog you could turn that interview into a podcast to make it easier for listeners to tune in on the go. 

Create Slidedecks

With so many ways to share and communicate content, presentations are still useful tools in many industries. Slide decks can be particularly useful when you’re handling complex content with a hefty table of contents and data. It allows you to present content in a visually appealing, easily-digestible content. 

Copyblogger is a great example of a blog that morphs content in slide decks as a part of their repurposing efforts. For example, their blog post “The 3-Step Journey of a Remarkable Piece of Content,” was transformed into a SlideShare presentation. 

Canva and Slideshare are great platforms for creating slide deck presentations. 

Create Infographics

Visual marketing content is much more than photos and videos. An infographic is a visual piece of content designed to condense and curate pieces of information around a particular topic. Infographics help make content more memorable and are easily shareable. 

According to a study conducted by OneSpot, infographics can increase web traffic by 12%. Another study from Hubspot found that infographics were the fourth most used type of content marketing. However, infographics are often overlooked. 

You can turn video and blog content into infographics (be sure to share it on social networks—particularly Pinterest—and on your blog). For example, the Environmental Protection Agency turned their content about saving water into an infographic to help build awareness around leaks. 

Conclusion

Being a great influencer and content creator isn’t about rapidly churning out content. A great influencer is strategic and leverages their content to create several touch points. While maintaining a consistent and organized posting schedule is important, getting your content into the hands of more people is also important. 

If you’re just getting started with content repurposing, start by conducting a content audit. There are two pieces of content to keep an eye out for: 

1. Evergreen content
2. Most popular content
3. Clusters of content that cover the same topic

Each time you create a new piece of content, think of how you can repurpose it. When you get into the habit of creating with repurposing in mind, you’ll find it much easier to build out a healthy content calendar.