There’s a common thread that crops up when you scroll through the content repurposing hashtags on social media….
- How do I avoid sounding like I’m repeating myself?
- Won’t people get bored of my content?
- Will my audience will leave because I’m repurposing my content?
These are great questions and luckily, there is nothing we love more than talking about them and blowing these myths out the water. Because when content repurposing is done the way content repurposing should be done, then it’s not repetitive and it certainly isn’t boring.
Here, we are going to look at 7 ways to avoid repetitive repurposing and the positive side of people calling you out on your repurposing!
We have covered this topic before but we were inspired to relook at it after coming across a tweet by Erica Schneider, who is the Head of Content at B2B content marketing and SEO agency, Grizzle.io which couldn’t help but grab our attention…
She’s torn between being flattered they remember her content and annoyed that they call her out about it. A bit of both probably!
Her question “does this happen to anyone else” received a lot of answers from people who struggle with the same thing. So let’s look at ways this can be avoided… and the good that can be taken from it when it does happen — because it isn’t all bad!
After all, Netflix paid $100m to play Friends reruns 14 years after it ended and if that’s not a good example of how people like to see good content over and over then we don’t know what is!
Why we need to repurpose content…
Jess Cook, who is the Head of Content at LASSO, as well as the first guest on season two of our B2B Content Strategist podcast, spoke about this in her chat with Amy, she said:
“A lot of times we as marketers get sick of our own message before people really understand what our brand stands for. And so don’t be afraid to repurpose and say the same things different ways over and over and over, because that’s the only way people will really know what you are and what you do and your point of view.”
Music to our ears because we’ve been preaching this for six years now!
You might get audience members commenting on how they’ve seen it before but the actual truth is….
- Not everyone is going to see the original piece of content. We aren’t glued to each social platform or blog we follow. We miss content, never mind the diminishing reach that we get on social posts too, so by repurposing you are ensuring a piece of content is seen by more eyes.
- You are going to get bored of your message long before your audience does. It’s the nature of the job. You’re involved in every piece, your audience aren’t so repurposing is one way to make sure as many people as possible know who you are and what you stand for.
We also want to talk about the zero moment of truth. This is important to consider in content marketing. Google did a study to work out why and how people make buying decisions online.
They coined the term the zero moment of truth — the point at which a positive buying decision or response to a CTA takes place — and they said this only happens when you feel like you know and trust who you are interacting with and that happens when you have spent:
- 7 hours with them
- Over 11 interactions
- In 4 locations
Thank goodness that’s not in-person!
We can feel like we really know someone through their content — listening to podcasts, watching videos, reading emails and blog posts, reading Tweets, following Stories…
So yes, when you’re repurposing content, some people might say ‘hey I’ve seen this before’ but if your repurposing is done properly then you can feel pretty good about that! They’re just in the category of people who must be following you closely.
Of course, there is a way NOT to repurpose your content and that is to just copy and paste content from here to there. Not only does that quickly get very boring for your audience, but the platform algorithms don’t like it either.
We want to be way more creative and strategic, platform and-audience-focused with our repurposing.
So here are 7 ways to avoid falling into the trap of sounding repetitive when repurposing:
1. Change the format
If you have long-form content, for example a podcast, you could turn episodes into blog posts, short videos for social media, infographics, text-only posts — this keeps your content feeling fresh and engages a different audience.
TOP TIP: Keep each piece of content platform-specific.
2. Add new information
Update your content with new statistics, research or examples to keep it fresh. So if you’ve written a blog post about the top 10 AI tools for B2B content marketing for example and you want to repurpose it onto social media, you could share personal opinions and experiences for each one and post them separately on LinkedIn and Twitter.
3. Rephrase your content
Say you are syndicating a blog post from your website to Medium or LinkedIn — repacking your content with new wording, using synonyms and a different sentence structure can bring fresh energy to your point of view.
4. Come at your point from a different perspective
An example for this one would be, the ‘How to’ guide gets repurposed into the ‘How not to’ guide. The ’10 reasons how to’ becomes the ’10 ways to avoid’… you turn your content on it’s head.
Flip your message so you communicate it from a different angle. Here you can change the medium too — so the ‘How to’ video, can become the ‘How not to’ blog post, for example.
5. Focus on a different audience
When you repurpose the content, you’re not necessarily targeting the audience you already have but a new one. So perhaps your original content is aimed at beginners, or people at the beginning of their AI journey, so try repurposing it for a more advanced audience.
Another important aspect is to repurpose for different stages of your marketing and sales funnel.
6. Combine multiple pieces into a long-form piece
If you have a blog or a podcast series you could repurpose them an e-book or a white paper, or a multimedia online course.
This will take work but if your content is aimed towards problem-solving and your audience want more from you, this could be a great option.
So here we’re talking about thinking BIG with your repurposing, not breaking long content down, but building content up into something bigger.
7. Spread distribution out over a longer period
Spread it out over time. Because too much all at once is never a good thing!
You can promote and share evergreen content over a long period without having to change it and if there is enough time in between posts then your content won’t seem repetitive…
For example, repurpose a detailed article into 12 Twitter threads. Share one thread a month for a year. Don’t share all 12 in the next 2 weeks!
That’s 7 top tips for avoiding repetitive repurposing. But, like we said if you do have very astute followers you still might get some saying they’ve seen the content before — if they do then give yourself a pat on the back, because you have an engaged core audience which is something to be proud of!
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