How to Segment Your Content for Ultimate Repurposing (with Lessons From TV Talk Shows) — Content 10x

Carpool Karaoke, Mean Tweets, Lip Sync Battle…just three examples of content that’s grown from a TV talk show segment to a standalone fan favorite.

But what can content marketers take away from this?

Creating defined segments in your content has lots of benefits for content marketers.

It helps you streamline your repurposing, as you can repurpose the same segment every week (which comes with the added bonus of higher-quality repurposing).

It can also help you grow a separate audience for that content segment. Hello segment superfans!

In this blog post, discover how you can use segmenting to optimize and supercharge your repurposing.

Keep reading to learn how to segment your content for ultimate repurposing.

My content segmenting ‘aha’ moment

I was in bed one morning recently, scrolling through Instagram (yes, I know it’s bad…yes, I’m trying to stop it…no, I haven’t succeeded yet!) and saw a great post from The Late Late Show with James Corden.

It was from a segment of his show where he pranks celebrities, and the victim this time was my imaginary husband and favorite Manchester United player of all time — David Beckham.

Watch this and just try not to laugh…

But as well as cracking me up, it also got me thinking…TV shows (and especially talk shows like The Late Late Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon), are excellent at content repurposing.

I’ve spent some time thinking about this a bit more, and I think you’re going to love seeing what we can learn from TV shows to improve our content repurposing.

So, what can we learn from TV shows and their genius approach to segmenting their content for repurposing? And how can we apply it to our own content?

What we can learn from TV shows and why it’s important

TV shows have really got their content repurposing mindset sorted.

They record their show, but it isn’t just one long conversation or an extended scene. It’s broken up into familiar segments with different purposes.

Those segments work on their own, almost like a mini-series.

Let’s look at The Late Late Show with James Corden again to dive into what I mean a bit more…

I’ve binge-watched his celebrity pranks on Instagram, I’ve gone down a YouTube rabbit hole of Carpool Karaoke videos, and yet…I’ve never actually watched an episode of The Late Late Show in full.

Isn’t that amazing? I can know what certain parts of his show are all about, can recall specific moments, and sound like a superfan without ever having sat through a full episode!

By creating these segments, repurposing them appropriately, and being really smart about their content strategy, they’ve turned me into a fan despite the fact I’m not even an actual viewer. I’m a fan of their repurposed segments.

Now, sure, you probably don’t have your own TV show…but you do have a podcast/livestream/video series/blog.

And you can take what these big shows are doing — starting with a clear structure, with these segments designed into the show — to make repurposing a breeze.

What it looks like to segment your content

Let’s think about how we can take this concept from big-budget TV blockbusters and apply it to our own content…

Say you have an hour-long podcast with a guest on it. How could you segment it? A ‘standard’ kind of structure would be:

There are so many possibilities to add great, recognizable segments to this structure! Here are just a few ideas to get you started that will hopefully help you see opportunities that fit to your specific content and structure.

• Quickfire Questions — a short, sharp, fun set of questions that you ask every guest. This can stand on its own or work as a great preview for your show if used as an audiogram (or a video clip if you film your podcast too!) — like we do on the B2B Content Strategist podcast
• Headline News — a section where you look at the top stories from your industry for that week with your guest, getting their expert insight on the topics
• Tip of the Week — a simple, actionable bit of advice that listeners can use to achieve a quick win — we always include a Top Repurposing Tip in our weekly email newsletter, the Content 10x Insider
• Podcast Reviews — one of my favorite podcasts, The Model Health Show, uses this strategy. They will read out a great review from the last week and then take that from the full recording to share on its own
• Supporter of the Week — if you use a subscription model for your show using a site like Patreon (you can learn more about this approach in my 5 ½ Great Ways to Make Money from Podcasting article!), you could choose one at random and invite them onto the show for a five minute mini-interview or even just give them a shoutout!
• Hidden Gems — where you give some airtime to a great piece of content you’ve seen that week. Social Media Examiner do something like this in their show, where they’ll share their favorite tool of the week
• Competition — ask a question at the end of each episode and get people to give their answers via Twitter. You’ll choose a winner at random and give them a shoutout or a prize

There really are so many possibilities with segmenting your show.

Hopefully you can now see how segmentation can work, but will it be worth your time?

The benefits of segmenting your content

It’s not an exaggeration to say segmenting your content could be one of the best ways to invest your time and level up your content.

It will benefit you as a content creator and your audience in equal measure.

Just think, by creating content with really clear segments, you:

• Improve the structure of your content — by making it repeatable, familiar, and recognizable. All of this will save you time and make the process of creating your content much smoother and faster
• Engage your audience — segments are great for helping you change gears. They add that clear structure and deliver a sense of progress that will keep your audience’s attention
• Give people what they want — humans love structure and predictability. When I used to work in an office, we ran our whole day by different segments of the radio shows we listened to. The Top 10 at 10 was the signal for my coffee break!
• Make repurposing so much easier — you’ve done all the hard work by creating standalone segments of your show. Stripping those segments out and sharing them is going to be lightning-fast and painless after the first few times you do it!
• Grow fans of your segments on social media — even reaching a new and different audience. Your segments may take on a life of their own

How will you segment your content?

Hopefully you are feeling invigorated and inspired to restructure your content into repurposable segments, but if you’re looking for more inspiration, there are plenty more places you can look!

Take a look at some of your favorite shows (yes, I am giving you a free pass to binge some trashy TV!) and see how they segment their content. Creative inspiration is important, after all…

If you want to take a deeper look at content repurposing, you can grab a copy of my book and lose yourself in hundreds of pages of theory, examples, walk-throughs, and more.

Or, let us take care of your repurposing for you. Our end-to-end content repurposing services allow you to consistently share your greatest content segments on social media, and beyond, every week.

Discover which service suits your business now.

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Originally published at https://www.content10x.com on May 26, 2022.