How to Turn One Piece of Content into 20+ (Ultimate Repurposing Guide)

Apr 29

there’s no reason why you SHOULDN’T be able to create multiple pieces of content from a single topic. Today on the blog, I’m sharing How to Turn One Piece of Content into 20+ (Ultimate Repurposing Guide) #repurposing #contentcreation | Brandmerry.…

If you’d like to watch this in video form, you can do that right here.

There is absolutely no reason why you should have to reinvent the wheel every single week when it comes to sharing content in your business.

Furthermore, there’s no reason why you SHOULDN’T be able to create multiple pieces of content from a single topic. Today on the blog, I’m sharing how to make your life a million times easier.

The topic of repurposing is my secret sauce to marketing, although it's not really a secret anymore because I talk about it all the time, it saved my business; it saved my sanity, to be honest.

I've truly spent the last five years fine-tuning my approach to repurposing to where it runs like a freaking machine. Just to give you a sneak peek this blog you’re reading right now was created over a month ago (more on that strategy in a bit).

This art of repurposing all comes back to understanding the content workflow and creating a plan that works for you.

So today I want to share with you how to create a content workflow, how to really embrace the art of repurposing, and ultimately, I'm going to share how you can take one piece of content and turn it into 20 plus pieces of content for your business.

3 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD REPURPOSE YOUR CONTENT

Before I jump into it, I do want to talk a little bit about why repurposing is so important. It will save you a lot of time and energy because you're not sitting down to create something new every single day, remembering to post it, and remembering to choose a new photo for it (one of the reasons I think many of us despise Instagram sometimes).

I know you know what I'm talking about because you've either been doing it in your business, or you've seen people doing it. And you're like, this seems very unattainable to constantly be thinking of something new to post.

When I first started as a solopreneur with a baby, I had no team.
I was working nine-to-five at my full-time job.
I was raising a baby, and trying to launch my business.

I realized really quickly that I needed to find a really strategic way to create some core pieces of content and then make sure that I was getting them out everywhere to expand my reach and brand awareness.

So the number one reason you want to repurpose is that it saves your sanity and your time.

Number two is the fact that it’s actually more beneficial for you to create multiple variations of your content to create this more evergreen effect.

If we're just posting on Instagram or Facebook, that content is going to disappear within 24 hours.

Whereas if you're utilizing your blog, that content might take a little bit more time to get in front of the right people, but it's lasting for years and years to come using platforms like Pinterest to extend the life of your blog content.

If you're really strategic, and you take one piece of content and are clear on exactly where you're putting it out, you're actually extending the life of that piece of content.

So the time that you're dedicating to creating that content is really helping in the long run.

And finally, number three is that we can't expect that our audience is just going to see our stuff right when we post it.

Everybody's got their own stuff going on, everyone's busy. So if we're only posting our content in one place at one time, then we're limiting ourselves.

We're limiting our brand exposure, and we're making it really difficult for people to find the content that they need to know about us so they can move through the buying process to purchase our products or our services.

So repurposing is essential as an entrepreneur, not just for your sanity, but also for strategic marketing.

The following content is all about how to design your repurposing plan, but if you want to snag a free guide it’s going to help you take what you’re reading today and map it out for your business.

You can grab this guide here.

REPURPOSE CONTENT STEP 1:
FIGURE OUT YOUR CORE CONTENT

The very first thing you want to do is figure out what your core content is going to be.

Now, I recommend that this core content is a long-form piece of content, so something that is quite a few words, typically around a thousand words or so that you can break it up into smaller pieces.

It'll make sense why we're doing that shortly.

But this core piece of content typically comes in the form of blogging, video or podcasting. Those tend to be the top three that my audience and my clients like to gravitate towards.

I do have a few clients who are super comfortable on social media, and that's their well-oiled machine. They're wanting to move into other areas like podcasting, video, or blogging so they like taking their three or four posts a week from social media and pulling them together into one single piece of content.

So that is available to you, but I find that the majority of my clients really love taking a long-form piece of content and then breaking that down.

Keep in mind with all marketing strategies you want to choose the piece of long-form content that works best for you.

I personally start with video content, so this blog actually came from a recorded video that I created first. This video gave me an entire week of content for my business.

👉 RECAP: Step one is to figure out what your core piece of content will be.

REPURPOSE CONTENT STEP 2:
DECIDE WHERE TO SHARE YOUR CONTENT

Number two is to decide on your platforms.

Now, this is equal parts:

Where do you feel comfortable showing up?
Where do you want to show up?
Where's your audience showing up?

So we never want to say, "I want to be on Twitter,” and your audience really isn't spending a lot of time on Twitter because that’s not going to help you build your business.

So be really strategic, especially if it's just you in the beginning and you’re not working with a team, because you don’t have to be everywhere in fact, I don’t recommend it.

As you start to get better at mastering your workflow, you'll find that it's really easy to add on another social media platform or add on a different piece to your content, but in the beginning, start simple and you’ll have a greater impact.

The three areas that I recommend showing up, in the beginning, are one form of social media, one form of a search-engine-optimized platform, and email marketing.

You should always be growing your email list, which means you should always be emailing your growing email list and making sure they are aware of your new content (remember, we can’t assume everyone has seen our initial post).

For search engine platforms you want to think Google (blogging), Pinterest (also blogging) and Youtube. These are platforms people are searching for content and answers on.

Then you’ll have your email list where you’ll send a link to your core piece of content for the week. If you want some tips on growing your email list using a lead magnet and funnel, be sure to check out this post here and another one here.

And a form of social media. Maybe that's Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or TikTok. You can have a little bit of fun with this one depending on where your audience is hanging out.

So that is where you want to decide where you are going to share this core piece of content. And then ultimately making sure that you're falling into those three categories, email marketing, search engine optimization, and a form of social media.

👉 RECAP: Step two is determining where you’ll be showing up focusing on your email list, a search engine platform and at least one social media platform.

REPURPOSE CONTENT STEP 3:
MAP OUT YOUR REPURPOSING PLAN

Once you have your core content figured out and you've figured out where you're going to share that core content and the additional pieces, now we get to map out the plan.

So this is where the fun begins. Inside of the guide, there's actually a web that I've created so you can do this yourself.

Essentially, you have your core piece of content in the center, and then you have all of these webs, kind of like mind mapping, that go out that have the different platforms and how many times you're going to show up on each of those platforms.

how i create 20 pieces of content from one topic

Here’s an example of my business, so you can see how this works.

So we start with a core piece of content, which is a video I create as part of my weekly series Mondays With Michelle.

I record an entire month of videos in advance and then schedule each one as a premiere on Facebook and IGTV on Instagram every Monday. We also post on Youtube on Wednesdays.

So that's already three platforms out of the gate from one piece of content.

In addition to that, we transcribe the video content and turn that into a blog post. So we transcribe our video pretty much exactly how it is and put that on our blog, which we've optimized for SEO, making sure that our title and our headers and keywords are going to show up in search engines.

This post right here is one of those blog posts. That’s another piece of content bringing the total to four.

From that blog post, we create five-ish pin graphics for Pinterest to start, more down the road as we navigate analytics.

We want to make sure that my content is getting seen on Pinterest because we have a very awesome strategy with Pinterest that brings in thousands of visitors every month, you might be one of them ;)

Pinterest is one of the mini-courses inside of my membership Brandmerry Academy because it’s so powerful for every business. So we're creating five additional pieces of content for Pinterest and those will be recycled not just that week, but over the course of a few weeks. And then the pins that do really well, we'll continue to put energy towards and optimize for years to come.

That gives us a new total of nine pieces of content.

From that core piece of content (remember that video from the beginning), I'm showing up on Facebook and Instagram multiple times a week. We're typically creating two to three graphics or posts every week. We also create a Reel for Instagram as well.

That's on two platforms, so that's six additional pieces of content over that week and possibly into the next week as well, just depending on what we've got going on.

Then in addition to that, we will create Instagram stories. I'll go on stories and just talk about the Mondays with Michelle before it is released, I’ll share the replay, I’ll share the Reel, etc…

And last but not least, I’m emailing my list at least once a week and saying, "Hey, I've got a new blog and I've got a new video up - check it out!"

So that's about 20 pieces of various content that I'm putting out into the world. And it's coming from one single video, and I'm not having to recreate the wheel every time.

That core transcript from the initial video is creating the social media content, and it's creating the blog, and it's determining what the Pinterest graphics are going to be.

So I don't have to think about what I’m going to write every single day.

I hope you see how awesome this is because it's such a fun way to make sure that not only is your content getting into the hands of the people who need it most, but it's also making sure that you're becoming known for something in your industry.

That's the power of branding - repeating yourself and saying the same things in different ways multiple times helps get your point across, builds brand credibility and recognition and really helps move your customer through the buying process.

Another reason I love repurposing my content is that people are going to find your brand at different points of the buying process, meaning that someone who's further along and ready to purchase is most likely going to Google to find your products or your services, where someone who's just casually scrolling and casually looking for advice or education might be turning to social media.

So by showing up on these various platforms, you're able to make sure that you're bringing in people at various points of the buying process, which is truly, truly important as a business owner.

👉 RECAP: Step three is mapping out the specifics of how many posts you’ll share on each platform and when throughout the week. You can grab the guide to do this on your own here.

REPURPOSE CONTENT STEP 4:
ADD YOUR WORKFLOW TO A TASK MANAGEMENT TOOL

So you have created your core content, decided on the platforms that you're going to show up with to start, mapped it out and determined what your workflow looks like.

The next step is building the workflow in your task management software so you can repeat the process weekly. In the beginning, this is going to be super valuable to get you into a consistent flow and when you hire team members you’re going to be so thankful you had this all mapped out!

My favorite platform for this is ClickUp, but we’ve also used Asana and Trello.

After you've created your map of what that content is going to look like, then you want to make a checklist of the things you need to do.

For example:

I have to pick the title for the content.
I need to write a script maybe if I’m doing a video.
I'm going to take that video and transcribe it, so that's a step.
Then I want to make the graphics for these different platforms (Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, etc…)

I want you to list out every micro piece that goes into this process.

If you're a solopreneur, you might be like, "This is a long list, Michelle," and I get it, but I promise the more that you repeat this, the faster it will become for you and this list will keep you on track and out of your head.

Then when you are in a place where you're ready to add a team, you can very easily assign people the weekly things that they need to do for your business to keep it moving forward and to make sure that you're creating that consistent content.

Once you have your workflow designed as a checklist in your task management system you can save it as a template and then repeat it every single week for the new topic.

CONCLUSION

Repurposing isn’t just limited to your weekly content, although this is where I recommend starting because creating consistent content is essential as an online marketer.

Repurposing can be used in your programs, too. I’ve repurposed workshops that I've done, that I've turned into free content.

Free content that I offered for a limited time, like a challenge, that I've turned into paid content or bonuses.

Again, consistency doesn't mean you're showing up every single day, but it means that you're showing up for your audience and you're not peacing out for an entire month.

The lack of consistency that might be happening is stalling their movement through the buying process and trust me you want to keep that momentum going.

Don’t forget to get your hands on my free Repurposing Guide, which includes some of my top tips, tools and the repurpose map! You can get your copy at brandmerry.com/repurpose.

If you are ready to elevate your marketing, you're ready to learn how to use powerful platforms like Pinterest, YouTube, optimize for SEO, understand how to repurpose in multiple areas, and much more, then I encourage you to check out Brandmerry Academy.

Doors are opening very soon, in May and you can go to brandmerry.com/academy to join the waitlist.

Branding and Business Coach | Michelle Knight of Brandmerry

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