Imagine you head a content team for a B2B organization…
For the past five years, you’ve averaged publishing four blog posts per month, plus a webinar and several social media posts. Last year, your organization launched a monthly podcast, too.
That’s 48 blog posts just in the last year. Plus, 12 webinars and 12 podcasts. Add in social media posts, quarterly e-books, and case studies, and you can see that adds up to a lot of content.
You may realize you don’t need “more” content. You need your existing content to work harder.
For many organizations, “harder” means better, wider distribution.
Why? Because prospects are overwhelmed with the firehose of material in their feeds.
Inbox “zero” is a myth; they’re struggling to keep up with their daily to-dos, and they often have no idea how to focus on those “important but not urgent” tasks that impact their career.
That’s where you come in.
You can help your client reach those overwhelmed prospects by doing more with their existing content. The key is repackaging or repurposing quality pieces to reach more prospective customers.
The outcome is positive business results with less work than creating entirely new content — which makes you look like a hero.
Keep reading for practical how-to knowledge on turning one piece of content into three or more pieces.
But first, let’s define what I mean by “repurposing.”
What Is Content Repurposing?
Brian Dean from Backlinko says, “Repurposing content (also known as ‘content recycling’) is the practice of reusing all or elements of existing content in order to expand that content’s reach.”
The benefits of content repurposing include:
Saving time and effort for clients.
Extending the content’s ROI.
Increasing visibility across platforms.
The most common way of content repurposing is to turn a piece of content into a different format. For example, you can use a blog post as the basis for social media content or a newsletter.
Another common example is writing a series of social media posts to support a webinar. But there’s a lot more you can do, too.
Here’s an example from one of my consulting clients. A few years ago, their founder wrote a book about their industry. While some of the content is a little outdated, most is still relevant. I used this book as the backbone to write a series of blog posts. The client published these pieces in industry publications.
We could go further and create slide-based videos with key elements pulled out. Or, someone could read the blog posts aloud and record them, creating audio content.
How Writers Can Pitch Content Repurposing
If your prospective client has a rich content library — a likely scenario these days — their content team probably wants to get more results from their content. For example, they want to be able to show how their content had a positive impact on key business goals, like sales numbers.
You can say something like,
“Hey, you have a rich backlog of webinars. I could summarize the key points and turn them into a blog post, a series of social media posts, and an infographic for your audience. This helps you reach readers who prefer written content and graphics on social channels while reinforcing the webinar’s message.”
Tips for Effective Repurposing
Smart content marketing always starts with the client’s goals.
- What do they want to achieve? More traffic, leads, or brand awareness?
- Tailor the content to the platform — LinkedIn carousels, posts, and infographics suit business audiences, while Instagram reels are popular with direct-to-consumer brands.
- Build effective repurposing systems:
- ai for webinar transcripts or podcast interviews saves hours.
- Design tools like Canva can help you create graphics aligned with the brand.
How to Turn One Piece of Content into Three (or More) Pieces
Remember that book I mentioned earlier? I turned it into four blog posts and four newsletters… so far.
Most established B2B companies have plenty of fodder for content repurposing. Here’s how you can help them maximize the benefit they can get from existing content:
- Define your client’s primary goal. This should be something they’re going to measure. Google Analytics makes it easy to measure traffic to a page. It’s also easy to measure sign-ups from a landing page. Define what you plan to measure.
- Identify the content to repurpose. In my case, it was a book, but I’ve done this for webinars too.
- Define your content deliverables. Will you create:
- Blog posts
- Social media posts
- Infographics
- Short videos
- Email newsletters
You don’t have to offer all of these. You can choose two or three.
Another idea is to partner with someone else to deliver content you prefer not to handle. For example, if you don’t specialize in video work, you could partner with someone who edits videos. Or, you can partner with someone to create eye-catching infographics.
I used my client’s book to pull themes, quotes, and examples for my long-form blog articles. I also wrote newsletters to send traffic to the article. I could have written social media posts, too, or worked with someone to create related graphics.
As every company tries to manage its most impactful content plays for today’s market, content repurposing can be low-hanging fruit. It’s efficient and effective. You could create a content repurposing package for your clients, resulting in a nice monthly recurring retainer.
Your Action Steps
If content repurposing appeals to you, you can start right now. Identify three established companies in your industry. Review their websites. Do they have a lot of published content? Some companies have webinars, e-books, blog posts, and case studies, but they’re not getting the necessary visibility.
Take a webinar, repurpose it into a blog post or two, and turn those into a series of social media posts and emails. Such a content plan can extend the life of the webinar by weeks or even months.
Why not identify a few potential prospects today and reach out to offer your services?
