Repurposing content can make you incredibly efficient. That’s why I’ve devoted an entire series to the topic here on my podcast. Last week, I talked about my “upstream” method. In particular, I used an example of going from blog to book – starting with the structure of a book as a roadmap, and then writing it little by little while you publish each section in blog form. It’s the best way to get a book project done while you build an audience.
But in running your content strategy, it’s equally important repurpose content in a “downstream” manner, too. That’s the topic of today’s segment. I cover two cases:
- Repurposing long-form content into medium-form content, such as going from book to blog.
- Repurposing medium-form content into social content, such as going from blog to social.
I focus more on the second case, since it’s the most common. It’s also all but required in running a sound content strategy. If you’re not repurposing blog content for your social posts, you are missing a huge opportunity to save time and effort.
So let’s teach you how to do that. In today’s episode, I cover how to reuse the meta description, the post excerpt, and the post content itself – and to prepare all this content up front so that you can plan for it all to work together in a nice, coordinated way.
Then when it’s time to promote the post, you don’t really have to think about it too much, because you’ve already planned it out and put it on an editorial calendar. Not only will make you much more productive, but you’ll find that your social posts are a lot stronger as well, because you’re treating them as a part of the writing process. This is really good content strategy, and a great way to up your game – both in quality and time saved.
Listen to the episode here or subscribe in iTunes – and don’t forget to download the templates that accompany this episode!
Show Notes
Here are links to the articles I mentioned in the episode:
- Authors are often concerned that they will get a hard time from publishers or agents if they publish draft book content on their blog. This attitude is beginning to change – so if this is a concern for you, I urge you to check out last week’s episode: Repurposing Content: Going from Blog to Book (My Upstream Method).
- I have a ton of free templates and tools for you to download, including the Twitter length-checker that I created, and an editorial calendar that I use for social media posts.
- When reusing the post excerpt for social posts, you really have to pay attention to the context. Here’s an entire episode on this: Repurposing Content Across Different Contexts.
- If you’re consider whether or not to send your entire blog post in an email newsletter (as opposed to a digest), here’s a lot more detail on the considerations: Repurposing Content Across Different Formats.
- Here’s my preferred short link service: bit.ly
- And my preferred read-it-later service: Pocket
One more episode in this series: Repurposing Content to Create an Online Course. Subscribe here (and select podcast / every new post) if you’d like to be notified as soon as new episodes are published!
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