“Repurpose your content.” Advice that’s right up there on any self-respecting listicle on productivity or showing up online.
We know why repurposing content is such a popular suggestion. It helps you:
- Produce consistent, high quality content with less effort
- Reach a wider audience with your tips and advice
- Improve your SEO
- Maintain a consistent brand presence online
…all with less effort – and in less time – than it takes to come up with fresh ideas for each platform.
But content repurposing can feel like a bit of an arcane dark art. Because despite everyone telling you to do it, no one ever really tells you how!
Until now.
In this blog I’ll walk you through the content repurposing process – explaining how the seed of an idea ended up becoming a popular post across all my socials.
You could call it my recipe for repurposing. And all with minimum time and effort.
The background
I’ve always been considered “good with money”. Friends described me as a bargain queen. Someone who never pays full price for anything.
And it’s true. Largely.
We didn’t have much money when I was growing up. Most of my toys were homemade. Most of my clothes, hand-me-downs. Holidays meant staying in the homes of my grandparents’ friends around the UK while they swanned off on intercontinental adventures.
(I share more detail on my money mindset in my popular guide to self-employment – Survival Skills for Freelancers.)
The seed
Because of my natural drive to save money, I regularly review my expenses – both personal and business – to identify ways to cut costs.
With software and app costs stacking up in my business, I decided it was time to review my tech stack.
I wrote a list of all the software and apps I use regularly (and those I don’t, which I could almost definitely flat-out ditch) and looked for opportunities to switch these apps to more cost-effective options.
Side note: I’m not good with compromise, so it was important that none of these swaps felt like a downgrade. Before I switched, I wanted to be sure that each replacement app offered the same features and benefits as the app it was replacing.
First, LinkedIn
I started by sharing two swaps – Xero to FreeAgent and Zoom to Teams – in a plain text LinkedIn post.
It gained 6,327 impressions, 49 reactions and 130 comments.
That was enough to tell me I was onto something. After all, who doesn’t love saving money?!
LinkedIn revisited
I added two more software swaps to the list – bumping my annual saving to £708.80 – and did a second LinkedIn post.
1,369 impressions, 37 reactions, 29 comments.
Then the blog
After adding one final saving – totalling a hefty £958.16 – I decided I needed to go into more details on how I’d approached the task in a blog on my website.
Then the newsletter
I featured the blog in June’s Clever Copy Club newsletter and hit a record 64.3% open rate and 8.86% click rate – with 78 unique clicks from around 1,000 freelance and small business subscribers.
Then the carousel
It was time to share the information to Instagram – probably the most time-consuming stage in the process, involving the creation of a new carousel design.
(As I’m planning on sharing more carousel posts I’m choosing to see that time as an investment in my business).
I’ve not posted much on Instagram lately, so my engagement is lower than it has been in the past (you can read about my viral Reel that got 10.6 million views and half a million comments here.)
The carousel was the most engaged-with post I’ve shared in a long time: 1,196 views (4.9% of which were from non-followers), 564 accounts reached, 52 likes and 38 comments.
Milking it…
Given only a tiny proportion of your followers ever see your posts, I shared the post again on LinkedIn: this time with the carousel visuals.
It’s been up just a couple of hours and already has 521 impressions, 12 reactions and 19 comments.
Next: Threads
For now, my final step is to share each stage of the money-saving process on Threads. I just need to master the threaded post and I’m golden.
I hope my recipe for repurposing content inspires you to squeeze every last drop of value from the content you already have.
Think I’ve missed a trick? Let me know on LinkedIn.