At a previous job, I helped manage a content marketing strategy for a D2C brand’s website. And one of our biggest challenges was figuring out how to constantly publish fresh content for our growing audience. That’s where the idea of content repurposing came in, and it’s since been one of the biggest lessons I learned as a content marketer.
Learning how to repurpose content was a game-changer in our content marketing workflow and helped fill our content calendars across the website, social media, and YouTube. It also helped us create a unified brand image across our channels and build an active audience community.
Content repurposing drives traffic and repeat customers for a D2C brand
Like every D2C brand, ours was struggling with the problem of how to publish content that brought results for the brand. Creating the content wasn’t the problem. Our team knew how to do that and were already publishing content regularly and following all the SEO rules. But making content that actually brought return customers? That was a different story.
The other problem was that we were publishing content on multiple channels: our website, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. We needed to ensure consistency across all these platforms.
That’s where the idea of content repurposing initially came in. We had all this content that was already on our back burner, but they were only assigned to one platform each. For instance, our customer feature stories were just for the blog. Our video series was just for YouTube. When really, they didn’t have to be.
When we took down all the barriers keeping our content types apart, we suddenly had all these new opportunities. It not only solved the problem of filling up our content calendar but also helped us build a stronger brand presence across all our fronts, which, in turn, created a stronger, more dedicated audience base and increased our repeat purchase rate.
Content repurposing or “content recycling” is exactly what it sounds like: recycling existing content to fit other platforms for a multi-platform content strategy. Translation: Learning how to repurpose content means you’ll never run out of things to post, and your content will be consistent across all your media platforms.
For example, you can turn your blog post from three years back into an infographic for Facebook. Or you can splice up a YouTube video into shorter vertical videos for TikTok or Instagram Reels.
Repurposing content gave us fresh content for our brand without exhausting our team thinking up new ideas. In this regard, it was a huge time-saver for our team and helped us publish content faster and more regularly.
It also built a unified brand image, which is important for building a strong brand presence. No matter where our audience came into contact with the brand — from our blog posts to our Instagram Stories — they had a consistent brand experience.
Finally, content is everything in digital marketing. Keeping our brand competitive, relevant, and on people’s radars required publishing content on the platforms where they were most active.
These are just some of the biggest benefits of content repurposing and why I always incorporate it into any content marketing strategy. It helps keep your brand relevant and accessible in an ultra-crowded and competitive digital environment.
My go-to multi-platform content repurposing strategy for brand consistency and an engaged community
The thing about repurposing content is that it isn’t a single strategy leading to one big goal, but multiple small steps and tactics you can incorporate into your content marketing plan. Content repurposing strategies include reincarnating one blog post as other content, like newsletters or social media infographics, and vice versa.
For instance, at the D2C startup, I would repurpose our blog posts into Facebook or Instagram Stories, and sometimes even short videos for YouTube. I had a template prepared specifically to fit the vertical Stories format with snippets of our blogs and links to full articles. Not only did we have consistent social media content, but we also earned an extra source of website traffic.
1. Audit existing content to see what can be repurposed
Content that can be repurposed is usually evergreen, aka timeless and relevant. For example, content like “how to fix a leaky faucet” and “how to wrap a present ” will always be relevant, instead of time-specific content like news.
These types of content will always be relevant and can, therefore, easily be repurposed into infographics, videos, and/or email newsletters because they’ll never fade out of relevance.
Aside from how-tos, other types of content to repurpose are tip lists, data, or case studies — or really, any type of content that isn’t “newsy” or specific to a certain season. For instance, a dental clinic might repurpose a blog post detailing how to floss properly into an infographic for social media or even a podcast.
At Fit Small Business, we also repurpose our website articles into infographics for LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
Repurposing one of our blogs into a LinkedIn infographic.
Auditing your content will be based on what your business already has. If you publish a blog, start by pulling your top 20 or 50 posts and seeing what else you can make them into, like infographics or videos. The same goes for video content. If you’re primarily on social media, note down your posts with the highest engagement rates or reshares.
2. Ideate the best formats and channels for existing content
After collecting the best content for repurposing, the next step was determining what formats to repurpose our existing content into and for what channels. For example, our biggest audience engagement and traffic sources came from our Instagram account, so we mainly repurposed our blogs into Instagram posts and Stories.
Maybe your business wants to expand from social media into email marketing — you can repurpose old social media posts into email newsletters.
Pro tip: Mix up your repurposing ideas
- Splice full-length YouTube videos into vertical videos for social media.
- Turn a blog post into a script for a video or a podcast.
- Turn a podcast or interview into a Q&A-style blog.
- Turn social media infographics into full-length newsletters.
3. Keep an ‘ammunition folder’ of all repurpose-worthy content
One of my biggest takeaways from learning how to repurpose content was keeping a folder of all the content eligible for repurposing into different formats. We called this our “ammunition folder,” which was really just a Google Drive of all the content that was ready for repurposing into other formats, be it blogs, social media posts, or long videos for splicing into Reels or TikToks.
There were no rules for the ammunition bank. As long as the content was relevant, not outdated, and true to our brand, it made the cut.
One improvement I would suggest now, though, is creating a spreadsheet to accompany your ammunition bank to track your content and what it will be repurposed into for each platform. In your sheet, you can track your existing content, what it’ll be repurposed into, and on what channels.
Use a spreadsheet to track your repurposed content.
I prepared a template of this spreadsheet that you can copy and use for your content repurposing strategy. One of the biggest challenges when I was repurposing content was the unexpected abundance of new content I had to deal with and assign to each platform, so having a single spreadsheet to manage them all would have been hugely helpful.
It’s a more organized way of managing your repurposed content and seeing how it performs on each platform. It also helps ensure you don’t accidentally duplicate content.
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4. Make content snack-sized for social media
Now comes the actual repurposing part. Particularly if you’re repurposing blogs for social media, like I did, you want to turn them into easily digestible and snack-sized content pieces. For example, turn blogs into infographics or carousels, or Instagram Stories.
If you have long-form video content, splice it into shorter segments for TikTok or Instagram Reels and resize them into a vertical video format (1080 x 1920 pixels). A good example of a brand that does this well is the pet care brand Chewy.
Or go one further: the next time you make videos, make them for multiple channels. It’s a practice I still follow today. For example, film a vlog for both landscape (horizontal) and portrait (vertical) aspect ratios. Splice those vertical videos into TikTok and Instagram Reel-ready videos and use them as “trailers” to link people to your full video on YouTube.
5. Re-share user-generated content on social media
User-generated content is any content created by your community that didn’t come directly from your brand. And it was one of my biggest superpowers in helping build the D2C brand’s credibility.
Anytime a customer would post about our product on social media, it gave us free publicity that we would then re-share to boost that publicity even more. More social media engagement meant more visibility on the algorithm.
One of the brands that does this consistently well is Airbnb, which regularly reposts content from its customers on X and other social platforms. Stuff like this gives you earned media (aka any media you get from outside sources), which helps build your credibility in the online world.
Airbnb regularly shares content from its customers on X, boosting its free publicity. (Source: @airbnb via X)
Only reshare high-quality content from other users on social media that’s relevant to your brand. Use a tool like SproutSocial to help keep track of all your social media mentions from users and reshare the best ones.
6. Write blogs featuring customer content
The D2C brand I managed also wrote a lot of blogs. Eventually, our brand team started writing blogs featuring our customers’ success stories with our products, using content they posted on social media (with their permission, of course).
These blogs effectively functioned as testimonials for the brand, helping build our credibility. But they also helped with customer retention — it turns out people like to see themselves reflected and represented in a business and valued as people, not just paying customers.
Plus, the customers featured on the site also tended to share our posts and stories on their social media profiles, giving us an extra visibility boost.
Our blogs would feature social media content from our customers. (Source: noissue)
7. Turn those blogs into video testimonials
Because video is increasingly social media’s content of choice, we also reached out to the customers we featured and invited them to be part of a video series discussing their product experience. Soon enough, these videos spun off into their own IGTV and YouTube series that helped humanize the brand and create an active online customer community.
Our blogs eventually evolved into IGTV video testimonials. (Source: noissue via Instagram)
8. Repost high-performing content
Here’s a hill I’ll die on: Resharing your best-performing social media posts isn’t a crime. And more brands probably do it than they’ll admit.
Social media algorithms don’t really care if you re-post old content. What they do care about is how much engagement your content is getting, whether old or new, and how interested users are in your content.
So if you have an old piece of high-performing content, repost it after some time. In fact, keep another content bank of all your best-performing content that you can reshare again when relevance permits.
For example, our D2C brand had a blog post about sustainability that took off on social media a few months back. We reshared it again on Earth Day, where it got even more engagement and resonated with people who shared the same values — aka our target audience.
9. Update and re-publish old blogs
About half of our blog posts were evergreen content, and part of our repurposing strategy was regularly updating them for freshness and to keep their publishing dates recent. This was especially true if there were major developments on the topics we were writing about.
It’s a more time and labor-efficient way to keep a steady stream of published content without constantly writing blogs from scratch. Google’s algorithm also favors fresh content, so it helps with your site’s Google ranking.
Pro tip: When repurposing content, be careful not to over-repurpose and end up with content bloat (i.e., a surplus of content that’s neither relevant nor helpful to your brand). It’ll confuse the brand and harm its credibility.
Always remember your content objectives when repurposing, whether to gain new leads or website visits. Content relevance should always be the top consideration when publishing content, even repurposed content.
You can also hold on to your repurposed content until the right time to publish it. For example, if you’re in the middle of a holiday sales campaign, it probably won’t be the best time to post that infographic repurposed from one of your listicle blogs.
My best content repurposing tool recommendations
What I hope you take away from the steps above is that learning how to repurpose content isn’t confusing or inaccessible. It really just takes some extra creativity and a mindset of sustainability when you’re creating content.
The other best part about repurposing content is that it doesn’t require a long setup process or expertise. I’ve used tools like Canva and iMovie to repurpose content, and know of marketing professionals who use CapCut for vertical videos. These are just some of the tools to add to your marketing tech stack for repurposing content.
Canva
I use Canva the same way you probably use Canva. It’s an easy tool for creating infographics, especially with its many helpful templates, including for Instagram and Facebook Stories.
Resizing images, however, requires a paid plan, so I’ve mostly had to get creative with resizing images for different platforms, which took some extra time. For instance, I had to add more design elements and frames when using a square image on an Instagram Story.
Pricing structure: Freemium
Canva is many people’s go-to for graphics, and it’s still reliable for turning blogs into infographics. (Source: Canva)
Adobe Express
This one I haven’t used as much, but in the few times I have, it’s been a worthy alternative to Canva if you, like me, increasingly find Canva’s best templates and elements locked behind paid plans.
It functions similarly to Canva and is also free, plus it has more unique design templates and elements. Another plus is it has tools like a MOV to GIF converter, a meme creator, and a online video editor (!), all of which are free.
Pricing structure: Freemium
Adobe Express is a worthy alternative to Canva with an online video editor. (Source: Adobe Express)
CapCut
If you’re unfamiliar with CapCut, ask your local TikTok creator—there’s a good chance they use it to edit their TikToks (the two platforms share the same parent company, ByteDance).
CapCut started as an app you can download on your phone, but now, a desktop version does much of the same. I’d stick with the app version, though, as it’s easier to post to TikTok or Instagram Reels straight from your phone. The app’s also much easier to navigate and has the full library of green screen memes and other video templates.
Pricing structure: Freemium
CapCut, developed by ByteDance, helps you create a variety of video sizes. (Source: CapCut)
Audacity
Audacity is a 100% free, open-source software for editing audio that helps create podcasts from videos. It can help extract, edit, and polish your audio. It’s been free for as long as I can remember, and it has always been a handy tool for working with anything audio.
The interface may initially seem confusing, but once you’re familiar with the basic cutting and piecing together of audio, it’ll be super helpful.
Pricing structure: Free
Audacity has always been a free tool for editing audio. (Source: Audacity)
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
When done the right way, yes. For example, updating old blogs with fresh content and republishing them can increase your chances of ranking higher on Google because Google’s algorithm favors fresh content.
This is especially true for high-performing blogs that already get plenty of traffic. Publishing content consistently also makes your website more accessible, and the more people who access your website, the more credible and authoritative it’ll seem to Google, and the higher it’ll rank.
Not at all. Repurposing content can potentially cross intellectual property violations if you repost content created by other users and pass it off as your own, without proper credit or permission.
Always get consent and credit people accordingly when re-sharing user-generated content on your platforms. Otherwise, repurposing your own content into different formats is perfectly legal.
Bottom line
The idea of content repurposing is broadening the value you get from each piece of content you publish. Start by evaluating all the content you currently have that would be a natural fit for other formats. For example, you may have evergreen blog posts that can easily become social media infographics, or long-form videos that can become TikToks or Instagram Reels.
Keep a folder of all your repurpose-worthy content and gradually add it to your content calendar. This is an efficient way of maintaining a steady stream of published content and creating a more unified brand front across multiple channels.
