How to Repurpose Blog Content on Social Media

Repurpose blog content in different mediums and formats to get the most out of each piece.

Repurpose blog content in different mediums and formats to get the most out of each piece. Click To Tweet

You spend a lot of time writing blog posts and coming up with valuable social media content. It would be a shame for it to be used only once. That’s why it is recommended that each piece be reused in as many ways as possible.

Share highlights on Twitter

Twitter is a fantastic place to share the high level tidbits of your posts, both as original tweets or as teasers to get clicks back to the original post. For example, a blog post is usually 400-600 words. There are likely at least 4-5 useful quotes that can be pulled out and used as stand-alone tweets for Twitter. Make sure to include specific calls-to-action, leading readers to retweet and/or share the original post.

Share as image posts

This tip plays off the previous one, but it is valuable enough to warrant its own section. Image posts are incredibly effective as earning engagement. In fact, according to HubSpot and Buffer, image tweets earn nearly 150% more retweets than those without. Use a tool like Pablo (also by Buffer) to overlay the highlight quotes to images. Don’t limit image posts to Twitter. Image posts work great on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and even Google Plus as well.

Republish to LinkedIn

Additionally, posts can be repurposed using LinkedIn’s publishing tool. This gives a post new life by exposing it to a slightly different audience, as it lives natively on LinkedIn. It is important to wait at least two weeks after the original publication date before using LinkedIn, giving ample time for the search engines to index the original post so that it ranks higher than the duplicate. To learn more about how Google views duplicate content, watch this short video.

Summarize using Instagram video

Use Instagram or Twitter’s new video feature to record a short summary of your blog post in a unique, visual way. Be sure to either link back to the post in your tweet or explain how to find the post. For Instagram, the best way to link offsite is to include it in the bio section.

Combine multiple posts into an eBook

An eBook is a fantastic way to repurpose several different blog posts into a format that has a number of different uses. You can take inventory of the most read blog posts over the last few months, and use this format to expound on the topics. Use a freelance service like Upwork or Growth Geeks (my new favorite) to put together a short eBook with all of this content. You can then utilize this as a lead magnet or free giveaway for building your email list.

Writing blog posts is hard work, so you should never let the work you put in go to waste. Use these tips to repurpose blog content and get the most out of your time.

Comments

Adam Smith says

September 4, 2015 at 9:56 am

Great post, Reade. I will be checking out Upwork and Growth Geeks and will try repurposing content on LinkedIn now. The other think I will be looking at is how I can use Periscope more often. I love that the expectation there is that it doesn’t have to be completely polished to go live with video. That’s why I never went ahead with youtube. There’s only so much time…

- Reade Milner says
  
  September 4, 2015 at 9:58 am
  
  Thanks Adam. I really think Growth Geeks would be especially helpful for some of the things you’re working on.
  
  Regarding Periscope, I’m really intrigued by them as well. I’m going to start experimenting with them. I’ll plan to write about my experiences.
  
  Thanks again!
  
Erik Tyler says

September 4, 2015 at 2:54 pm

Great tips, Reade. I actually had no idea about waiting to post on LinkedIn until this. I love when I add another little piece to “the puzzle,” so thanks.

Another thing I’ve taken to doing is making a visual “four-block” or “five-block” of all the posts that I put up in a month, and publishing that at the end of each month of the beginning of the next month, along with shortlinks to all posts. This can be done even on Twitter, and it does bring extra traffic.

Also (though it may be obvious), I include relevant links to previous posts in all new posts (and even go back into old posts and add forward links to newer posts; for instance, if I did a four-week series, I’ll add quick links at the bottom of the prior posts to make it easy for people to hop forward to read the next post, even though it wasn’t available at the time the prior post was written).

Lastly, I always enter each blog post on StumbleUpon with a thorough list of search words (which appears to be unlimited). Here’s the direct link to do that: http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit.