The power of repurposing content for a small business owner.

We all know that content creation is a full-on aspect of running a small business. Repurposing content is such an under utilised technique. There seems to be a misconception that everything you share needs to be a fresh idea.

Not only does this put a lot of pressure on a freelancer's workload, but it means your business is missing out on the powerful benefits of repurposing.

Before I go any further, just to clarify repurposing is: changing something slightly to make it suitable for a new purpose. This is not to be confused with republishing which is when you share a piece of content in exactly the same form as before. (This can also be useful but needs careful consideration regarding timings between postings.)

Repurposing content reduces your workload because you aren’t starting from scratch Meaning you not only save time on the creation and editing but you also put less stress on your creativity. Coming up with new ideas requires a lot of energy. When you repurpose content you give your creative brain power a break without losing any consistency in your online presence. This can be especially useful to you during busy times, whether that’s a busy spell in your client-facing work or when family life means you have less time to spend at work, Christmas is a prime example.

The online world is a noisy place, coupled with people's busy lives, and it's understandable that your people don’t always remember or have time to instantly action things they see. Repurposing content acts as a way of reminding your audience of the value you have to share. As well as serving as a reminder each time you share a piece of content you will catch different people from your audience, extending the overall reach of that particular message. Old content is often still relevant because you have new followers who won’t of seen it.

There are two styles of repurposing. Either tweaking and updating a post to put out on the same platform or reformatting a piece of content to go out on a different channel. For example, for a quick tweak you might use an old caption with a new image to share on social media but in a reformatting situation, you could take a blog post and turn it into multiple short posts for social media, an email to your list and pins for Pinterest. As you can see spending time reformatting content helps you make lighter work of keeping up with your wider marketing activities. To find out more details about how I recommend you repurpose your blog posts check out my blog: How to repurposing your blog posts.

If you’re new to repurposing I suggest going to your library of past content and see what you have that did well or that forms part of your business’s core message or that demonstrates your expertise. Once you have got into the habit of repurposing it will become easier to see opportunities to do this with content at the time of creation and it will form part of your standard content creation process. Streamlining your content creation still further.

What will you repurpose first? If you’d like to run an idea past me, pop me a message.