How you can Automate Your Content material Repurposing in 5 Steps

The recommendation is in every single place: repurpose your content material! Get extra mileage out of your weblog by turning it into social posts! Flip your LinkedIn posts into a number of tweets!

However this recommendation lacks the logistical side: how are you going to maintain monitor of one thing you printed at the moment and repurpose it over the subsequent few weeks?

As a contract content material marketer and journalist, my on-line presence is vital. I’d expend far an excessive amount of mind vitality if I wrote each single social put up from scratch. As a substitute, I’ve discovered a approach to make use of automation to construct out reminders to repurpose my calendar.

My efforts have paid off. I’ve tripled my on-line following (to 4,500 followers on LinkedIn) in 18 months, and most of my work is inbound. I schedule two posts for LinkedIn per day and really, only a few posts are internet new content material. Most are a repurpose of one thing I’ve written elsewhere.

Whether or not you’re a workforce of 1 or a workforce of twenty, it’s the identical state of affairs: you’ve received to bake a repurposing plan into your course of. And automation can take the “considering” out of the method. Right here’s how.

Step 1: Begin together with your authentic content material

On the middle of your content material repurposing might be your authentic content material: weblog, eBooks, webinars, podcasts, and social posts.

Automation works finest if you’re going from long-form content material to short-form content material, or from one social platform to a different. As a result of in these instances, you’re not considering of one thing new: you’re taking the work you’ve already achieved and prepping it for a brand new platform.

You’ll be able to attempt the reverse (like beginning with a Twitter thread and utilizing automation to remind you to create a full-blown weblog put up), however the great thing about automation is including a date that you just plan to re-share the content material. That’s tougher to do when you could spin up a whole article — who is aware of how busy you’ll be that day.

To prep for automation, you could decide the place your content material “lives” — reminiscent of your weblog, an electronic mail platform for newsletters, an extended LinkedIn put up that you could be need to repurpose right into a shorter tweet, and different content material you create.

Finally, you may take into consideration repurposing your repurposing (and sharing your repurposed content material a second time), nevertheless it’s best to have your model new content material as a place to begin.

Step 2: Create your content material repurposing plan

You’ll be able to’t begin down the trail of automation with out figuring out what the top outcome might be. If you have already got a content material repurposing plan, nice! Including automation might be straightforward.

Your plan ought to embody your beginning piece of content material and the top outcome. You’ll want to consider:

• Format (making a social put up, sharing a hyperlink)
• Quantity (turning one weblog put up into three social posts)
• Cadence (how usually you’ll share one thing you’ve repurposed)
• Platform (the place will you publish the repurposed content material)

Once I first began repurposing, I received out an enormous calendar (okay, it may need been Airtable as a result of I’m a geek like that) and “drew out” my plan. I began with an article that I printed on Medium and a hypothetical publish date of the primary Monday of the month. I’d share the hyperlink the subsequent day on my social platforms. Then I’d plan to create LinkedIn posts primarily based on concepts within the article and share them three weeks and 6 weeks after the preliminary publication date.

I crammed in my calendar. Finally, I may visualize the entire days all through the month after I’d have repurposed content material to share (and, conversely, the times I’d have to create new content material). I can preserve a excessive quantity of social posts as a result of I achieve this a lot repurposing, and the trouble is way decrease than new content material.

As soon as I had a plan, I used to be able to create automation.

Step 3: Select a content material repurposing vacation spot

While you automate your content material repurposing, you’re making a “guidelines” that you just’ll work from. As you schedule upcoming content material, you’ll work from the guidelines, whether or not it’s a venture administration instrument, a to-do app, or a spreadsheet.

What does this seem like IRL? I plan all of my upcoming content material (each new and repurposed) in Trello. Once I publish one thing new, automation provides a brand new reminder in Trello (known as playing cards) for me to repurpose that content material on a particular date sooner or later. I can work from both an inventory view or a calendar view.

Nonetheless you’re planning your content material at the moment, you need to use the identical instrument or app with automation.  I add labels in Trello to establish if the content material is new versus repurposed.

For those who begin including automated reminders or to-do gadgets to your present venture administration instrument, it would look overwhelming — particularly in case you’re not planning your repurposed content material at the moment.

It’s best to create separate views or filters inside your instrument to separate your new content material out of your repurposed content material. You may additionally need to set up your repurposed content material by platform — both the unique supply or the ultimate vacation spot.

Step 4: Arrange your automation

Automation instruments join two separate apps collectively. The unique supply of your content material is the primary app and your venture administration instrument or spreadsheet for content material planning is the second app. Most automation instruments work in the identical approach: if <one thing> occurs, then <one thing else> will occur.

For instance:

1. If a new article is printed
2. Then create a reminder in Trello to repurpose the content material as a LinkedIn put up in 3 weeks

Or:

1. If a new put up is scheduled in Buffer for my LinkedIn profile
2. Then create a reminder in Trello to repurpose the content material as a Tweet in 2 weeks

I take advantage of Zapier, however different instruments embody Make and IFFTT. The Zapier setup features a Set off (“this occurs”) after which an motion (“one thing else occurs”).

Automation instruments can deal with multiple “then” motion. Most of mine have a number of steps, reminiscent of repurposing the content material into a number of social posts, on completely different platforms, and re-share the article six months later. Considered one of my extra refined content material repurposing automation has 5 actions.For each article printed on Medium, playing cards are added to Trello to remind me of the next:

1. Create a social put up on LinkedIn in three weeks
2. Create a social put up on LinkedIn in six weeks
3. Create a thread on Twitter in eight weeks
4. Share the article in my publication (with out a particular due date)
5. Tweet a hyperlink to the article in six months

You too can use filters in automation instruments to take completely different actions from the identical supply. Once I schedule a holiday-specific put up in Buffer, I don’t need to repurpose it later. I add a tag in Buffer known as “Vacation” and filter these out in Zapier.

While you arrange automation, you need the vacation spot to include as a lot data as doable, reminiscent of a hyperlink to the unique content material or the complete textual content of the content material (like the unique social put up). That approach, if you work on creating your repurposed content material, the unique is true at your fingertips.

Step 5: Work out of your content material calendar

Automation will solely create reminders so that you can repurpose content material sooner or later: you’ll nonetheless want to put in writing the repurposed content material from the unique. As AI writing expertise is quickly creating, I’ve performed round with tossing total articles I’ve written into ChatGPT and requested it to condense the important thing concepts right into a LinkedIn put up. The output must be tweaked (so much), nevertheless it’s a place to begin.

Zapier has integration with GPT-3, so it’s doable to incorporate AI as a step in your automation with an instruction to “Repurpose textual content from X supply right into a Twitter thread” with some directions in regards to the output. You’ll be able to write the output on to your vacation spot so if you find yourself able to schedule the repurposed content material, some concepts are ready for you.

In my workflow, I’ll open Trello and have a look at the upcoming repurposed content material I have to schedule. Every Trello card reveals me the channel for the repurposed content material, the due date, and the textual content of or a hyperlink to my authentic content material.

This began as a LinkedIn put up scheduled in Buffer. The textual content of the Buffer merchandise was copied over to my Trello card. I can see by the Label that I have to create a Twitter put up from this content material, due tomorrow.

I’ll write my repurposed social posts in Buffer and schedule them in keeping with the date in Trello. I do that work in bulk, often scheduling about two weeks’ price of repurposed content material in a single sitting.

The good thing about ready till the repurposed content material comes due in Trello is that I’m wanting on the authentic with recent eyes (weeks or months later). I’ll pull out no matter perception makes essentially the most sense at a time to create my repurposed put up. However one other various could be to put in writing the repurposed content material instantly after it arrives in your vacation spot, whereas the unique content material remains to be recent in your thoughts. Then you definately’re solely scheduling the repurposed content material later; you’re not writing and scheduling.

Some professional suggestions for managing content material automation

I’m a one-person repurposing machine, so I’ve loads of automation arrange!

Listed below are another issues I do:

• Export my LinkedIn feedback as soon as a month and import them into Zapier to create Trello playing cards to repurpose my feedback as a brand new LinkedIn put up.
• At any time when I communicate on a panel, I add a hyperlink to the recording in Airtable. The brand new Airtable report triggers Trello to evaluation the recording and create social posts from what I stated on the panel.
• I take part in loads of Slack communities. I save a few of my very own feedback in Slack and people are the set off to repurpose the remark as a social put up (and even typically increase on the thought as a full article).

Let content material repurposing develop into a flywheel

Once I first added repurposing automation to my workflow, I added an excessive amount of. Since I handle all of my very own work, I had wayyyy too many steps, and I couldn’t sustain with the repurposed content material I wanted to put in writing. Perhaps a bigger content material workforce would be capable of deal with my grand plans, however as a solo individual, I used to be overwhelmed. So I scaled again and began with creating one social put up for every article I wrote. As soon as I had a deal with on that, I added an increasing number of automation.

However now I’ve constructed momentum. I repurpose my repurposed content material. It’s created a flywheel impact and I get a lot extra content material with far much less effort.

I by no means have to consider how I’ll preserve my on-line presence, as a result of each time I sit right down to schedule my repurposed content material, I do know precisely what I want to put in writing.