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The recommendation is all over the 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 facet: how are you going to preserve monitor of one thing you printed as we speak and repurpose it over the subsequent few weeks?
As a contract content material marketer and journalist, my on-line presence is crucial. I’d expend far an excessive amount of mind power if I wrote each single social put up from scratch. As an alternative, I’ve discovered a manner 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 web new content material. Most are a repurpose of one thing I’ve written elsewhere.
Whether or not you’re a crew of 1 or a crew 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 “pondering” out of the method. Right here’s how.
Step 1: Begin along 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 whenever 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 pondering of one thing new: you’re taking the work you’ve already completed and prepping it for a brand new platform.
You may 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 simply plan to re-share the content material. That’s tougher to do when it’s essential spin up a whole article — who is aware of how busy you’ll be that day.
To prep for automation, it’s essential decide the place your content material “lives” — equivalent to your weblog, an e mail platform for newsletters, an extended LinkedIn post that you could be wish to repurpose right into a shorter tweet, and different content material you create.
Ultimately, you possibly can take into consideration repurposing your repurposing (and sharing your repurposed content material a second time), however it’s best to have your model new content material as a place to begin.
Step 2: Create your content material repurposing plan
You may’t begin down the trail of automation with out understanding what the tip consequence 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 tip consequence. 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 typically you’ll share one thing you’ve repurposed)
- Platform (the place will you publish the repurposed content material)
After 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 based mostly on concepts within the article and share them three weeks and 6 weeks after the preliminary publication date.
I stuffed in my calendar. Ultimately, I might visualize all the days all through the month once 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 accomplish that a lot repurposing, and the trouble is far 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
Once you automate your content material repurposing, you’re making a “guidelines” that you simply’ll work from. As you schedule upcoming content material, you’ll work from the guidelines, whether or not it’s a challenge administration instrument, a to-do app, or a spreadsheet.
What does this appear like IRL? I plan all of my upcoming content material (each new and repurposed) in Trello. After I publish one thing new, automation provides a brand new reminder in Trello (referred to as playing cards) for me to repurpose that content material on a selected date sooner or later. I can work from both an inventory view or a calendar view.
Nonetheless you’re planning your content material as we speak, 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.
Should you begin including automated reminders or to-do objects to your current challenge administration instrument, it’d look overwhelming — particularly if you happen to’re not planning your repurposed content material as we speak.
You need to create separate views or filters inside your instrument to separate your new content material out of your repurposed content material. You may additionally wish to arrange your repurposed content material by platform — both the unique supply or the ultimate vacation spot.
Step 4: Arrange your automation
Automation tools join two separate apps collectively. The unique supply of your content material is the primary app and your challenge administration instrument or spreadsheet for content material planning is the second app. Most automation instruments work in the identical manner: if <one thing> occurs, then <one thing else> will occur.
For instance:
- If a new article is printed
- Then create a reminder in Trello to repurpose the content material as a LinkedIn put up in 3 weeks
Or:
- If a new put up is scheduled in Buffer for my LinkedIn profile
- Then create a reminder in Trello to repurpose the content material as a Tweet in 2 weeks
I exploit 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 a couple of “then” motion. Most of mine have a number of steps, equivalent to repurposing the content material into a number of social posts, on totally different platforms, and re-share the article six months later. Considered one of my extra subtle 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:
- Create a social put up on LinkedIn in three weeks
- Create a social put up on LinkedIn in six weeks
- Create a thread on Twitter in eight weeks
- Share the article in my publication (with out a particular due date)
- Tweet a hyperlink to the article in six months
You may as well use filters in automation instruments to take totally different actions from the identical supply. After I schedule a holiday-specific put up in Buffer, I don’t wish to repurpose it later. I add a tag in Buffer referred to as “Vacation” and filter these out in Zapier.
Once you arrange automation, you need the vacation spot to comprise as a lot info as attainable, equivalent to a hyperlink to the unique content material or the total textual content of the content material (like the unique social put up). That manner, whenever 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 write down the repurposed content material from the unique. As AI writing technology is quickly creating, I’ve performed round with tossing complete 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 (lots), however it’s a place to begin.
Zapier has integration with GPT-3, so it’s attainable 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 concerning the output. You may write the output on to your vacation spot so when you find yourself able to schedule the repurposed content material, some concepts are ready for you.
In my workflow, I’ll open Trello and take 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 based on 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 advantage of ready till the repurposed content material comes due in Trello is that I’m trying on the authentic with contemporary 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 different can be to write down the repurposed content material instantly after it arrives in your vacation spot, whereas the unique content material continues to be contemporary 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 a whole lot 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.
- Each time I converse on a panel, I add a hyperlink to the recording in Airtable. The brand new Airtable document triggers Trello to overview the recording and create social posts from what I mentioned on the panel.
- I take part in a whole lot 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 generally develop on the thought as a full article).
Let content material repurposing turn into a flywheel
After 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 write down. Possibly a bigger content material crew would be capable to deal with my grand plans, however as a solo particular person, 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 would like to write down.
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