If you have long-form blog content, guess what?
You also have:
A roadmap for an interesting podcast episode
A script for a YouTube video
Talking points for a training session or course
A chapter of a book
Data for a slide deck or infographic
Pieces of a Twitter or LinkedIn thread
The thing people forget about writing long-form blog posts is that in doing so, they've already completed the heavy lifting when it comes to creating something valuable.
Think about it: Writing a high-quality evergreen blog post is much like writing a solid research paper. It requires a lot of time and effort, several rounds of edits, and if you’re a good writer, some elements of fun that make the piece enjoyable to read.
Once completed, you’ve done the research, gathered the key data/research/stats, tied in visuals, and created a helpful walk-through on a certain topic. That content you worked so hard to put together shouldn’t just sit there and collect digital dust after the initial publish promotion.
This is the era of repurposing content. So…why not do that? Use your blog post as the framework/script for your next iteration in a different format.
Repurposing in action
I’ve used this repurposing approach many times and in many different ways. Here’s what it looks like in action:
My newsletter articles sometimes get compiled into eBooks, like this free one and this premium one. (Note: If that content gets turned into a paid resource, I remove it from my archive and site so it’s only available to those who’ve purchased so it can’t just be dug up and read for free!)
Some of my top-performing blog posts have been turned into YouTube videos (this one has almost 7,000 views, which is big for me!)
Emma and I often pull from topics we’ve written about for our own blogs/newsletters when prepping for our podcast, and it speeds up the production process a TON by giving us comprehensive talking points to cover when we sit down to record
I’ve pulled from several long-form blog posts I’ve written as the road map for paid training sessions, like this one on how to write an About page
I’ve done private workshops and speaking gigs where I pull much of my talking points from pieces I’ve reported on for business outlets, like this one I wrote for Vogue Business
Now, you and I both know this idea of content repurposing is not a new one. It’s been a best practice in the marketing world for many years.
But I wanted to talk about it today because so often, marketers and writers forget to do it. Life gets busy, and this practice often gets pushed to the back burner. “I’ll get to that later,” we tell ourselves. But then…we never do.
In doing that, however, we’re forcing ourselves to work harder, not smarter. With a little bit of tailoring, you can take a piece you worked hard on and make it shiny and new for a whole new platform and audience. It just makes sense, you know?
So this is your reminder to do it. Put it on your to-do list.
