The way to Automate Your Content material Repurposing in 5 Steps

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 side: how are you going to preserve 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 important. I’d expend far an excessive amount of mind vitality if I wrote each single social publish 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 internet 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 “considering” out of the method. Right here’s how.

Step 1: Begin along with your authentic content material

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

Automation works finest once 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 circumstances, you’re not considering of one thing new: you’re taking the work you’ve already finished 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 publish), 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 that you must spin up a complete article — who is aware of how busy you’ll be that day.

To prep for automation, that you must decide the place your content material “lives” — akin to your weblog, an e-mail platform for newsletters, an extended LinkedIn publish that you could be need 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), but it surely’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 tip outcome can be. If you have already got a content material repurposing plan, nice! Including automation can be simple.

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

• Format (making a social publish, sharing a hyperlink)
• Quantity (turning one weblog publish 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)

After I first began repurposing, I received out a large 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 stuffed in my calendar. Ultimately, I might visualize all the 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 hassle 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 simply’ll work from. As you schedule upcoming content material, you’ll work from the guidelines, whether or not it’s a mission administration software, 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. 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 particular date sooner or later. I can work from both a listing view or a calendar view.

Nevertheless you’re planning your content material at the moment, you should use the identical software or app with automation.  I add labels in Trello to determine if the content material is new versus repurposed.

When you begin including automated reminders or to-do objects to your current mission administration software, 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 software to separate your new content material out of your repurposed content material. You might also 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 mission administration software 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:

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

Or:

1. If a new publish 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 embrace 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, akin to repurposing the content material into a number of social posts, on completely different platforms, and re-share the article six months later. One in all 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:

1. Create a social publish on LinkedIn in three weeks
2. Create a social publish on LinkedIn in six weeks
3. Create a thread on Twitter in eight weeks
4. Share the article in my e-newsletter (with no particular due date)
5. Tweet a hyperlink to the article in six months

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

While you arrange automation, you need the vacation spot to include as a lot info as attainable, akin to a hyperlink to the unique content material or the total textual content of the content material (like the unique social publish). That manner, once 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 know-how is quickly growing, I’ve performed round with tossing whole articles I’ve written into ChatGPT and requested it to condense the important thing concepts right into a LinkedIn publish. The output must be tweaked (loads), but it surely’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 in regards to the output. You’ll be able to write the output on to your vacation spot so if you end up 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 exhibits 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 publish 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 publish 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, normally 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 wanting on the authentic with contemporary eyes (weeks or months later). I’ll pull out no matter perception makes probably the most sense at a time to create my repurposed publish. 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 contemporary in your thoughts. Then you definitely’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 publish.
• Every time I converse on a panel, I add a hyperlink to the recording in Airtable. The brand new Airtable document triggers Trello to evaluate 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 publish (and even typically develop on the concept 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 put in writing. Perhaps a bigger content material crew 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 publish for every article I wrote. As soon as I had a deal with on that, I added increasingly 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.