7 Clever Ways to Repurpose Content for Social Media

“What should I post on social media today?”

How many times do you find yourself asking this question?

To build a strong social media presence, you need to publish a consistent stream of content. But what happens when you’re short of time, manpower, or ideas in general?

The good news is that you don’t always have to create content from scratch. A time-saving and cost-effective tactic you can use is repurposing content for social media.

Repurposing content refers to reformatting a top-performing content asset and reusing it across other channels.

After including this tactic in their social media strategy, Venngage was able to grow its social media traffic by:

• 300% on Twitter
• 200% on LinkedIn
• 150% on Pinterest
• 100% on Facebook

In this article, I’ve listed seven clever ways you can repurpose content for social media and increase visibility.

Highlight quotes and statistics from blog posts

Let’s say you’ve spent hours writing a well-researched blog post. It goes up on your website and shortly after, it’s forgotten.

You might think putting out a generic social media post with a link to the article will drive traffic to your blog but that’s far from effective.

A better way to maximize reach and drive traffic would be to repurpose the blog post for social media content.

How do you do that?

By creating individual social media posts focused on a quote, tip, or statistic from the blog post. You can place the link to the entire blog post in the caption or Instagram bio.

This is more effective than a generic social media post because it offers value and makes people curious to learn more by clicking on the article link, thereby driving traffic to your website.

Here’s an example of a social media post by the New York Times where they’ve curated quotes from a larger COVID-related story published on their website.

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Publish mini-infographics

From being engaging and highly shareable to increasing website traffic by 12%, the power of infographics can’t be denied.

While every brand would like to create infographics regularly, the truth is it is a time-consuming process.

Once you get a grasp on how to make infographics, the question is: what are you doing to maximize its potential on social media and boost visibility?

Instead of posting full-length infographics on social media and have people view cropped versions, break them down into smaller graphics.

Identify important data points or key messages from the master infographic and create mini-infographics around them.

By repurposing the infographic for social media, you will be able to attract more views and promote the infographic in the process.

Here’s an example of a mini-infographic posted by Venngage which is a snippet of a larger infographic published on the website.

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Share testimonials and reviews as social media posts

88% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, proving the important role reviews and testimonials play in building trust and influencing purchase decisions.

While one half of the story is gathering customer reviews, the other half is strategically showcasing them to your social media following. And what better way to do that than by creating social media posts?

Start by gathering reviews from your website, Facebook page, Google My Business, and other review sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, Trustpilot, and Amazon, among others.

The next step is to create visually-appealing social media posts, with one post dedicated to one review. It’s also a good idea to mention the customer’s name in the visual and tag them in the caption, if possible.

Showcasing testimonials is a great way to build credibility as it gives your audience a glimpse into how your brand is perceived and is a lot more powerful than branded content or advertisements.

Here’s an example of a social media post by Mailchimp, featuring a customer story.

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Condense listicles into carousel posts

Whether it’s listicles, roundup posts, podcast episodes, or even eBooks, everyone doesn’t have the patience to sit through them all.

One good way to turn that long-form content into snackable social media posts is by creating carousel posts on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

It’s interesting to note that carousel posts receive higher engagement than images or video posts on Instagram. They help you communicate information in an easy-to-digest manner while keeping readers engaged.

So, condense a longer blog post or eBook and outline the key takeaways in a carousel post. Make sure you focus on one idea per slide to avoid overwhelming the readers. You can also add images or icons to create a more engaging experience.

Take a look at this carousel post by Asana. They’ve used this format to showcase the results of their survey, compelling readers to click on the link in the caption to view the entire survey.

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Turn blog posts into Twitter threads

Two years ago, Rand Fishkin made an interesting observation about Twitter giving more prominence to tweets without URLs.

He stated, “Tweets without URLs definitely correlate to more engagement+amplification (but this could be a result of user behavior, not intentional network design).”

So, if you’ve been posting generic tweets with a link to your blog post and wondering why they’re not driving any traffic, now you know why.

What you can do instead is repurpose top-performing blog posts into Twitter threads. This is likely to increase impressions and engagement.

You can tell a story, build a narrative, highlight key takeaways, or offer unique insights with Twitter threads. Be sure to add images, videos, GIFs, or even polls in the individual tweets, ending with a link to your blog post in the last tweet of the thread.

Here’s an example of Slack sharing a client success story through a Twitter thread.

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Convert video clips into GIFs

Another content asset that’s great-to-have but is incredibly time-consuming to create is video content. This is why it isn’t wise to create a video, post it on social media once and forget about it.

Apart from posting snippets of the video on social media, a clever way to boost views and engagement is by repurposing video clips into GIFs. They are shareable and capture attention on social media, helping you add context in a visually-appealing way.

GIFs can be used to:

• Evoke an emotion
• Show a product in action
• Demonstrate a quick process
• Make boring data more engaging

You can use tools such as Giphy or EZGif to create GIFs.

Here’s a GIF Pizza Hut created from one of their promotional videos with Kevin Hart.

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Source content from your brand community

Do you have a brand community that allows your customers to connect with each other, engage, and offer help? If yes, look into the candid conversations happening in your community forum and source the user-generated content to share on social media.

Sourcing content from your community allows you to showcase social proof and position your brand as a leader that is facilitating actual human conversations.

Below are some of the common posts sourced from the brand community:

• Lesser-known tips and tricks about your product shared in the community forum
• Success stories shared by the customers in the community
• Product updates and new features shared in the community
• Insights generated from polls created in the community
• Funny community discussions added by members

Here is an example of community content posted on social media:

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The takeaway: repurpose content for social media to boost visibility

As marketers, we’re so busy thinking about the next “new” piece of content to create that we overlook the importance of maximizing the potential of our existing content assets.

So, take a moment to review your repository of content and identify top-performing assets that can be repurposed for social media.

Not only will this save you time but it will also help you maximize reach and schedule a consistent stream of social media content.

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