The right way to Automate Your Content material Repurposing in 5 Steps

The recommendation is in all places: 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 will you maintain observe of one thing you revealed right this moment and repurpose it over the following few weeks?

As a contract content material marketer and journalist, my on-line presence is essential. I might expend far an excessive amount of mind vitality if I wrote each single social put up from scratch. As an alternative, I’ve discovered a means 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 group of 1 or a group 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 together with your unique content material

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

Automation works greatest 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 instances, you’re not pondering of one thing new: you’re taking the work you’ve already achieved and prepping it for a brand new platform.

You possibly can strive 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 more durable to do when you might want to spin up a complete article — who is aware of how busy you’ll be that day.

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

Ultimately, you may 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 possibly can’t begin down the trail of automation with out figuring out what the top consequence shall be. If you have already got a content material repurposing plan, nice! Including automation shall be simple.

Your plan ought to embody your beginning piece of content material and the top 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 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 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 revealed on Medium and a hypothetical publish date of the primary Monday of the month. I might share the hyperlink the following day on my social platforms. Then I might 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. Ultimately, 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 must 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 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 appear 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 (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 right this moment, you need to use the identical instrument or app with automation.  I add labels in Trello to determine if the content material is new versus repurposed.

If you happen to begin including automated reminders or to-do objects to your present venture administration instrument, it’d look overwhelming — particularly if you happen to’re not planning your repurposed content material right this moment.

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 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 means: if <one thing> occurs, then <one thing else> will occur.

For instance:

1. If a new article is revealed
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 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, similar to 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 subtle content material repurposing automation has 5 actions.For each article revealed 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 e-newsletter (with no particular due date)
5. Tweet a hyperlink to the article in six months

You may also 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 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 potential, similar to a hyperlink to the unique content material or the complete textual content of the content material (like the unique social put up). That means, 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 jot down the repurposed content material from the unique. As AI writing know-how 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), however it’s a place to begin.

Zapier has integration with GPT-3, so it’s potential 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 possibly can 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 take a look at the upcoming repurposed content material I must 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 unique 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 must 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 good thing about ready till the repurposed content material comes due in Trello is that I’m trying on the unique 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 put up. However one other different can be to jot down the repurposed content material instantly after it arrives in your vacation spot, whereas the unique content material remains to be contemporary in your thoughts. You then’re solely scheduling the repurposed content material later; you’re not writing and scheduling.

Some professional ideas for managing content material automation

I’m a one-person repurposing machine, so I’ve numerous 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 file triggers Trello to evaluation the recording and create social posts from what I mentioned on the panel.
• I take part in numerous 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 concept 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 jot down. Perhaps a bigger content material group would be capable of 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 increasingly more 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 jot down.