With so many different social media platforms available to us, creating content can feel overwhelming and time consuming and therefore falls down the to-do list, or simply never gets done.
The trick here is to create content that you can then post across all of your social media platforms, to alleviate the pressure of constantly creating fresh content.
As a creativity mentor my number one goal is to make content creation as simple, effective and fun as possible. If you’re not having fun then you’re not going to want to do it. With so much hype around short-form video content, this is the area you should be focussing on, but we’ve been hard wired to believe that we need to be writing value-driven, conversational or educational pieces of long-form content, so switching to short-form content is often the barrier for many entrepreneurs and business owners.
A few months ago I started repurposing TikTok content onto Facebook Reels because it was a new feature for Facebook. The content I was posting was created in 2020, but because it was a new feature for Facebook and because my content strategy hasn’t changed I was able to reuse what was there. This resulted in 50,000 new followers and 40 million views on Facebook and I’ve launched a new business off the back of it because I started to attract a new audience with different needs.
These results and statistics aren’t going to happen to you overnight, but it shows you the power of repurposing content. So, I’m going to share my top seven tips on repurposing content to grow your audience faster:
Tip #1: Create a content strategy that is evergreen and will work on multiple platforms so that your content can be shared on any platform at any time
Tip #2: Always remove the watermark before repurposing video content as this can affect the performance of your content. As an example, if you create something in TikTok, make sure you remove the watermark before sharing it to Instagram. Each platform likes to push out fresh content, so Instagram will penalise you if you use content that includes the TikTok watermark and won’t show it to as many people.
Tip #3: Create content that’s under 1 minute long as it’s easier to share across all platforms, rather than just a few. Pinterest and YouTube shorts love content that’s 1-minute or under. If you concentrate on creating 70% of your content that’s under a minute long then 70% of your content can be shared to four, five or six different platforms with ease.
You can even schedule your content to appear in different places within each platform. With Instagram, for example, you can share video content on your feed, but then share it in your stories in 2-3 weeks time. The same with Facebook, you can share it to your profile first and in your stories a short time later to really maximise visibility and reach.
Once you’ve repurposed content once it doesn’t mean that it’s done and dusted. You can re-use it as many times as you want. Our attention spans are so short these days that your audience will forget that they’ve seen the content before. Or, if they have, it will reinforce the message you were sharing. If your audience is growing then they won’t have seen the content before, so it’s giving you the opportunity to share something that they’ll be interested in and will increase engagement again.
Tip #4: Use hashtags to drive SEO rather than engagement. Platforms are constantly evolving and at the moment they’re focussing on hashtags that are SEO and keyword driven, so rather than tagging the groups that you want to see your content, tag the keywords that your ideal customers and customers will be using to search for your products or services. This will help with impressions and visibility longer term and will also be captured by the Google spiders and will improve the indexing of your website, as some platforms rank your content on Google.
Also, when you can clearly define what your content is about by using specific keywords in your hashtags, the algorithm knows where to place your content. If you’re using generic hashtags then it confuses the AI because it doesn’t know where your content belongs, therefore you’re reducing the visibility and the reach of your content.
Tip #5: Focus on creating content for one platform at a time. As an example, all of my content is created in TikTok and then repurposed across all the other platforms, so I’ve spent time researching TikTok and then experimented with content to see what I like to create, but also to see what my audience is engaging with the most. Don’t be afraid to focus on one platform first, as you need to do your research to find the styles and creatives that you think would be applicable to you, what you feel excited about and what you feel comfortable with doing. Find a creative style that really suits you and one that you can deliver easily without having to think too much about it. Spending time on the platform is really important.
Tip #6: Save ideas when you see them. There’s nothing worse than creating a piece of content but not having a sound that goes with it. Or not having an idea on what to post each day. When you’re scrolling through each platform and you see a piece of content that you enjoy, save the video and save the sound so that you’ve got a bank of ideas to refer to.
Tip #7: Don’t focus on being perfect. Whether you’re a personal brand or a faceless brand, your audience wants to see what’s real, so don’t be afraid to show up without any make-up on, or don’t worry if your washing is hanging up in the background. People like to follow people like them, they’re not looking for perfectly polished Hollywood blockbusters, that’s not what short form video is about. It’s very realistic. Create content from where you’re at and then build up to more polished looking content. Your people will love you for that just as much as if you came out with some super graphics or a slick video.
About the author
Sam Bearfoot is a Creativity Mentor to Online Business Owners who struggle with content creation and confidence online. She’s created over 60 million views and more than 150 thousand followers with her no fluff, simplistic yet creative approach to showing up online. This paired with her decade long business experience in the online space, she’s the ultimate wing woman you want on your creative team.
If you want to find out more about Sam, you can connect with her on LinkedIn.
