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Whether you are involved in social media marketing, or content creation, it can be significantly time-consuming as well as require heavy investments into resources. However, it goes without saying that in today's fast-paced world, recycling content can be a powerful and effective way for marketers to maximise their ROI while still maintaining a consistent presence across platforms. For online brands that integrate interactive video content, directly onto their website, recycling your social media content can amplify your brand's visibility and boost sales simultaneously.

Join along, as this article delves deep into different ways that your online brand can recycle social media content, while optimising audience engagement rates.

Understand Why Repurposing Content Matters for Your Brand

Let's start by exploring why this matters. Social media channels are seen to thrive significantly on regular updates, with numerous changes being regularly brought about by the platforms. Though, this doesn't necessarily mean that, brands need to keep recreating new content. Similarly, syncing new product updates from your socials to websites can often a time be challenging when trying to create multiple different pieces of content for your different media channels, and that's where recycling content comes into play. Here is how it can benefit your ecommerce store:

Consistency and Brand Recall

Repurposing of content gives online business owners the ability to create as well as maintain a constant image or message. By reiterating relevant key messages, at different points in time, tends to help increase brand recall, with studies highlighting that audience recall can go up by almost 70% when the same message is presented in slightly different formats. The more and more your audiences are able to see your messages, there is an increased likelihood for them to remember it.

Maximize Your Budget

When it comes to the creation of social media content, often a time, it can be quite cost intensive. This can be inclusive of hiring photographers, purchasing the required equipment, as well as the time spent on actually brainstorming and creating fresh content at a rapid rate. When content is repurposed, it allows for you to optimise the value of what you created already and allowing you to get more value derived from existing creations, thus saving you significant money.

Boost Engagement and Reach

Did you know that only a small percentage of your built audience will come across your content at any specific time. Sometimes this could be as small as a 5% of your total user base. When content is repurposed, it ensures that your content and marketing messages are seen by a larger target group, which technically boosts your engagementfurther while increasing the odds of viewers interacting with your content.

Extend the Lifespan of Your Content

Last but not least, the amount of effort that is put into making content is significant, but it isn't really proportionate to the lifespan of the content. With a repurposing strategy, you are able to bring in new life to pre-existing media and ensure that it remains relevant with your audiences. As a result, as the year passes, the media that you put so much effort into creating won't necessarily fade and your company will remain relevant.

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How to Effectively Repurpose Your Social Media Videos

Repurposing your content, does not mean that you are using the same old footage again and again. In order to get the best out of your recycling strategy, start with these steps:

Republish Across Multiple Platforms

In simple words, this strategy can be understood as recycling your posts for different platforms. Each platform is known to have its own specific features, and the content that may perform well on a given platform will not necessarily have the same results on other channels. Instead of having to create completely new media, you can republish the existing media with minor adjustments to the style of the relevant channel.

Make the Most of Your Audience’s Short Memory Span

As mentioned above, the lifespan of content is often short-lived, with a majority of your followers having a tendency to miss your posts the first time around. That's why recycling can be so important! Research has shown that content that is posed 1/2 a year or a year ago, can be forgotten.

With the implementation of a strategic approach to post recycled content regularly, with minor changes in formats, can ensure that your organization is able to reach different segments of your established audience. For example, a long form video posted on TikTok earlier on in the year can be reshared as short form content with a different caption.

Recycle Content Tactically

In order to have a successful strategy, it is not just about republishing the same content again and again. In fact, it is about repurposing in a tactical manner, to create differential touchpoints to re-engage your audiences. Look at it this way, imagine what your audiences might need to solve and create your content accordingly! Here are a few tips for you:

    • Change the Context: Your content can be recycled by illustrating alternative perspectives. For example, a product review can be easily turned into a testimonial or a behind the scenes video can become a styling or product use tutorial.
    • Segment Your Content: You can turn, long content into bite-sized media. This simply implies taking long videos and repurposing them into multiple shorter videos to use across your platforms.

Recycle Your Message, Not Just the Format

As mentioned, repurposing can come in one of two forms, modifying the formats or even the message itself. Make sure not to hesitate to re-target pre-existing themes as well as fundamental messages. Instead of trying to re-invent the wheel every chance you have, re-use these core ideas, remember repetition is the key to trust.

Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC)

User generated content is an ideal way to seamlessly recycle your content. By promoting your followers to share their experiences with your product in the spotlight to use this content to create new posts. This not only puts more emphasis on your strategy and message but also builds more of a community around your ecommerce business.

For example, repost customer reviews, pictures, or videos showcasing your products. You can also turn UGC into stories on your Instagram or product detail pages to foster more engagement.

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Examples of Content Recycling Strategies

To give you more ideas, here are some practical examples of how to recycle your content:

  1. Chop up Long-form Content: Take long-form blog posts, videos, or webinars and break them into multiple 30-second clips, key takeaways, or quotes. Share these on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok.
  2. Turn Video Scripts into Visual Carousels: Repurpose video content or podcasts by turning the key takeaways into eye-catching carousels for LinkedIn or Instagram.
  3. Update Old Visuals: If you have high-quality images or videos from campaigns that are a year or two old, refresh them by adding new captions or pairing them with current trends or themes.
  4. Repurpose Advertising Content: Use snippets of your past advertisements to reinforce your company’s message. These can be reposted as Instagram stories or even in paid ads on social media.

Embrace the Power of Repurposing and Drive Reach

In this ever so crowded and competitive world of social media, repurposing your content is not only a smart strategy, but is a must-have in your marketing strategy to maximise your targetted impact. By recycling your content across different platforms and websites, you are not only able to cut down on hours invested and resources while increasing your overall awareness. So what are you waiting for?