You’ve written a blog post, and you’re feeling pretty good about it. You’ve burned through hours of research for the right statistic and perfect quote, spent long nights squinting at your word processor’s spell-check function, and mastered the ins and outs of website editing.
Whether you’ve written something to sell a product or pull at your readers’ heartstrings, you have a blog post and you want people to read it.
Great! But how, exactly, do you turn an article skimmer into a blog reader? How do you find and grow your audience?
Repurposing content for social media is one of the best ways to gain a larger audience and appeal to different types of readers. This guide will go through the benefits of repurposing content for social media and offer tips on how to do just that.
Reasons to use blog content for a social media post
Content repurposing allows you to take an original post and turn it into multiple new social media posts. That means less writing and more promotion for a greater audience reach.
While the goal is not to continuously recycle existing content into new posts—you will have to create new blog content eventually—it gives you a chance to make more use of the content you already have and adds a buffer between each new post.
How can you repurpose blog content for social media to make the content more efficient?
Highlighting excerpts from your blog and promoting those snippets can be a great way to engage readers. Did you write a how-to guide? Creating an infographic with a brief summary of each step gives your audience access to key information in a short amount of time.
Meanwhile, posting excerpts on social media can sum up the main idea of your article in one short, succinct quote that entices readers to learn more.
How can repurposing blog content for social media help you reach a larger audience?
Repurposing content for social media is a surefire way to improve your search engine optimization (SEO). By posting your blog content on multiple social media platforms, you’ll have more opportunities to use keywords.
It also gives you more backlink openings. If you link to your blog from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, your blog will have four more potential avenues for your audience to find your post and click through to your site.
Moreover, social media posts are highly shareable. More shares make for more traffic to your posts, which boosts your search engine rankings.
Finally, repurposing your content provides you with the opportunity to redeem an old post that may not have performed as well. By returning to your old post, sprucing it up, and promoting it on social media, you’ll be able to give it a second chance to reach an audience.
How can repurposing blog content for social media increase brand awareness?
A greater social media presence gives you more opportunity to get your brand’s message across. If you publish content on your website, only the people who know to check your site will see your blog post. By repurposing that content and promoting it across platforms, you’ll have more opportunity to gain a new audience.
Impactful content is also one of the major ways you can show your brand’s personality. The more content you have over different platforms, the more opportunity you get to engage different audience demographics and show the world who you are.
Best types of blog content to repurpose for social media
Maybe you’re used to writing website copy or blogging every week, but how does that translate to social media? With so much content to choose from, it’s important to understand what content works best with different social media platforms.
How should you choose blog content to repurpose for social media?
As you consider different ideas for content to repurpose on social media, keep in mind that the key to repurposing content is to make sure the content is good. But what does quality content look like? Here are some things to consider when choosing blog content to repurpose:
- Which of your blog posts has performed the best?
- Is the content in line with your brand’s personality? Does the tone of your content fit the image you want to project?
- Why do you think your audience will enjoy or connect with this particular content? Who are you trying to reach? Make a short list of reasons why the blog content you’ve chosen will appeal to an audience. If you can’t think of anything, that’s a sign to look at a different blog post.
- What takeaways, key facts, or core pieces of information (like statistics or quotes) can you highlight from this blog content? These snippets will be essential: because they are quick to read and easily digestible, they’ll be great for social media.
What are the benefits of choosing event-specific blog content to repurpose for social media?
There are two types of blog content to choose from: event specific and evergreen.
Event-specific content is valuable for when you want to reach an audience of people who didn’t attend a particular event or provide a recap for those who did. Sharing moments from the event can also garner attention and potentially advertise for the next event. Webinar content and recaps of lectures or online meetings, for example, are event specific.
You can post recordings of the event online—Facebook is an especially good place for this because it enables videos under 240 minutes long and file sizes up to ten gigabytes. Moreover, Facebook is giving video-sharing sites like YouTube a run for their money: more than four billion video views take place on Facebook every day. Plus, native videos (videos uploaded directly to Facebook) get 478 percent more shares on Facebook than videos from other sources.
Instead of posting the entire event, another option is to post video snippets—think teasers for TEDx Talks.
While the event is ongoing, you can also live-tweet it to share key takeaways and keep nonattenders updated. Attendees can do a lot of social media sharing for you as they take, tag, and share pictures and videos.
After the event, you can also add attendees to an email list for that event or for your brand. A newsletter for people who went to the event may help spread word of future events and garner interest.
What are the benefits of choosing evergreen blog content to repurpose for social media?
Unlike event-specific content, evergreen content has long-term viability. It will be relevant for years to come and can be a powerful way to drive traffic to your site.
Evergreen content is often niche or in depth. Consider research, how-to guides, or case studies. Because its information stays up to date, evergreen content provides a source of regular, organic traffic. Occasionally, evergreen content may need to be refreshed if statistics change, links break, or something similar occurs. On the whole, however, you won’t have to make major, frequent changes, which saves time and effort.
How to edit your blog content for a social media post
In many ways, editing blog content for social media is similar to starting a blog because you have to consider similar factors like your audience and message. Let’s look into some dos and don’ts for editing your blog content.
What should you consider when editing blog content for a social media post?
One of the most important things to consider is your audience. Will your post entice readers to engage with or follow you? Try listing out reasons why the content you’ve chosen to repurpose will appeal to your audience, and keep those reasons in mind as you turn it into a post for social media.
Next, consider the platform. Who uses what platform? How can you appeal to different age groups and aesthetics? A LinkedIn post, for example, should be written with professionalism in mind. Alternately, an Instagram caption should be short, sweet, and potentially humorous—and you can get away with emojis.
What should you avoid when editing blog content for a social media post?
As you consider your social media marketing strategy, keep in mind some pitfalls to avoid. At best, you could lose your readers’ interest; at worst, you could alienate or offend your target audience.
Consider the mechanics of your social media copy, and make sure the content is grammatically sound. A misspelling or an improper use of the word their can put readers off and make them question your professionalism.
Likewise, ambiguity creates confusion. Be as clear as possible when you write captions and edit your blog content. It’s better to be too clear than not clear enough.
Overly formal writing is less approachable for a general audience. On blogs and social media, a more colloquial, laid-back way of writing will be more inviting for readers than paragraph upon paragraph of industry jargon.
With that said, some social media platforms, like LinkedIn, expect a certain level of professionalism. It’s all about finding the right balance.
In that vein, humor can be a great way to connect with your audience—but only when it’s warranted. Have you ever told a joke that fell flat at a party? A poorly timed tweet or outdated meme can lose your audience’s interest. In particular, jokes at a person’s expense are hurtful and should be avoided.
What are the most effective ways of editing blog content for a social media post?
As you edit your content, keep your target audience in mind, and build your readers’ curiosity. Asking questions encourages conversation and connection between your audience and your brand. Creating a graphic that features a particularly startling statistic or magnetic quote, for example, will leave readers wanting to learn more.
Finally, use second person to address the readers and center the audience. The social media posts you’re creating aren’t about who you are. Your message should discuss what you can do for your audience, whether you’re teaching them, entertaining them, or selling them something.
How to adapt a single blog post to several types of social media posts
When it comes to content editing for social media, there are a few things to keep in mind.
How should you adapt a single blog post to different social media platforms’ requirements?
Across platforms, the file-formatting requirements, social media demographics, overall aesthetics, and expectations for interaction differ vastly. Rather than hit the share button on your blog post and let the same content loose on every social media platform at once, you must adapt it to each different platform.
A flashy, comedic Snapchat story may reek of unprofessionalism on LinkedIn.
Certainly, some platforms do provide users with the ability to automatically crosspost—for example, you can share your Instagram post on Facebook and Twitter with just the tap of a button. However, the outcome often looks clunky and rushed. An Instagram post automatically shared on Twitter, for example, only provides a link to the post rather than displaying the image itself.
There’s a lot to figure out when it comes to creating a content strategy for social media. When comparing each platform, it may be helpful to take notes on the best time to post, how often to post, the age range of typical users, and what media formats tend to fare the best on each platform.
Why is tailoring your content to specific social media platforms’ requirements crucial to your success?
Sites have different formatting requirements. Instagram allows only image and video uploads, while Twitter has a 280-character limit on its tweets. It’s important to adapt how you present your content so that you can make posts that are appealing to your target audience.
How each social media platform uses hashtags, as well as which popular hashtags to use, differs vastly across platforms. For example, more than two hashtags on Twitter looks like spam, and the algorithm minimizes hashtag-heavy tweets.
Meanwhile, Instagram posts allow up to thirty hashtags, which you can include either in your post caption or in a comment on your post.
Moreover, seeing your post appear in the same form across platforms may be unappealing to users. It may look manufactured and too much like an ad rather than an actual piece of content worth giving time and attention to.
Alternately, by changing the content across platforms, you can appeal to different people. Some prefer video, some images, some behind-the-scenes information, and some simple text. Varying the content you create can engage your wider audience.
How can you use images and video to repurpose blog content for social media?
Visuals are essential to social media. Presenting information or a quote in a graphic is one way to grab your viewers’ attention. You can turn list posts and statistics into infographics or create visual aids for how-to guides. Videos, podcasts, and webcomics can both entertain and inform your audience.
Images and video can add to the mood of your content. Meanwhile, breaking up the text with graphics is both eye-catching and an appealing way to avoid an intimidating wall of text.
With the story feature on social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, you can provide updates to your audience and post work from behind the scenes.
You can also hop on trends by creating memes or participating in challenges.
All of these things give a more genuine, personal feel to your work and put a personality behind your brand or blog.
When to hire it out
Repurposing blog content for social media is no easy task, and many businesses and content creators will hire outside help. Here at Elite Editing, we have a variety of services that can suit your needs, from web copy editing to social networking support.
With the assistance of a professional service and an expert pair of eyes, you’ll be able to create social media content that stands out from the rest.
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