In a world where the average person is bombarded with thousands of marketing messages daily, finding ways to cut through the clutter and get your news noticed is more important than ever. And, if you’re like most people, you have a ton of content sitting around that you’ve created over the years. Indeed, that content is probably gathering dust in some dark corner of your hard drive!
More importantly, as the saying goes, “Content is King.” This is especially true in the online world. Quality content helps you stand out from your competitors and attract attention from your target audience.
But what if I told you there’s a way to breathe new life into that old content and use it to drive traffic and engagement on Instagram? That’s right, my friends: I’m talking about repurposing your content.
Repurposing content is taking one piece of content and adapting it in another format. For example, you could turn a blog post into an Instagram post carousel, a Reel, or Instagram Story highlights.
By repurposing your content, you can reach a whole new audience with your message and get more mileage out of the content you’ve already created.
The possibilities are endless, but the benefits are clear: by repurposing your content, you can reach new audiences, drive more traffic to your site, and get more engagement from your existing fans.
So, how do you go about repurposing your content? Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Table of Contents
What is Repurposing Content?
Repurposing content is your answer to work smart, not hard!
Everything from your top-performing Reels, posts, and Instagram captions to every line and photo dump can be used. Even blog posts or other content outside Instagram can be used. You can recycle them into an Instagram-friendly format to keep a continuous and stable content calendar.
Now that you know what repurposing means, why else should you do it? Well, repurposing your content can get you these advantages:
Advantages of Repurposing Content
In addition to giving yourself a well-deserved break from thinking of new content to share, repurposing your content can benefit your content strategy and:
- Reach a wider, larger audience –
You’re allowing people who may not have seen the original to see your best-performing content, in a new way.
- Strengthen brand image –
By emphasizing select postings deliberately, you’re establishing a deliberate brand message.
- Improve content SEO –
Repurposing a piece of content, in another format, can increase the number of keywords targeted, giving you an increase in engagement and a wider ranking.
Repurpose External Content for Instagram
Now that you know the advantages of repurposing your content, what’s next on the to-do list? Well, we give you ideas on how to repurpose your content into Instagram posts to get that smooth-flowing content calendar!
- Turn Long-Form Content to Carousels
Carousels are a great method to publish longer-form written content such as captions, blog posts, podcast show notes, and emails you’ve shared among other platforms.
- Create Instagram Guides From a Series of Posts
Instagram Guides allow you to compile all of your shared posts into a single scrollable sequence that you can share on its own. They also have shareable URLs you can add to your stories and feed, and have a dedicated tab on your profile.
So, if you break down each blog post portion into its own Instagram carousel or post, you can use this tool to reassemble them. This allows your audience to understand the entire narrative or content theme without having to leave the platform!
- Clip YouTube Videos to IGTV and Reels
It would be a waste of content not to fully explore the potential of your YouTube video content, which is highly favored by both your audiences and platform algorithms.
Resize and clip your best-performing YouTube videos to fit on IGTV or your Reels. You’re ready to go if you use your YouTube video description as inspiration for your caption.
Repurpose Content from Instagram
How about the content you’ve already spent years mastering on your Instagram profile? It can be used elsewhere as well!
- Develop an email course from your Instagram posts
Do you have helpful tips or advice that you could share with others? Why not develop an email course? This is a great way to share your knowledge while building relationships with potential customers or clients. To get started, gather all the useful material you already have from your Instagram posts, and then convert them to newsletters that people can receive via email weekly or monthly. Be sure to include some sort of call-to-action at the end of each email, so people know what the next step is supposed to be.
- Create a podcast from IGTV
Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular as people look for new ways to consume content while on the go. If you have any recorded videos and audio files from IGTV (interviews, speeches, presentations), consider turning them into podcasts that people can listen to at their convenience. All you need is editing software (Audacity is an excellent free option) and a platform to upload them, such as Spotify. Once you’ve created your podcasts, promote them on social media and other channels, so people know they exist!
- Put together a YouTube video from existing footage
If you have any video footage just sitting around gathering dust (old Instagram posts, Reels, and IGTV), breathe new life into it by creating longer-form engaging videos that people will want to watch! You can do this in numerous ways – add graphics and text overlays, add a voice-over, add music – get creative and see what works best for your particular footage. Once you’ve created your videos, upload them onto popular platforms like YouTube and Vimeo, so people can find them easily online.
- Republish old content
Just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s no longer relevant or valuable to your audience. If you have some older Instagram posts, articles or blog posts that still receive decent traffic but could use an update, consider republishing them with new information. This is especially helpful if you run a seasonal business or brand; by updating your old content regularly, you can ensure that it always stays relevant to what’s currently happening in your industry.
Running out of content ideas is what most users face, which prompts them to search for content ideas. But, you might not really be running out of content.
In fact, you could have so much content with all the content you shared over the years already. You just have to learn how to repurpose them – sort of like upcycling your content to make it accessible in a new way!
