Does Content Repurposing Really Work?

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Why aren’t more content creators taking advantage of content repurposing?

Currently there are roughly:

• 800 million videos on YouTube
• 600 million blogs in the world
• 48 million podcast episodes

Yet the vast majority of that content is silo’d, meaning, the video, blog post or podcast only exists as that single piece of content. It’s only available on the original channel and in the original format in which it was published.

Mr Beast has an amazing YouTube channel but the content is only in video form.

Smashing Magazine has arguably one of the most profitable blogs on the planet, but busy professionals can’t listen to it.

Why is that?

Is content repurposing really just modern digital alchemy?

Some might argue that when you create content in a particular format, like a podcast, it is catering to an audience that prefers to consume content by listening to it, rather than read or watch, and that other audiences just wouldn’t be interested. Therefore the average podcast creator thinks turning their podcast recording into a video would be a waste of time, that no one wants to watch their podcast, and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy for themselves.

Even though we know, statistically, that every one of us has a preferred learning style that favors written, audio or video… we cannot possibly know what each individual member of our audience prefers and may actually be excluding some by limiting what we offer!

What if I were to show you evidence and examples that content repurposing really does work? What if I were to dispel the privileged hypothesis that content repurposing doesn’t work and therefore we shouldn’t do it or do it well?

But before I do that, have you seen the latest series released to Disney+ that everyone’s buzzing about? No, not another Marvel spin-off… I’m talking about Star Wars Galaxy of Sounds. According to the show credits, “Galaxy of Sounds is a tribute to the visual and sound artists who have helped create the lasting legacy of Star Wars.”

Each episode is under ten minutes in length and features a collection of video and audio clips from the original trilogy, prequels, sequels, The Mandalorian, Rogue One, and even Solo. There is no musical score and all dialogue has been removed, so these are only the sound effects of speeders racing, lasers firing, and light sabers clashing.

So, there’s absolutely nothing new whatsoever in the Galaxy of Sounds series. It is 100% repurposed content. Editors took the 40+ hours of existing live action Star Wars materials and spliced together a series of highlight reels.

And fans are loving it.

I was particularly impressed by the idea of taking common threads or themes found in virtually all of the original Star Wars content and showing us rapid series of related clips.

For instance , Episode 6, Connections, demonstrates the relationships and moments that characters had with each other throughout the stories and it was touching to be reminded of such key interactions and, at a deeper level, gain a new appreciation for how screenwriters and directors over the years wove subtle nods and elements of consistency throughout eleven films and a television series. Like Han Solo’s dice, which appeared in the original trilogy as well as The Last Jedi and Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Of course, you might think to yourself that Star Wars represents a decades-old entertainment franchise with millions of fans around the world that adore everything LucasFilms puts out. And while the mixed reviews of recent films might question that hypothesis, you’d be right to suggest that Entertainment content isn’t the same as business content, so let’s look at another example of content repurposing.

Business Content Repurposing: Agency Accelerated

Agency Accelerated is a live video interview show that I produce, sponsored by Agorapulse, that’s in its second season. Each broadcast features a skilled host and knowledgable guest that discuss a specific topic of interest, particularly to growing marketing agencies. Season one topics included diversifying revenue and streamlining processes, featuring guests from Microsoft, Visme and other prominent brands.

As a live video broadcast, the content is initially streamed to social media channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. Once the broadcast ends, the video remains on each channel just as any uploaded video, available for replay audiences indefinitely. The original HD recording is then downloaded and prepared for an array of repurposing tactics.

First, a transcript is created and from that, a recap of the interview is written. This recap helps summarize for readers what was discussed in the interview and draws out the most important points. This is a terrific approach to turning live video content into readable blog content, particularly for audience members who might prefer to read, not have the time or capacity to watch a 45 minute video interview, and of course create appealing written content for Google Search. Agency Accelerated is in the process of publishing a new show site where these recaps will be published, along with downloadable eBook versions.

Second, quote graphics, video snippets, and social posts are pulled from every episode to create dozens of pieces of micro content which can be shared to social channels, embedded into other blog posts and, most importantly, given to each show’s guests so that they, too, can share snippets from the show to their channels.

Third, the audio from each episode is separated from the video, edited, then published as a podcast! The Agency Accelerated podcast launched in late September and has already accrued hundreds of downloads and fantastic reviews. Each new episode is automatically distributed to Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and dozens of other podcast directories and aggregators, reaching large new audiences and marketing agencies.

This is the benefit of having a video-first approach to reaching content. With a single Facebook Live video to start, savvy businesses can repurpose that content dozens of ways. If you’re starting with a blog and want to turn that into a podcast or video, that’s easy too.

What if you have previously recorded video, such as past lives or event webinars?

Business Content Repurposing: Agency Summit

Let me share another example of how I’ve repurposed content recently, only this time, it was from a major online event. Agency Summit took place in June 2021 and featured nearly 50 video sessions from agency coaches, influencers, and partner brand experts. There were nine live workshops and dozens of recorded sessions in this virtual event that reached over 2,500 marketing agency owners and executives. Topics ranged from client contracts to onboarding, and everything in between.

While we could have followed the same repurposing process as Agency Accelerated and turned these 50 videos into blog posts and podcasts, those free distribution channels would have defeated the purpose of the original summit, which was lead generation. Agency Summit was free and designed to introduce the Agorapulse brand to a wider audience of marketing agencies. By registering for the event, those agencies created opportunities for Agorapulse to continue the conversation and eventually funnel them into a product trial.

If I simply published all those videos to YouTube, I might help grow my channel, but wouldn’t have the powerful lead gen mechanism of a summit to depend on.

So instead, we created the Agency Love Learning Hub on the Thinkific learning platform.

When I’ve run major virtual events in the past, they were more generally about social media and social media marketing, so it made great sense for us to repurpose those videos to the Social Media Manager School. Hundreds of past summit sessions live there as videos along with presentation slides, audio versions, eBooks and more. Since this event was focused entirely on marketing agencies, we decided to build a new learning platform just for agencies and use the Agency Summit sessions as the initial core. To that we’ll add some of the Lunch & Learn webinars I’ve hosted, Agency Accelerated episodes, and more.

The Agency Love Learning Hub isn’t live and fully populated yet, but if you really want to, you’re welcome to create a free account and poke around!

Brands who are interested in learning more about how I run virtual events and keep that content working to benefit the brand for years to come should learn more about my Virtual Event Intensive, “Sold Out Summits.”

Wrapping Up

Along with Agency Accelerated’s podcast, the Agency Love Learning Hub is yet another great way to approach how you do content repurposing – not just from a tactic perspective, but strategic as well. Make sure that not only are you taking the time to transform your content into other mediums and channels that can reach new audiences, but that you do so in a way that strengthens, not detracts from, the original goal of the material. Both of these tactics are assuredly helping to further enhance the original goals of the show and virtual event.

To that end, I’m truly inspired by what Disney has done with Star Wars Galaxy of Sounds and actually intend to do something very similar with Agency Accelerated. Now that we have a full season recorded and are about to publish six full recaps, I can create articles for major publishing sites that speak to a specific theme, such as diversifying revenue, and reference multiple shows in the article.

Consider how you can repurpose the content you’re already creating! Both into new formats and mediums, as well as into new combinations and channels.

Related