The recommendation is all over the place: repurpose your content material! Get extra mileage out of your weblog by turning it into social posts! Flip your LinkedIn posts into a number of tweets!

However this recommendation lacks the logistical side: how are you going to hold monitor of one thing you revealed at this time and repurpose it over the subsequent few weeks?

As a contract content material marketer and journalist, my on-line presence is crucial. I might expend far an excessive amount of mind power if I wrote each single social publish from scratch. As a substitute, I’ve discovered a method to make use of automation to construct out reminders to repurpose my calendar.

My efforts have paid off. I’ve tripled my on-line following (to 4,500 followers on LinkedIn) in 18 months, and most of my work is inbound. I schedule two posts for LinkedIn per day and really, only a few posts are web new content material. Most are a repurpose of one thing I’ve written elsewhere.

Whether or not you’re a staff of 1 or a staff of twenty, it’s the identical state of affairs: you’ve bought to bake a repurposing plan into your course of. And automation can take the “considering” out of the method. Right here’s how.

Step 1: Begin together with your unique content material

On the heart of your content material repurposing might be your unique content material: weblog, eBooks, webinars, podcasts, and social posts.

Automation works finest once you’re going from long-form content material to short-form content material, or from one social platform to a different. As a result of in these circumstances, you’re not considering of one thing new: you’re taking the work you’ve already accomplished and prepping it for a brand new platform.

You may strive the reverse (like beginning with a Twitter thread and utilizing automation to remind you to create a full-blown weblog publish), however the great thing about automation is including a date that you simply plan to re-share the content material. That’s tougher to do when it’s essential to spin up a whole article — who is aware of how busy you’ll be that day.

To prep for automation, it’s essential to decide the place your content material “lives” — equivalent to your weblog, an e-mail platform for newsletters, an extended LinkedIn post that you could be wish to repurpose right into a shorter tweet, and different content material you create.

Ultimately, you may take into consideration repurposing your repurposing (and sharing your repurposed content material a second time), however it’s best to have your model new content material as a place to begin.

Step 2: Create your content material repurposing plan

You may’t begin down the trail of automation with out understanding what the tip outcome might be. If you have already got a content material repurposing plan, nice! Including automation might be simple.

Your plan ought to embrace your beginning piece of content material and the tip outcome. You’ll want to consider:

• Format (making a social publish, sharing a hyperlink)
• Quantity (turning one weblog publish into three social posts)
• Cadence (how typically you’ll share one thing you’ve repurposed)
• Platform (the place will you publish the repurposed content material)

After I first began repurposing, I bought out an enormous calendar (okay, it might need been Airtable as a result of I’m a geek like that) and “drew out” my plan. I began with an article that I revealed on Medium and a hypothetical publish date of the primary Monday of the month. I might share the hyperlink the subsequent day on my social platforms. Then I might plan to create LinkedIn posts based mostly on concepts within the article and share them three weeks and 6 weeks after the preliminary publication date.

I stuffed in my calendar. Ultimately, I may visualize all the days all through the month after I’d have repurposed content material to share (and, conversely, the times I’d have to create new content material). I can preserve a excessive quantity of social posts as a result of I accomplish that a lot repurposing, and the trouble is far decrease than new content material.

As soon as I had a plan, I used to be able to create automation.

Step 3: Select a content material repurposing vacation spot

If you automate your content material repurposing, you’re making a “guidelines” that you simply’ll work from. As you schedule upcoming content material, you’ll work from the guidelines, whether or not it’s a venture administration device, a to-do app, or a spreadsheet.

What does this appear like IRL? I plan all of my upcoming content material (each new and repurposed) in Trello. After I publish one thing new, automation provides a brand new reminder in Trello (known as playing cards) for me to repurpose that content material on a selected date sooner or later. I can work from both a listing view or a calendar view.

Nevertheless you’re planning your content material at this time, you should use the identical device or app with automation.  I add labels in Trello to determine if the content material is new versus repurposed.

When you begin including automated reminders or to-do gadgets to your present venture administration device, it’d look overwhelming — particularly in case you’re not planning your repurposed content material at this time.

It’s best to create separate views or filters inside your device to separate your new content material out of your repurposed content material. You might also wish to manage your repurposed content material by platform — both the unique supply or the ultimate vacation spot.

Step 4: Arrange your automation

Automation tools join two separate apps collectively. The unique supply of your content material is the primary app and your venture administration device or spreadsheet for content material planning is the second app. Most automation instruments work in the identical method: if <one thing> occurs, then <one thing else> will occur.

For instance:

1. If a new article is revealed
2. Then create a reminder in Trello to repurpose the content material as a LinkedIn publish in 3 weeks

Or:

1. If a new publish is scheduled in Buffer for my LinkedIn profile
2. Then create a reminder in Trello to repurpose the content material as a Tweet in 2 weeks

I exploit Zapier, however different instruments embrace Make and IFFTT. The Zapier setup features a Set off (“this occurs”) after which an motion (“one thing else occurs”).

Automation instruments can deal with a couple of “then” motion. Most of mine have a number of steps, equivalent to repurposing the content material into a number of social posts, on totally different platforms, and re-share the article six months later. Certainly one of my extra subtle content material repurposing automation has 5 actions.For each article revealed on Medium, playing cards are added to Trello to remind me of the next:

1. Create a social publish on LinkedIn in three weeks
2. Create a social publish on LinkedIn in six weeks
3. Create a thread on Twitter in eight weeks
4. Share the article in my publication (and not using a particular due date)
5. Tweet a hyperlink to the article in six months

You can too use filters in automation instruments to take totally different actions from the identical supply. After I schedule a holiday-specific publish in Buffer, I don’t wish to repurpose it later. I add a tag in Buffer known as “Vacation” and filter these out in Zapier.

If you arrange automation, you need the vacation spot to include as a lot info as doable, equivalent to a hyperlink to the unique content material or the complete textual content of the content material (like the unique social publish). That method, once you work on creating your repurposed content material, the unique is true at your fingertips.

Step 5: Work out of your content material calendar

Automation will solely create reminders so that you can repurpose content material sooner or later: you’ll nonetheless want to put in writing the repurposed content material from the unique. As AI writing technology is quickly creating, I’ve performed round with tossing complete articles I’ve written into ChatGPT and requested it to condense the important thing concepts right into a LinkedIn publish. The output must be tweaked (so much), however it’s a place to begin.

Zapier has integration with GPT-3, so it’s doable to incorporate AI as a step in your automation with an instruction to “Repurpose textual content from X supply right into a Twitter thread” with some directions in regards to the output. You may write the output on to your vacation spot so when you find yourself able to schedule the repurposed content material, some concepts are ready for you.

In my workflow, I’ll open Trello and take a look at the upcoming repurposed content material I have to schedule. Every Trello card exhibits me the channel for the repurposed content material, the due date, and the textual content of or a hyperlink to my unique content material.

This began as a LinkedIn publish scheduled in Buffer. The textual content of the Buffer merchandise was copied over to my Trello card. I can see by the Label that I have to create a Twitter publish from this content material, due tomorrow.

I’ll write my repurposed social posts in Buffer and schedule them in line with the date in Trello. I do that work in bulk, often scheduling about two weeks’ price of repurposed content material in a single sitting.

The advantage of ready till the repurposed content material comes due in Trello is that I’m wanting on the unique with contemporary eyes (weeks or months later). I’ll pull out no matter perception makes probably the most sense at a time to create my repurposed publish. However one other different could be to put in writing the repurposed content material instantly after it arrives in your vacation spot, whereas the unique content material continues to be contemporary in your thoughts. Then you definately’re solely scheduling the repurposed content material later; you’re not writing and scheduling.

Some professional ideas for managing content material automation

I’m a one-person repurposing machine, so I’ve lots of automation arrange!

Listed here are another issues I do:

• Export my LinkedIn feedback as soon as a month and import them into Zapier to create Trello playing cards to repurpose my feedback as a brand new LinkedIn publish.
• Every time I communicate on a panel, I add a hyperlink to the recording in Airtable. The brand new Airtable file triggers Trello to evaluate the recording and create social posts from what I stated on the panel.
• I take part in lots of Slack communities. I save a few of my very own feedback in Slack and people are the set off to repurpose the remark as a social publish (and even generally increase on the concept as a full article).

Let content material repurposing change into a flywheel

After I first added repurposing automation to my workflow, I added an excessive amount of. Since I handle all of my very own work, I had wayyyy too many steps, and I couldn’t sustain with the repurposed content material I wanted to put in writing. Possibly a bigger content material staff would have the ability to deal with my grand plans, however as a solo particular person, I used to be overwhelmed. So I scaled again and began with creating one social publish for every article I wrote. As soon as I had a deal with on that, I added increasingly automation.

However now I’ve constructed momentum. I repurpose my repurposed content material. It’s created a flywheel impact and I get a lot extra content material with far much less effort.

I by no means have to consider how I’ll preserve my on-line presence, as a result of each time I sit all the way down to schedule my repurposed content material, I do know precisely what I would like to put in writing.