4 Ways To Repurpose Content Thoughtfully

Blog posts, video content, and social media posts take time and effort to create. Getting the most out of your effort means posting it more than once on one platform. 

“It’s OK to repost and reshare content that did really well,” says Michelle Razavi, founder and CEO of the next-gen food company Elavi. “Nobody remembers. It’s so hard to reach people nowadays; chances are, it’s probably going to still be the first time someone sees it. So repurpose your heavy hitters to give yourself that break.”

A content repurposing strategy helps you get more value from what you’ve already created. Instead of constantly trying to create content from scratch, you adapt your high-performing content into different formats and distribute it across multiple channels. Learn how to repurpose content, including best practices to continue getting value from past work. 

What is content repurposing?

Content repurposing is the practice of adapting existing content into different formats for use on multiple platforms. The idea behind this strategy is to increase the value you get from a single content asset. 

Repurposing aims to reach audiences regardless of how and where they consume content, whether it’s watching short-form video clips on TikTok, reading blogs they discovered via Google or ChatGPT, or watching video podcasts on YouTube. By adapting a single piece of content for these different channels, you can reach audiences who may never see the original piece.

“There are really efficient ways that you can use content across all platforms,” Amanda Rach Lee, a popular Canadian YouTuber and content creator, says on Shopify Masters. “For example, when I was streaming on Twitch more, I would stream myself drawing something, and then I would cut that down into a TikTok or something for YouTube Shorts, or I would use part of that in a YouTube video.”

4 practical ways to repurpose content

1. Turn blog posts into social media content
2. Turn video content into written content
3. Break long-form video content into short clips
4. Refresh and update old content

Here are a few practical ways you can repurpose content:

1. Turn blog posts into social media content

A single blog post can become several social media posts for Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, or TikTok. For example, you can:

• Pull key insights into LinkedIn posts. Share a single infographic from a longer white paper and link back to the white paper for those who’d like to learn more. Or summarize a report in the form of an Instagram carousel, as Diaspora Co. did for its annual impact report. 

• Create quote graphics or static images. Take some of the most memorable quotes from an interview published on your blog and turn them into graphic Instagram or LinkedIn posts. 

• Turn tips into short-form content. Take tips from a longer guide on your website’s blog and turn it into a single short video. For example, Graza’s chocolate mayo cake recipe appears as a long-form recipe on its blog and as a step-by-step Instagram Reel, allowing it to share the recipe across two different media.

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2. Turn video content into written content

Video is a versatile format for content repurposing because you can adapt it into written content using transcription tools like Descript, Otter.ai, and Rev. A YouTube video or webinar can become blog articles, email campaigns, or written content for your website.

Turning video content into blog posts has an additional advantage: it gives search engines text to crawl and rank, opening up traffic from queries your video alone couldn’t capture. 

For example, the men’s grooming company Beardbrand creates long-form YouTube videos around beard care and repurposes that content into written guides and product pages. The video The Ultimate Beard Trimming Guide is adapted into the blog post “Your Guide to a Perfect Beard Trim,” which ranks for organic search queries like “how to trim a beard,” pulling in consistent organic traffic that a video itself might not reach. 

3. Break long-form video content into short clips

Long-form content, such as podcast episodes or videos, can be broken into smaller pieces like Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts. 

Australian beauty brand Fluff films its podcast-style content and turns longer YouTube videos into short clips for Instagram Reels, Substack articles, and Spotify podcasts.

“For us, it’s all about repurposing content,” says Fluff founder Erika Geraerts about this approach in an episode of Shopify Masters. “We film all of our podcasts so that we can put them up as Reels, or on TikTok, taking some of those conversations and repurposing them into blog content.”

4. Refresh and update old content

Not all repurposing involves new formats. Sometimes, it’s about improving what you already have. Refreshing a blog post, for example, builds on existing equity, such as backlinks and search history, rather than starting from scratch.

Google has various “query deserves freshness” signals that surface fresher content for queries where recency matters (such as seasonal content). However, for evergreen topics, refreshing blog content once a year is still a good idea to signal recency to search engines and keep content accurate and up to date.

Update outdated content with new products, updated recommendations, or new insights or industry trends to keep content fresh and relevant. Then you can also update the year in the meta title and reshare the updated blog article with your audience via email or social media.

Best practices for repurposing content

• Start with high performers
• Use AI to scale repurposing
• Adapt content for different platforms
• Track performance
• Align content with your marketing goals

Follow these best practices for your content repurposing strategy:

Start with high performers

A small fraction of published content tends to drive most of the traffic. For example, Hubspot has reported that roughly 76% of its monthly blog views come from older posts rather than new ones, meaning a relatively small set of high-performing pieces is doing most of the work. 

If a blog post is generating strong traffic, engagement, and product clicks, and it’s closely aligned with your target market and keywords, it’s a strong candidate for repurposing, as it’s already proven to connect with your audience.

When refreshing, keep the URL, title tag, and H1 the same, as these are already indexed and ranking. Only update the content, not the structure. Update stats and dates, add new examples, and cut what’s no longer relevant. The goal is content freshness, not a full rewrite.

Use AI to scale repurposing

AI tools can streamline your content repurposing workflow. For example, you can take a blog post and ask AI to generate multiple social media captions, email drafts, or even infographic ideas.

Muammar Reed, co-founder of the independent children’s bookstore MiJa Books, explains the power of AI for repurposing content.

“You can take the captions from your video, feed them into ChatGPT, and then have it write newsletters,” he says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “Now with AI, there’s no excuse for you not to be able to turn one piece of content into four or five other posts on different platforms.”

Adapt content for different platforms

Different platforms have different formats, expectations, and audiences, so tailoring your content ensures it works more effectively.

B2B-oriented content tends to perform better on LinkedIn, where 80% of B2B social leads originate. Meanwhile, Instagram or TikTok may reach a more consumer-focused audience, particularly among younger consumers. “Posting on social media daily is just as important as raising money, especially if you’re trying to target Gen Z,” Leah Marcus, cofounder of Good Girl Snacks, says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast.

Each platform also requires a different approach to formatting. For example, Instagram is geared for visual-first social media content, while LinkedIn is oriented toward professional written content, and TikTok is suited to short, engaging video content.

Once modified for different platforms, Shopify social embed apps allow you to display social content on your website.

Track performance

Use tools like Google Analytics or YouTube Analytics, or Instagram, TikTok, and Meta Business’s native analytics tools to measure content performance, including clicks, views, saves, and follows and/or subscriptions. These tools can track engagement, traffic, and conversion rates, helping you refine your repurposing strategy over time. 

Content marketer Ross Simmonds says that if a blog article was performing and now isn’t, it’s a signal to refresh it, then repurpose and reshare it. Whether you choose to update high- or low-performing content first depends on your team and goals. If you’re trying to reach new audiences fast, opt to repurpose high-performing content first. If your goal is steady organic growth, opt to refresh low performers. 

Analytics also tell you what’s working once you’ve repurposed content. Compare the engagement rate of a repurposed clip against the original to see which format your audience prefers, then double down on the winner. If you find that a repurposed short clip performs better than the original long video, it’s a sign that your audience prefers short-form content. You could then repurpose longer videos into shorter clips. 

Align content with your marketing goals

Rather than treating repurposing as an afterthought, bake it into your content marketing strategy and processes from the start. Rank your marketing goals, then use that to decide which content to repurpose first. 

For example:

• If your goal is to drive organic traffic, repurpose video or social content into SEO-focused blog posts.

• If your goal is brand awareness, turn blog posts or long-form content into short-form social media posts, which puts your content in front of new audiences through social feed discovery.

• If your goal is conversions, repurpose educational content into product-focused pages or email campaigns that guide users toward purchase. 

Most businesses strive for all of these goals, but avoid doing everything at once. Choose what will move the needle the most now and work through that first.