Episode 299: Are Your Re-Purposing?
In this episode, Fiona discusses the importance of repurposing content to save time and effort for small business owners who struggle to create new content regularly. Fiona shares examples of repurposing content and emphasizes the need to have a clear understanding of business-as-usual content and content pillars for effective repurposing. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The importance of repurposing content to save time and effort
The misconception that followers remember all of our content and the value of repurposing similar content
A personal example of repurposing old emails to create new content during a health crisis
How to use business-as-usual content and content pillars to manage the volume of content needed for a business.
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Welcome to episode 299 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today you're reading a quick tip episode, and that's where I share a tip, tool, or tactic that you can implement immediately. The one I'm going to share today is something that has honestly saved me countless hours and allowed me to keep a consistency in my marketing that I think without this, I just wouldn't be able to do. Stick around for that. I wanted to mention that last week we had said, we will be changing the brand. Now that was all meant to change, and I am quickly recording this at the last minute because we are having some tech issues. Don't you love that? I think that's a lesson in itself. These things always take longer than you think. Mistakes, not even mistakes.
No one's made a mistake. Just tech challenges with websites and DNS settings and all sorts of things are just taking longer than expected. We are coming back as My Daily Business Coach podcast for two more episodes this week, and then next week you'll see a slightly different rebrand. But these things, you just have to laugh, don't you? Because this is life. This is life as a small business owner. Everyone will have things that they're about to launch and something goes wrong. It is what it is. The other thing, of course, is to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the lands in which I am recording this. It is pouring outside, but I have to say, looking up at these beautiful gum trees, it still looks gorgeous even in this weather. Of course, I want to pay more respects to the elders past, present, and emerging of the Wurrung and Wunrundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
If you are somebody that creates content and who doesn't these days and is somebody that often finds themselves frustrated or overwhelmed at how much content they need to create, even if it's just a monthly newsletter. There are 12 pieces of content to create in the year. It's not a huge volume, but it can feel like it, particularly when you have other things going on in your business. Most people are running small businesses, and people that I'm talking to and myself included, we're not publishers. Our main job is not to publish content like broadsheets or design files or whatever it is, or the New Yorker or any of those places. Instead, we can find ourselves almost feeling like we have to become publishers and have to have all this new content always going out plus still run the business.
Today I want to talk to you about a tactic that I have employed so many times in my business, and it's just part and parcel of the business now, and it has been for years. And that is the idea of repurposing. Now, this is something I feel like people don't do enough. We spend all this time creating posts for, let’s say, Instagram or coming up with a real idea or a TikTok or something that we're doing a Pinterest short or a YouTube short, or a newsletter or a blog. We feel like we always have to come up with something new. We have this perception, particularly with say Instagram, that all of our followers, remember all of our content from every single post we've ever done all the time. And even that, they're even seeing the content, they’re not.
I think it's something like 30%, even your most engaged followers will only see 30% of what you put out. There's no harm in repurposing, in putting out similar content. Often this is what we do. In our business, our business's usual content, which is two podcasts a week, one Sunday email, and social media posts, I have to say, I write the Sunday emails. If you're not already subscribed to that, go on over to mydailybusinesscoach.com/subscribe and you'll be able to sign up. I send quite a lengthy email every single Sunday. This year, and particularly last year, there's been a lot of stuff that has happened, but last year, particularly when my back went out, I had three herniated discs around June or July, and I couldn't walk for about eight weeks.
I couldn't drive for weeks. It was horrible. Just a reminder to look after your back people. But it was such that I couldn't even walk out to the office out the back. I found it very difficult to lie in a certain position and have my laptop on top of me, whatever it was. I just literally felt like I couldn't write my Sunday emails. Repurposing was so important then. Repurposing for me in that instance was to go back through old emails that I'd already written and just choose a few, and then just change mainly the top and bottom of those emails. Now, that's not to say if people are reading and thinking, why would I sign up to your email if you're just going to send the same email? These were emails from years ago.
Chances are a lot of people hadn't seen them because they had signed up after that original email had gone out. But also a lot of the content is still relevant. It's not like, it's so dated or anything like that. I think when you have content that is good and valuable and that is really clear with your content pillars or your key themes that you talk about, you can repurpose that repeatedly. That was a very straight repurposing example, but other ways to do that would be to take one of those emails and turn it into a podcast so that that content is already there. Another way would be to take one of those emails and cut it up and create five or six Instagram posts based on the five or six tips that I'd given in that one email.
There are so many ways to repurpose content and we don't do it enough. I had mentioned just before your business-as-usual content and also content pillars. I think those two things are really important to get clear on if you're going to repurpose content. The first I mentioned is the b a u or business as usual content. That is figuring out as a business, what are we putting out regularly. What is always on content? Like I said, ours is always two podcasts, one Sunday, email, and social media posts Every single week when we are in campaign mode or launching something, there may be more of certain things, like more social media posts, maybe more emails. There are never really more podcast episodes. But my business as usual, I know that if we put out two podcast episodes a week, we have about 104 podcast episodes that need to go live each year.
Likewise, I send out a Sunday email every single week. That is roughly 52 emails. Where your content pillars come in, in conjunction with repurposing is once you know what your business' usual content is, then you have numbers like I just said, 104 podcast episodes, and 52 Sunday emails. Let's say we can post on social media three times a week, that's roughly 150, 156 if my maths is correct, social media posts that also need to be created. If you look at that alone, you're like, that is so much content. how are we going to put out 104 podcast episodes in addition to running a business? This is where your content pillars come in. Your content pillars, and again, this is a quick tip episode, I'm being quick. Your content pillars are the five or six key themes that you regularly want to be known for and regularly talk about.
These are the things when I talk to my clients about coming up with their content pillars, it's like, what do you want to be known for? What are you the go-to business or brand for? That is your content pillar. And I will do a whole other episode on content pillars and link to previous ones we've done in today's show notes. But once you have your content pillars, let’s say if you have four or five of those, you can then look at, for example, my Sunday email, if I have 52 emails and I have five content pillars, that's roughly 10 emails on a particular theme not sent consecutively, but 10 over the course of the year on theme X. If I know that I've already sent stuff on theme X, I can take those old emails or those old podcast episodes, or even Instagram posts and then combine those into the new emails so I can pre-plan and batch create my content and repurpose.
Today it is about repurposing and I hope that that very brief overview has given you some fuel to realize that you don't have to start from scratch every single time. Quite often you have a bunch of content that you can just tweak, edit, and update, and that becomes new content for you. This is also good for SEO. If you have certain blog posts that are performing well, it's worthwhile to go in and edit those, update those, and launch them again as if they're new blog posts. Even if the URL is the same, you're pointing people to that blog post that maybe was from two years ago, but you've updated it now so it is fresh and new, but you're also benefiting from those SEO rankings and metrics that you've found.
That is today's episode. It is to consider how often are you going back to what you have already done and repurposing it. How often are you being clear on what your business' usual content is and your content pillars or themes so that you can easily go back and be like, one of my content pillars is travel? Let's look at all the stuff we've done on travel. Let's look at our own Instagram channel and see all the posts we've talked about travel, and then take that content and repurpose it. Rather than feeling you have to start from scratch every single time.
That is it for today's quick tip purpose episode. Just questioning yourself. How often are you repurposing? It's not a dirty thing, it's amazing. It is incredible. It has saved me countless hours. And it's funny sometimes that I'll repurpose something and I'll send it out and expect somebody to say, “Isn't that the same as what you sent like 11 months ago?” I'll get all these people replying who I know read the first one and will say, "Oh my God, this is amazing. This is exactly what I needed to hear this week.” You can't have that mentality that, if I've put it out once, I can't put it out again. That is it for today's quick tip episode. All of the show notes and links and everything else in text format can be found over at my dailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/299. Thank you so much for reading. If you found this useful, please share it with a friend. And if you have 10 seconds please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple. It just helps other small business owners find this podcast. Thanks so much for reading.
