408: Repurposing Your Content
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What do you do with old content? As a busy business owner, your time is precious! You pour a lot of effort into creating content or gaining media attention, so don't waste it! Thankfully, there are many ways to repurpose existing content. From infographics to webinars, highlights to short videos, a single piece of media can be transformed into new methods for targeting market segments, raising your profile, and demonstrating your value.
Main topics:
You should repurpose content
Make it easy
Use Canva!
Embrace video!
Main takeaway: The key to successful content repurposing is understanding your audience on each platform and tailoring the content to suit their preferences and the platform's unique characteristics.
Links:
https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/408
https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/246
https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/334
https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/336
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
content, repurpose, people, pet, blog post, infographic, video, pet sitter, social media, blog, clients, share, email newsletter, media coverage, showcase, link, company, generate, post, create
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:03
Welcome to pet sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you to pet sitters associates and our newest Patreon member at Lisa. Thank you for finding value in the show and for giving us a few dollars every month. If you to enjoy listening to the show and have found value in the episodes, you can go to petsitter confessional.com/support, to see all of the ways that you can contribute to the podcast on episode 406. We talked about making the most out of media coverage, we were interviewed on TV and we talked a little bit about that experience. The one thing that we did not discuss was how to repurpose that content, what we did with that content after we were interviewed. So that's what we're going to talk about today. repurposing content is a very effective way to maximize the reach and value of your content investment.
Collin 00:54
And we want to start off by talking about not just repurposing media content or media exposure for you and your business. But the more really important one here is repurposing your own content things that you have done created that you've used before, because we pour a lot of effort and energy into making the social media posts or maybe you shot a video of what a day in the life of a pet sitter looks like. Or you spent a lot of time in Canva futzing around with different color palettes and different texts and everything in different photos. You don't want all that just go away. So I know it can be feel it can feel very defeating to feel like you've really done something you really made something that you're proud of. And then on social media, the way social media is it just kind of consumes the content, it disappears into the gaping maw of a black hole of the internet. And you can go well, what now what? Well, you got to make it again and again and again. So
Meghan 01:48
yeah, I can feel very daunting. You think there's 365 days in a year, I need to post every single day. So okay, that's 365 different ideas that I need to generate, which is not necessarily the case.
Collin 02:00
No, no, exactly. If you have made one thing, using different variations of it is is going to help you a lot in lessen the mental burden, the mental fatigue as you're running your business because you're doing an awful lot of things. So the first thing that we want to talk about is, is if you are writing blogs, you write the blog, you put in several hours of effort editing, using that are helping you're using chat GPT to help you write blogs these days. Take that blog post and turn it into an infographic that you can share or actually also put on your, your your website.
Meghan 02:36
These are these are great for if you're doing on your blog, the top five reasons to hire a dog walker or they you know, basically a list of anything you can you can very easily turn into an infographic
Collin 02:47
or maybe you're doing multiple reviews of different dog gear or different dog water bowls or different leashes. If you have a blog post that is rich in data or provides a step by step process for somebody to follow, consider turning it into an infographic because these are visually appealing. This is also helpful in social media context where people are always looking at photos. You can also share infographics to potential clients or existing clients if they have questions on how to do something. Because they're visually appealing, they're also easy to consume. And they are highly shareable on social media, which is something that we want, we want to be providing value to people. So we create a blog and you put that out there and then you see how it does and then you in while that is out there turning you are making an infographic that you can come back around and share it out again as an infographic because it will help give a really a fresh perspective on your content. And importantly, here, you're not just now having another thing to throw out there to put on your social media. But you are attracting a different segment of your audience. Not everyone in your audience that you are sending out information to or posting to is, is reading, they're not not everybody learns that way. Creating a photo is very beneficial to more people. And that way you are having different touch points for different segments of the people you're trying to talk to
Meghan 04:10
well and say you do a blog on Instagram, you have to have a picture to go with that blog. So if you have a photo on your blog, you may reuse that one for Instagram and maybe Facebook as well, their Facebook, it's a lot easier to share the link directly. But you have that one blog that you've said, Okay, this is a social media post. I'm gonna I'm gonna tell a little bit about it. And I'm gonna use the photo that I had in the blog post that I generated on my website. And then maybe the next day or the day after that I can use the infographic to again point back to my blog and get a few more clicks on my link.
Collin 04:43
An example of one that we did this on is toxic household plants, we had a big listicle of the five most common or 10 most common or whatever it was. In addition to this we then generated an infographic of what the plants look like and brief description of them and how to help have a pet who had consumed them. Canva makes this really easy. They actually have some built in templates and forms for infographics where you can come in and plug in your own information data, change the colors, add your logo, and relatively easily turn a wall of written text into a picture for somebody to see.
Meghan 05:19
If you don't know what Canva is, it is an amazing tool that you can generate all kinds of pictures and social media content. We actually talked with Jess Bay on Episode 246, about a more of a deep dive into what exactly it is and how to use it for your pet sitting business. Another great idea is developing an ebook from your blog post. So again, this blogging is necessary. In order to do this, if you have a series of blog posts on a similar topic, you can compile these into an ebook or a comprehensive guide. And again, Canva is super easy for this, you can then use it as a lead magnet to attract subscribers to your email list or as a value add for existing customers. We just did this with several blogs that we had about pet friendly activities in our state and turn that into a lead magnet, or lead magnet magnet was a little sad. And so we needed to update it. We actually talked about all about lead magnets in Episode 334. It was way back then we had said we needed to revitalize it. And we finally just did that. But it looks a lot better now. But it's really easy to do. If you create a blog post about pet friendly attractions in your state or pet friendly restaurants. It can also be done with local resources, groomers trainers, that you can turn that into an ebook and say on your website, hey, I have developed this ebook, give me your email address, and I will send it to you for free.
Collin 06:41
Yep. And basically what we did is we went through we our blogs were pretty intensive have here a 10 of these or 15 of these, we went through and picked some of our favorites and just did three or five to reduce it down so that it wasn't so intimidating. But again, we had content at our disposal that we had generated that we had done research, we had looked at reviews, we had read what other people thought we had put it on our website, we want to surface this in a new way. And so yes, we put together a 10 or 15 Page downloadable eBook, basically where people can go and go, Oh, hey, I'm a pet owner in the state, I would love to see what kind of all these activities are around me and either take a road trip with them or go go on adventures and just see what we have to offer in our local area.
Meghan 07:24
Another way you can repurpose content is by hosting a webinar or a live q&a based on a post. So if you have a blog post or a social media post, or even a video that has sparked a lot of questions or interest, you can consider hosting a live webinar or a q&a session where you delve deeper into that particular topic does not only provides value to your audience, but it creates an opportunity to engage directly with your followers. And ultimately, and importantly, it shows that you are the expert here you are the go to resource for anything pet in your area.
07:57
The webinar important doesn't have to be long, and I'm gonna say it doesn't even have to be live, you can shoot a video about you answering the top five questions or diving or, like you said, diving deeper into this blog. Or maybe if you're not blogging and you don't want to go that route, you can have just a pre recorded question and answer session from common questions that you get from potential clients or answers to questions that pet parents should be asking either about pet ownership, or before they hire a pet sitter things that you encounter that you want to equip people with. And you can put this on your social media and say, Hey, this Friday, I'm going to be posting a webinar or hosting a webinar about your common questions that I think more people should be asking about their pet care provider or for people who have a new puppy or people who have a geriatric animal, or whatever that is, pick a topic that you're particularly passionate about, this will make it easier to do the research or make it easier for you to talk about this, you'll be more comfortable in that setting. And I think we have to stress that it's going to help kind of showcase you as something, it's going to provide something that people can invite their friends to, that people can share out about what you're doing and how you're presenting yourself. And at the end of the day, take that content that you already have that you've been sitting on that you want do something with and surface it that's what this is all about taking existing content and maybe a couple months old, maybe a year or two old, as long as it's still relevant. We need to go, what else can I do? How can I surface this for new people?
Meghan 09:28
And I think Questions and Answers are perfect for that. Even if you can't think of what to think about if you have an FAQ page on your website, just start going through that people love to see on social media people love to see faces. And so if at all possible, you doing just even short little 15/22 32nd videos are going to be incredibly engaging and they're gonna say oh, okay, this is this is a person that I can buy from people buy from people and so the more that you can get your face or your staffs faces out there, it's going to be helpful to you. You can
Collin 09:59
even Have a segment of your Instagram page, right where you have those videos saved in the little bubbles right below your bio. They're called highlights. They're called highlights, which I know, obviously, but you can have an FAQ there or pin the video on your Facebook page so that people always see that when they go to you.
Meghan 10:18
Along the same lines here. Another way to repurpose content is creating social media micro content. So this is breaking down your long form content, whether that is that webinar, or a very long video you did or a blog post into bite sized pieces suitable for social media. So if you have this blog post about the top 15 pet attractions in your state, maybe picking one and talking a little bit more about it. And that way, if you want to do even five of those, that's five different pieces of content that you've already repurposed. And again, it's doesn't have to be long, it's micro content. So it's 15 20/32 Little snippets.
Collin 10:55
Or instead of creating one long social media post about a topic that's very in depth, let's just say about maybe who your services are for, it can feel compelling for us to sit in and list down everybody who needs to use our service. And to one really long, multi paragraph social media posts. This is gonna get lost in the shuffle, it's really hard for people to connect with. Instead, take that idea and break it out into multiple smaller segments. So that all of a sudden, instead of I have one blog post that explainer, I have one social media post that explains all of the people. For me, now I've got 10, that tart talk hyper specifically to each one of those target audiences. You can turn things like quotes that you have tips, statistics, or just short snippets of your content into the standalone pieces that you can share out that make it easy to digest, make it easy to understand who you are, and get to know you just a little bit better.
Meghan 11:52
So I see this really working both ways. Here. If you are a person who loves creating short content, you can wrap that into something longer on your website and funneling people there. Conversely, if you love writing blog posts, and long form videos you love and love being in front of a camera, you can then break that down into little social media content pieces. Yep,
Collin 12:12
exactly. Or maybe you have an idea for a social media post. Try writing that out and posting it and then go back and look at that and go, how would I dive deeper into this? Or what's four new ways I could write this kind of the same thing? Or what's one aspect of this post that I can dive into or pull out to make it into its own thing? Yeah, it's it's about lumping or breaking apart
Meghan 12:39
to be seen as an expert in your area. It's also important to transform your customer testimonials into case studies. So people leave you Facebook and Google reviews, or even Yelp, if you use that. You can take those and put those on your social media and say, hey, this person said this, we love providing peace of mind to pet parents while they are away. This person, let us take care of fluffy and trusted us enough. And here is what they said about our services. If you've received positive feedback from your clients, consider expanding them into case studies, you can dive deeper into what the customer's problem was, how you solved it, and then the results. So they needed a midday potty break. That is what I do. I took the dog out, I did this, this and this. And the results are they left me a review that said how wonderful their peace of mind was
Collin 13:28
that people are trying to see who can solve their problem. And unfortunately, pet owners are not in groups with other pet owners talking about the problems that they're encountering. So it can feel very isolating, to have these problems, especially if it's a first time pet owner, or maybe they've been owning pets for the last 40 years. And this is the first dog that's done this, or this is the first cat that's encountered this problem by you pulling out these hyper specific examples, we could move remember, every person is an individual, and they have their individual path. But they have their own unique needs. But here's the thing. They're shared by a lot of other people, or maybe they're just close enough where they'll be able to connect with that and go, Oh, that's my problem. That's what I was having. And so the way this would look is you would have the image either be the entire testimonial or a snippet of the testimonial. And then in the description, you would have written out a case study. Here's what I was contacted with. Here's how we set this up. Here's how we worked through this and here's where we are today. So that you can present that entire flow of problem brainstorming solution. Happy pet parent happy pet, everyone wins and you get to share out more about your amazing business.
Meghan 14:42
One thing that is going to make your business even more amazing is pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, and that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance, because you work in the pet care industry. You can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why Petsmart Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote at pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when you join by clicking membership Pet Sitter confessional and use the discount code confessional when you go to checkout to get $10 off, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets it llc.com. So we said this episode is piggybacking off of our media exposure episode from 406. So what about media exposure, there are some ways that that some easy ways you can reuse and repurpose that content that you have from TV appearances or newspaper articles, or even a digital article that was written about you.
Collin 15:40
And the first thing that you should do is create a media or a Press page on your website. This should include links to your media appearances, a short description of each piece, and how it showcases your expertise. This is important to not just have random links in there to random places on the internet on your website. People don't know what they are, they need to know how they can help get to know you better, and showcase that knowledge that you have. This not only increases the visibility of your media coverage, but also reinforces your credibility and authority. If you don't have a lot of appearances, and you don't want to create an entire bespoke page for one appearance or two appearance, put this on your about you page where people can learn more about you or have this as a pinned post on a social media page. So people can click right to that and see more about you. As you get more appearances as you reach out to people and they write things about you or you contribute to things, add these analysts to the page, have a good capture, have a good photo that captures kind of more thoughts about this. The title that description is really important so that people know exactly what they're clicking onto.
Meghan 16:47
And with social media, share it there. The short clips are great for this reels, highlights on on Instagram, or pin post to Facebook, share about it on those platforms and have a link back to the full coverage article. If it's available online. You can also use quotes that you said or key points as standalone posts to generate interest and say, Hey, I was featured on this thing. Maybe it's even a print magazine that you can take pictures of and share it on social media, make sure to also tag the relevant media outlets, if it was a TV station or a newspaper, use those appropriate hashtags to increase your reach as well. That
Collin 17:26
pullquote is so important. I mean, you you say cool things all the time. Or maybe you just say something that's funny, or you think it's going to be especially relevant to a target audience that you are trying to reach. Pull that out, put that on a photo, include a description about your parents on that media coverage, and whatever that was, and a link to that. And you can do this over and over. And over and over again, as you find quotes that you want to highlight about your company. If you even do a four minute segment on a TV interview, there's so much going on, I guarantee you you can find four maybe five little sentences, little snippets in there to pull out and highlight and showcase different aspects about your company.
Meghan 18:06
You can also showcase your media coverage in your email newsletters. This allows you to share your achievements directly with your clients and your subscribers and encourage them to engage further with your content. You can include a link in there and you can see how many people clicked on it and exactly who clicked on it.
Collin 18:23
If this is another pitch for if you're not doing an email newsletter, to do an email newsletter, the newsletters allow you to have direct connection to clients, and even potential clients. And to learn more about you. This is why we use email newsletters to communicate very specific information. We use this for the personalized asks the personalized updates these things that we only want our clients to know about. We don't post those on social media. So it's a very intimate setting where we have a one on one conversation with our clients and even potential clients can sign up to this to kind of get in an in depth look and behind the scenes look into our company. So you are sharing this out with fans. These are people who want to know more about your company wants to know more about you and be connected to you in a deeper way. So sharing this there is a great way to highlight more, hey, you know you trust me with your pets. And look what's going on over here. Look at this TV appearance, read this blog article read this thing about me. And they will want to do that that will make them see wow, I picked a really cool company. This makes me feel confident in the person that I am choosing to take care of my pets. And if you have potential clients that are on your email newsletter people haven't used yet. Maybe they're on this email newsletter list because they signed up for your lead magnet that you generated from other content like we talked about earlier, and they're watching and seeing what kind of company is this and then boom, this thing lands in there. That's going to excite them about who they're going to be working with.
Meghan 19:49
We actually talked about email newsletters in Episode 336. So if you want to learn more about how to do that, what to put in there, you can go back and listen to that episode. Another way to use your media coverage is Creating a blog blog post, write a blog post that expands on the topics that you discussed during your appearance, you can embed videos or link back to the original piece. But ultimately you are providing more detail about what you did, how it happened, how it came about. And behind the scenes insight that your audience may find interesting
Collin 20:20
that remember here, if you are being if you're going on TV, if you have a blog article being written about you, if there's a newspaper article, if there's a magazine article, there's there's they only have so much, they only have so much space. And so they have to be very economic with the words that they include the topics that they can cover, you may have wanted to say more but not had space or time. So this is where you can go, Hey, here's my here's my interview that I did with such and such news outlet. We only talked a little bit about these kinds of walks that I do. But I really want to highlight this aspect and expand on that. And again, what's great is you can do these kinds of blog posts multiple times and say, Hey, remember this news, this interview that I did, I want to expand on this aspect. And then the next week, this aspect and this has, and it gives you this continual feed of things that can point back to that video, pull down more information, pull down more things that you want to say and highlight and expand how you talked about those,
Meghan 21:16
you can also create a short video or a podcast episode. It's particularly important if you were on a podcast, you could share that on a podcast, you can you can create that, share your experience, talk about the topics you've covered, and any additional thoughts that you have and not only amplifies your exposure, but it also creates an opportunity to connect with your audience on a more personal level, and again, showcase that you are the expert. Well, and
Collin 21:38
that behind the scenes look, I know we talked about a little bit for the post blog recap now talking about a video or a podcast to recap everything, but really talking about how it came about. Maybe you were nervous. How did you prepare for this? What did you want to talk about? What do you not want to talk about? Tell that to your clients, they want to know who you are they want they they're gonna want to see that you took this seriously and how you prepared for it. what that felt like, in the moment really humanizes you and your company and allows them to see this as somebody who's doing things who's active, who's trying to do something with their business, and they're going to want to be a part of that now, not everybody's going to care if that's part of your clients. And that's fine. That's okay. But just sharing that information. It helps build fans of your company and helps it get just a little bit more sticky. When people think about who they want to service them and their pets.
Meghan 22:32
Yeah, it's that brand awareness, and people need to see your company between seven and 10 times before they actually purchase from you. The key to successful content. Repurposing is ultimately understanding that your audience on each platform is different, and tailoring the content to suit their preferences and the platform's unique characteristics, you're not going to put a 30 minute long form video in your email, you may include a link to it, you may include a short YouTube video snippet of that, but there's a different audience for each type of platform. And that's
Collin 23:05
where the repurposing becomes so powerful is because just because the video worked, just because the blog worked, just because the photos worked doesn't mean that they're going to work for everybody in every situation. And so now you can take this, and you can mix and match it and allow it to shine and really showcase the strengths on different platforms for different audiences for different purposes.
Meghan 23:30
So when we had our TV appearance, here's what we did, we blasted it on all social media platforms, we included a short video of it as well on Facebook, you cannot include pictures and video. So I had to include the link in the caption of the Facebook post on Instagram, you cannot have links that clickable links except in your bio. So I included the video, the short video there. We also sent it in our weekly email newsletter. And then we added it to our media appearances on our website, we obtained a copy of the full length interview, it was only four and a half minutes. But we're going to be splicing and using short segments of that for our social media moving forward.
Collin 24:10
All in all, we're looking at this opportunity that we had and go okay, we might not get this opportunity again, we might not come for a while. So what can we do with what we have. And then as business owners, that's a mindset that we're pretty all used to being in of I don't have a lot, I don't have a lot of time, I don't have a lot of money or resources. What can I do with what I have? And when we look at this content, sure we make it. But coming back to what we started off by talking about going, I don't want to have to remake this or I might not be able to recreate this. So while I have it, what are my options? What are my options and we walked through Blu through 10 different ways to do this. I know there's probably 100 more of how you can take content and do something else with it. Again, it's all about going How can I optimize for my time so I need to read Use it or maybe how can I repurpose this to talk to a different content, or use different content to talk to different parts of the audience segment that I'm trying to reach, we're going, I can use this for so many different aspects. But sometimes we don't have the time or the bandwidth to do that. So hopefully, these ideas can help prompt you or push you along that path.
Meghan 25:19
The blessing and the curse of the internet and social media is that it lives forever. But the blessing is that you can repurpose your content every six months. Because truthfully, I don't mean to be mean when I say this, but people are going to forget what you say and what you did. They just are there is so much content to consume out there. Probably a week after you say it, they're going to completely forget. And that's why it's important to be posting regularly on your Google My Business. So that Google surfaces you on your Facebook, your Instagram, as much as you possibly can. I know we're all very busy business owners, but it is really important and to know that it is okay to reduce, reuse and recycle your content that really is okay. Every few months. If you have a cool infographic that got a lot of likes and shares, you can reuse that if you have a great picture of you and a pet or a staff member and a pet that did really well it's okay to use that over and over again, if you don't know what to blog about, you can either ask Chad GBT for new ideas or you can repurpose an old summertime blog post of summer activities or water friendly activities with your dog. If you don't know what to write about, for your email, look back at six or 12 months ago and see what you wrote about then. And if that can give you more ideas, there are so many different ways that we don't have to keep creating the wheel every single day or every few weeks, we can use the content that we have already generated over and over again, every few months.
Collin 26:50
I love doing that of looking back at my emails of going okay, what did I do this time one year ago? What was I writing about what was important to us over the weeks leading up or following that if I'm really struggling for what to go into an email that helps generate some new ideas. Sometimes it's a direct copy and paste, like let's just be very, very real is that I'm going I don't know what else to say, Oh, wow, look at this. A year ago, I sent some really cool stuff. Well, I don't have it in me today to generate anything new. So I may tweak some things, change some dates, boom, there you go. And that's okay to do. You made it once you need to use it as many times as you can and is as fitting to the audience that you're talking to.
Meghan 27:32
We would love to know what ideas you have for repurposing content and how you have done that in your own business. You can email us at feedback at petsitter confessional.com. Or you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional. Thank you also to our wonderful Patreon members and Petsmart associates for sponsoring today's episode. And thank you most of all for taking your time and listening to this. We appreciate you and thank you. We will talk with you next time. Bye
