Your brand is important, so know it’s best to repurpose content for your business to reach new audiences. You search through your most popular blog posts and find ways to give more information to your existing customers and make something fresh for new clients.
This one piece of information becomes more blog posts, white papers, social media posts, and YouTube videos.
Repurposing content gives you the option to use valuable content you’ve created on all of your channels, yet going back and recreating content is difficult to do. A better way to repurpose is to start creating with repurposing content in mind. If you create from the beginning with repurposing in mind, you will save time and create more content than you imagined.
This idea uses modular content to repurpose. Using a modular outline, start with a topic and create a document with moveable pieces that will work for any channel you publish on.
Your introductions, lists, and definitions are all in one place ready to be transferred over for your next piece. For anyone who loves or hates outlines, it makes it simple to create and repurpose content faster.
Table of contents :
- Why Repurpose Content
- What is a Modular Content
- How to Use a Modular Content Outline to Repurpose Content
- How to use Modular Content for Social Media
- Benefits of a Modular Content Outline
- Pitfalls of Modular Outlines
- Repurposing using Modular Outlines
Why Repurpose Content
Repurposed content brings your most important information in front of new audiences without boring or alienating your current customers. Simply put, you need to repurpose content to keep your audience engaged and to save yourself time.
Repurposed content is reusing something you created again in a new way. If you created a blog post you can use it to make an e-book, white papers, or social media posts. You take the information you already have and make it into something new and useful for your audience.
If you have a blog, data shows you need to blog frequently. The same goes for any social media content you create. If you create something that works well for your audience, you can redistribute it indefinitely.
You’ve done the research and know what topics will work for your audience, don’t let all the work you’ve done on one blog post go to waste. While you may know repurposing content is a good goal, you may have ended your search for ways to repurpose your content. Now is the time to talk about how to repurpose content swiftly and successfully.
Choose a system that’s simple to do. When you create a new blog post, for example, start with the mindset that you will need to reuse the information you gathered in multiple ways. Begin your repurposing with your main topic.
What is a Modular Content
The modular process is creating content that allows you to create in no particular order. The idea comes from educational methods of creating curriculums in small modules. The units are independent and short and can be taught in any order.
Modular content is used in big business. Pica 9, a SaaS marketing platform, did a study on modular content and the way businesses use it to customize customer experiences. Content is important for business because it helps you connect with your audience and sell.
We can use the business model to work for us as content creators. After all the goal is engaging with customers, take EA for example:
EA uses modular content to engage with gamers. The company made a shift from selling games to building strong relationships to gain subscriptions. The shift caused a surge in subscribers. To do this, the company invested in people and changed the way they built content encouraging customers to subscribe with personalized interactions at any point the user chose to engage.
Big businesses use modular content in multiple ways, the idea is movable pieces for a constantly moving audience.
For a small business or a business of one, the strategy can be simplified for creation. Using a modular outline will help you create movable pieces that will work for repurposing and engaging your audience.
The marketing strategy has been tested by companies like Venngague. In the HubSpot Content Marketing Course, they mention ways to use the strategy to streamline the way you update information with your team on one topic.
The benefit of modular content is to help you come up with multiple content pieces from one idea. If you do have a team, it streamlines the process of content creation, so your blog writer is in sync with your social media graphic designer.
Neither has to step on each other’s toes to get the job done. Whether you have a team or are currently a team of one, having all your ideas on a topic in one place will help you stay organized.
How to Use a Modular Content Outline to Repurpose Content
You can use modular content by creating a modular outline and repurposing your content from the start. From one outline, you can create endless pieces on one topic you deem yourself and your company the expert on.
What is a Modular Outline
Modular content is building an outline with units full of text, images, and data in no particular order. The outline is built on independent parts of one topic with multiple introductions, tips, lists, and headers. Everything you need to move around and use to create e-books, articles, landing pages, YouTube scripts, and yes even TikTok videos.
These pieces can be customized, upgraded, and reused for different channels. It’s repurposing content before you create it. Tweak each piece to fit your audience by taking the information and placing it on the right platform.
How many introductions did you write for your last blog post and how many did you delete? A modular outline allows you a place to save each of those introductions. If one didn’t make it to your final blog post, it may still work for your YouTube script.
To use modular content to repurpose, create an outline, and build content based on your customer’s needs. Because the idea starts with choosing a topic, your offer, or product will always be top of mind, so you are constantly creating content with a purpose.
1. Choose a topic
2. Create an outline with movable pieces (ex: headers, introductions tips, and lists)
3. Gather data and fill out the outline
In Google Docs, you can use the “choose document outline” tab to move between sections
4. List different titles of more blog posts or other pieces you can make in the future
5. Create a blog post or other content
6. Update the outline with new information on the topic as you find it
The value of repurposing content is exponential. You won’t wear yourself down always searching for the new trend. In the weeks in between, you’ll have content that you know will work and is on brand for you without spending hours creating it.
Often you’ll find one topic can be used as multiple pieces of content. As you write your outline, you will see other blog post titles in your lists or your tips and tricks section. Take your outline a step further and make a section on social media ideas, so you know exactly which information to start with.
How to use Modular Content for Social Media
One of the most popular ways to reach an audience is through social media. It requires daily updates, which means a lot of content. When using a modular outline, your tips and tricks, data, and images that work best for social media are already in one place.
Want a new image on your site listing a benefit? Go to your outline and pull from your list of benefits to add with a new image for the day.
Your outline should be built with multiple headers tips, lists, benefits, and even images you can use later. Having content you’ve already updated in place means you can search your outline for something special on donut day when it rolls around on your social media calendar.
Other Ways to Use Modular Content
Guest posts
As a content writer, I know how difficult it can be to create quality content fast. You may write about a topic for one website and need to write about that topic again. Each time you need a new article that is totally different from the last.
For example, I like to write about using modular content as a faster way to create multiple pieces from one content idea. In one article I may write about how companies use modular content and in another about building outlines.
My outline helps me separate the information, but have one central place to go back and find the information on both. Whether it be creating articles or promoting those articles on social media, a modular content strategy can help. Which creates a new piece of content for other businesses and helps your writing process.
White Papers/ Customer Resource Guides
Creating content for your audience to find information on your products is key. According to SEM Rush, 55% of marketing and business owners are creating more content and publishing more frequently. The way to do this is by giving them information to make the decision to purchase. White papers are proven successes in content marketing.
More content means more information and more leads for you. White papers are longer than blog posts and are more formal. It’s harder to turn a blog post into a white paper than it is to turn a modular outline into one.
Content Audits
Once you’ve created content across your channels, you will need to go back and update as needed. As you go through old blog posts to update new information, your info on all those topics will already be in one place for your whole team.
With a modular outline, you will always have updated information on the topic. Instead of starting from scratch to update on what’s new, you already have it in place. You can add new benefits by updating with new links you’ve found to refresh old ideas.
Benefits of a Modular Content Outline
How many times have you bookmarked a piece and promised to go back and read it later? Instead of bookmarking that article, add the relevant links you need to your modular outline for future updates and new content.
The benefits of a Modular Outline are simple, it saves time, streamlines information, and makes it easy to repurpose content.
Saves you time and helps you create social media content faster
You won’t have to search through your blog for that fact you want to share for the day. You can use your outline to fill out your calendar for the month or even the year.
Keep your new information all in one place
The relevant articles and data you need to cite are already listed in your outline. Instead of searching for new data last minute and new information when you see fit. When it’s time to create something new, simply go to the outline to update a link or make a new piece quickly.
Central update location
As things change quickly, this outline will give you the opportunity to update information without needing to create new notes or a new place to keep them. The outline streamlines the process whether you are a team of one who needs to stay organized or you have a team of people who need information on the same topics for different pieces of content.
Pitfalls of Modular Outlines
As with any repurposing task, content creators have to be careful not to simply copy and paste. The best part about modular outlines is to copy and paste quotes or find a list you were looking for.
However, each time you create something, you should add something new. Give your work a fresh and up-to-date voice. Your readers should always feel they are learning something new from the information they are getting, not rereading the same three lines.
Be careful with modular outlines. Especially when using a team, encourage them to use their own words and add their own fresh takes. It would even be wise to leave notes on what content was used where, so you can streamline your backlink process, but SEO is another conversation.
Repurposing using Modular Outlines
Now you have an idea of what a modular outline is and how to use it to repurpose content. The type of content you create from your outline is endless, just as your repurposing goals should be. Content creation is the best way to reach an audience and show them what you are made of, so repurpose content to give your audience more ways to connect with you.
Whether you love outlines and need a new system or hate outlines and need a different option, modular outlines can work for you. Use this outline system to keep all your information in one place. When you do that you can create blog posts, white papers, and social media posts.
This keeps the information that is relevant to your audience and gives them fresh new ideas in new ways.
Streamline your process with your team to create even faster. Don’t wait until you have a blog post to make your content work for you. Start with the topic and an outline, so you can create once and repurpose the information over and over again.
