5-Step Guide to Creating a Content Repurposing Workflow

In a recent 1:1 meeting, someone said something that stuck with me—it’s hard for people to surface valuable information.

You need a content repurposing strategy, or blog posts you’ve poured hours into researching, interviewing, and writing end up sinking into the dark internet depths (rarely to be seen again).

And that’s a shame, because those once-popular posts aren’t suddenly a flop a few months or years later. Rather than having your old posts collect dust, you can create a repurposing workflow that helps you resurface content in new formats.

Below is a five-step content repurposing workflow to turn blog posts into LinkedIn, Twitter, and newsletters.

Repurposing vs. redistributing vs. refreshing

People use the terms repurposing, redistributing, and refreshing interchangeably—and they all serve a similar purpose: getting more mileage out of your content. But there are a few key distinctions:

• Redistributing → Posting the same piece of content multiple times on your channels. You can break the piece up by sections or post a summarized version. 

• Repurposing → Getting more mileage from the same piece of content by turning it into another media type. For example you can use the ideas from a blog post to create a LinkedIn carousel.

• Refreshing → Going back to the same piece of content a few months or years later to freshen it up, update it, and re-optimize it for SEO.

1. Find what content performed best 

Some content flops—it’s the nature of the game. 

If a blog post you distributed didn’t get much traction the first time, it’s unlikely to be a hit the second time.

If a post did get a lot of engagement, though, it’ll likely do well again when repurposed. For example, the tweet thread and corresponding article below would be one I’d try to redistribute. 

Another way to check performance is to go on Google Analytics and find your best-performing posts in the last year, quarter, or month (depending on your publishing velocity). Then add links to those posts in a Google doc, Notion page, or wherever you like to write.

Some other ways to find your best content is to go on Ahrefs and look for posts that: 

• Used to be ranking for more keywords than now 
• Moved down in the search engines results page (SERP)
• Drove significant traffic to your site

2. Use AI tools to create summarized copy from posts

While you could read through each entire blog post and write a summary, today’s AI writing tools make the process much quicker. Some of the more reliable AI tools are:

• Writer – starting at $18/mo
• Jasper – starting at $49/mo
• Copy.ai – free up to 2,000 words/mo

For example, you can use Writer’s Highlights feature to paste in an article and receive back a summary, meta description, LinkedIn copy, and pre-written Tweet. You can tweak as needed for your tone and voice, then add the copy to the document of your top-performing posts.

Another strategy that Justin Simon, Content Repurposing Expert who created the Content Repurposing Roadmap course, recommends is pulling headers from articles to create themes around social media posts. 

Each heading becomes a theme that you write a post for (appropriate to the platform). This is also a good way to ensure every section in your article packs a punch.

3. Choose which channel you want to repurpose content on

Choosing your channels is one of the most important steps of a content marketing strategy. Since you can’t be everywhere at once, choose one, two or three channels and really focus your energy there. It’s better to build an engaged audience in one or two places than to have a sparse following in five or six.

Which channels you choose will depend a lot on your business type. In the post, “How to prioritize content distribution channels,” Jimmy explains this concept in more detail. 

The best channels depend on the business model and product price point:

• Self-serve PLG products → SEO to unlock & scale growth + email to expand customer lifecycle
• Sales-Assisted SaaS → SEO, email for gated content, and social media for repurposing
• Sales-Heavy SaaS → Email to distribute BOFU content and convert leads, and social to distribute content
• Consulting/Services → Social media for growing your reputation and referrals

Once you decide which channels you’ll lean into, you can feel confident repurposing content. 

4. Serve your audience on the channel you’re sharing on

Finally, it’s time to schedule your tweets, LinkedIn posts, and newsletters using the copy you generated earlier.

Remember: you’re creating content for unique social media platforms. Like most things in life, there aren’t shortcuts—what performs well as a tweet thread won't deliver the same results when copied and pasted into a LinkedIn post.

You can use the same ideas and even some of the same text, but the formatting should cater to the platform. Here are a few practical examples.

Linkedin

Long form social media posts work best on LinkedIn. For example, Eric Doty posted this 300-word post with a summary of his advice on outsourcing thought leadership content. The post takes a few minutes to read, unlike on Twitter, where people tend to look for quick hits. 

Posts that do well on LinkedIn have some meat to them but are still easy to read with emojis and short sections. Spend time stalking successful posters to get inspired by what’s working. 

LinkedIn carousels are another popular format, which are more visual than simple text posts. They have short slideshows with text and images embedded in a post. For example, Rachel Pilcher shared this well-designed, funny carousel with “Things you should never say to a copywriter.” 

You can use Canva to create a carousel template (pre-made templates here) with your logo, colors, and key points from your blog post.

Twitter

The name of the game on Twitter is being short and punchy. Studying successful tweets from influencers like Amanda Natividad and Kaleigh Moore can help you see what works on the platform.

For example, this simple tweet from Elise Dopson shared her most popular article from 2022 with a quick one sentence summary. 

This tweet thread from Amanda Natividad has a brief but strong first tweet, then the other tweets in the thread deliver without being too long-winded. Mastering Twitter is truly an art form.

While you can use an AI tool to summarize key points and even write tweet threads for you, it’s important to know which formats and styles work well. 

Email

So LinkedIn favors long form, and Twitter is all about short form, but what about email? 

The honest answer is, it depends. If your main goal is to get people to click through to your website, you don’t want to give away the whole blog post in an email.

For example, Zapier’s editorial newsletter takes the core of the idea and teases out a single-paragraph overview of the article.

No matter your channel, make repurposing a part of your process. For example, you could write an outline for blog content, then use the ideas in the outline for your next newsletter.

5. Adopt a distribution-first mindset

Lastly, let’s touch on a concept Justin Simon calls a distribution-first mindset.

“Distribution and repurposing shouldn't come when the blog, video, or podcast is finished and you're scrambling to figure out what to do with it. You want to know exactly what is coming from that content before you hit publish.

"Those ideas need to be part of creating the original content. They can affect the format, design, and information. I like to include the distribution plan as part of the outline phase. That way, you can plan what other content and channels you want to include,” he says. 

Ideally, don’t wait until months after publishing a blog post to repurpose it. The best practice is to bake it into your creation process so you get into the habit of repurposing. You'll ultimately cast a wider net when you distribute and prevent your good content from sinking to the internet depths.