According to Semrush’s 2023 State of Content Marketing report, 42% of marketers say that repurposing content leads to content marketing success. And it’s no surprise, creating a single piece of high-quality content requires a lot of resources. You can publish it as it is and get some results or repurpose it to multiply your results. As author Ross Simmonds suggests, the best creators spread their ideas by creating once and distributing them forever.
So, what does this have to do with the Power Rangers?
Power Ranger Megazords offers a perfect framework for building a content repurposing workflow. But I’ll get into those details later. First, let me share a story about how I learned to repurpose content for Come Alive.
How thinking about the lumber industry helped me turn one blog article into 7+ content pieces.
Over the 20th century, competition was so fierce in the lumber industry that sawmills had to figure out ways to maximize their profits. As a result, they started using ALL the byproducts of cutting lumber.
Logs were used for boards, scraps were used for mulch, and even sawdust was collected and sold as animal bedding for farmers. It became rare to find a sawmill whose only product was lumber.
Reading this story made me wonder: what “byproducts” in my work am I wasting? This became a personal strategy of reusing any content I make at least 3 times.
For example:
- I wrote a 4,000+ word piece on how to start a podcast to test on Google Ads.
- I took the piece, broke it into several 800-plus-word articles, and sold them to a training website under a shared license.
- They performed well on the training website, and we used them as the foundation of an educational video series.
- I used the shared license to post them to my personal website. One particular article had above-average results, and I turned it into:
- An email series.
- A podcast episode.
- Public speaking topic.
- My team continues to pull quotes from the article to use for social media posts to this day.
That’s how one piece of content was repurposed in 12+ different ways.
We have always used pre-established processes for our content at Come Alive. However, the level of intentionality from the above example wasn’t happening consistently. Our marketing efforts felt disjointed, and I knew we could use our energy and assets more efficiently.
In fact, when it came to content creation and promotion, several of us spent time on the wrong things.
Why repurposing content requires delegation, and how to do it.
While content repurposing is more efficient than creating stand-alone pieces, it still requires multiple steps. If you are a business owner or CMO creating most of this content, you will quickly become a bottleneck.
The best way to bypass this is to use Jay Papasan and Gary W. Keller’s main concept from their book The One Thing. It’s the idea that if you want to achieve more, you need to scale back and focus on less.
The way I see it, there are 3 types of work:
- Work that only you can do.
- Work that someone can do.
- Work that just needs to get done.
Work that just needs to get done doesn’t require a person’s time. These tasks can be automated with processes or tools. For example, you can use Calendly to schedule meetings with others (and no, Calendly is not rude).
Work that someone can do requires a human touch, but this someone shouldn’t be you. For example, I’m very good at managing projects, but my business is better off when I hire someone to help with operations. This way, I can focus on tasks only I can do.
Work that only you can do are the most important things you should be doing. For example, no one else can host and conduct interviews on my personal podcast.
With this delegation framework in mind, our team gained clarity on what we should or shouldn’t be doing.
For example, I should be hosting and interviewing for my own show(s). A personal podcast is a way for me to connect with my guests and audience. It is also a platform to share what I believe. My (literal) voice is important.
I shouldn’t be writing or scheduling social media. That’s something someone else on our team is better off doing.
In the same way, our executive producer should be doing higher-level tasks like writing for and overseeing our narrative shows, but not writing show notes for all the episodes we produce.
Once we identified what we should and shouldn’t be doing, our content repurposing flowed better, but it wasn’t enough. We needed a sharp system. We needed an actionable solution.
This is where the Power Rangers make their appearance.
Analyzing your content so you can start building a repurposing workflow.
A content repurposing workflow is a plan for creating and reusing content. When done well, it takes the guesswork out of choosing what kind of content to create and in what order to make it.
To build one, you need to start by analyzing your content. I want to share how we did it at Come Alive so you can use it as inspiration.
How we analyzed our content.
In order to turn content repurposing into a consistent process, we analyzed our content through four filters:
1. Basic expectations: What criteria should our content meet?
We decided that all our content should align with our company’s purpose and values, reflect our niche, speak to our target audience, and have a consistent tone.
2. Evaluating content: What should we focus on right now?
There are countless ways to create content. Instead of relying on our feelings, we evaluate what we should be making with facts. We do this by analyzing the goal of each piece, its impact, the level of effort it takes to create it, its longevity, the priority level, its funnel stage, and the author.
3. Promotion frequency: How often should we publish each kind of content?
Different kinds of content need to be published at different frequencies. For example, it makes sense to publish on X at least twice a day, on LinkedIn once a day, podcast episodes once a week, and long-form articles once a month.
Your frequency might be different. What matters is determining what yours is and sticking to it.
4. Content calendar: What topics should be posted on which days of the week?
Similar to promotion frequency, our content follows a rotation. This removes the guesswork. We’ve already done the strategizing, so we can focus on creating.
We typically follow 2 to 3-week rotations featuring topics like value adds, ideas to discuss, client and company testimonials or promotions, and the occasional hard sell.
Putting It All Together
When you think about content and promotion this way, it becomes easier to decide what to spend your time on and what will have the greatest impact on your business. It also builds consistency and trust with your audience.
Bring out the content Megazord! Building a content repurposing workflow in 2 steps.
Now that you have analyzed your content, it’s time to put together your repurposing workflow, i.e. building your Marketing Megazord!
If you’re not familiar with the Power Rangers*, they are a group of teens who have been chosen to fight space monsters that threaten Earth.
Each teen is granted ninja-esque powers and controls their own huge fighting robot, a.k.a. Zord. And when the individual Zords aren’t strong enough to defeat a monster, they combine into one badass Megazord.
As I noted earlier, our individual content pieces were strong (like the individual Zords), but I knew they could be unstoppable if they worked seamlessly together (like the Megazord).
Or, if you prefer the sawmill analogy, we had too many byproducts going to waste.
Step 01: Determine your Zords by selecting your primary content.
Ask yourself what type of content is most important for your business? For us, it was:
- Articles
- Podcast episodes
- Videos
- Speaking gigs
- Newsletters
- Podcast guest appearances
*For the record, there are 21 different themed Power Ranger seasons. I’m focusing on the best one, season 01 (Don’t @ me).
Articles, the Red Ranger.
Jason, the Red Ranger, controls the Tyrannosaurus Zord and is the leader of the Power Rangers. Although we work in the audio space, our articles are typically the best pieces for lead generation. They can reach the most people and “lead” the way towards much of our other content.
Podcast episodes, the Black Ranger.
Zack, the Black Ranger, controls the Mastodon Zord and is second-in-command. Similarly, our podcast episodes are easily our next best content type and often carry the same bravado as the Black Ranger.
Video, the Pink Ranger.
Kimberly, the Pink Ranger, controls the Pterodactyl Zord. Her edgy and cool demeanor is often used to cover up her own vulnerability. We haven’t started video yet, but it’s definitely the “cool” medium and one that allows for vulnerability and authenticity.
Speaking gigs, the Yellow Ranger.
Trini, the Yellow Ranger, controls the Saber-Tooth Tiger Zord. Trini is independent and thoughtful. As the founder of Come Alive, I actively seek speaking opportunities. It’s an easy way for me to connect with and help our audience.
Newsletter campaigns, the Blue Ranger.
Billy, the Blue Ranger, controls the Triceratops Zord. Billy is hella smart but somewhat underutilized. He’s also one of the longest-lasting original Rangers. In the same way, email is an excellent way to connect with our audience and nurture relationships.
Podcast guest appearances, the Green Ranger
Tommy, the Green Ranger, controls the O.P. Dragon Zord. Tommy isn’t always around, but when he is, he always helps secure the win. Podcast guest appearances aren’t a consistent part of our content strategy, but they are very successful when we do use them.
Independently, the Power Rangers and their Zords are strong. When they combine into the Megazord, they are unstoppable.
Step 02: Controlling the Megazord by using your content repurposing workflow.
Alright. So now that you understand how Zords work, here’s how the Marketing Megazord has become an effective, easily automated solution to our initial problem: A disjointed marketing strategy.
The primary piece of content acts as the engine. It is what kick-starts the content repurposing workflow. Once a piece of our primary content is created, our team automatically puts new secondary content in motion.
For example, if I write an article, my team knows to…
- Choose 5 to 10 quotes to use for X posts.
- Choose 3 to 5 paragraphs to use for LinkedIn posts.
- Break up the article by sections to use as individual LinkedIn articles.
- Reuse the excerpt/meta description in the monthly newsletter broadcast.
- Choose 2 to 3 concepts to be made into social media graphics.
I focus my time on writing an amazing article, and my team can automatically repurpose it into 20+ different pieces of content. And if the content performs exceptionally well, we move to the secondary list of content we can create to maximize its impact.
This automation is only for our articles. We have unique processes for all six kinds of our primary content. Thus, we have a fully functioning Marketing Megazord.
What does your Marketing Megazord look like?
If you spend time on things outside your unique ability, you’re cheating yourself. If you make content for a single purpose, you’re cheating your audience.
Even though the example is silly, the Marketing Megazord really is a killer process. My team and I know exactly what to focus on and when to focus on it. I focus on the tasks with the highest impact only, and my team handles the rest. No content is being wasted, and everything gets repurposed.
Hopefully, you can see how much more powerful content can be when it works together.
Last random note for everyone born in the 1980s…
I almost themed this whole thing “Marketing Voltron”.
“Voltron” is a more popular search term than “Megazord” and Voltron would technically beat the Megazord in a head-to-head fight.
That said, I went with the Power Rangers analogy because it’s stronger, and I’m a sucker for alliteration. Marketing Megazord.
Okay. I’m done nerding out. Go create something.
