Why You Need To Repurpose Blog Posts To Video
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As a blogger, it is easy to get caught up on the treadmill of creating new content, always looking forward. So while new content is super important, it is also key to look back a bit at the crowing catalogue of posts you are building.
And repurpose them! Content created in one format can be changed into any number of others which gives them a new life, reach new audiences, and doesn’t have to take a ton of time. For the perfect example, let’s look at why you need to repurpose blog posts to video content to show you what I mean.
Table of Contents
Why repurpose a blog post to video?
Time is precious, even if you work full time from home and don’t have kids like me. You want to make sure everything you are doing has a purpose. And when it comes to repurposing content, video is one of the best options to consider for a number of solid reasons.
Reach a new audience
Video marketing is huge and there are countless ways you can utilise it. But if you aren’t ready for full-scale self-featured videos with lights, camera, and the whole set, you can repurpose your posts into video and still reach a new audience. That might be on YouTube, video fans on social media or just reaching people who watch rather than read.
You don’t need to create something new
Repurposing blog posts to video helps to create something ‘new’ for your various audiences without the workload of creating an entirely fresh blog post. This can be a real time saver.
Get the most important points across quickly
There’s a big emphasis on ‘epic’ or cornerstone content, long-form content and that’s great. Google loves it and you can really get into the meat of a topic. But not everyone wants to read a 3,000-word post. Video lets you create a highlight set of the most important points in the content in a short, visual form.
Algorithms love video
We’ll talk about all the places you could add your video in a mo but all of them are more than a bit obsessed with all things video at the moment. So if you are regularly adding video content, you can boost your presence on platforms, increase followers or engagement and even drive traffic.
What kind of video can you create?
Glance at a blog post and you probably don’t see an instant video. After all, there are a lot of words, a few pictures, and not always anything that jumps up and says ‘make me into a video now!’ But that doesn’t mean you can’t use some of the tried and tested types of video as inspiration for your repurposing.
Here are a few examples of making a post into a video:
- Make an explainer type video that walks through how to do something
- Go more in-depth and create a webinar-style video with slide shows for the main points
- Make short clips that highlight a particular point from the video
- Make a teaser video that tells people a little about the content and urges them to the post for more
Here’s an example from a recipe post: a series of still shots of the process of making the recipe becomes a video. There’s a short instruction on each shot as to what’s happening. Then there’s a call to action at the end to go to the post to grab the ingredients list and more tips.
Or another one: take a post like this with plenty of headers and subheaders and make slides from each. Combine them to a video and use the CTA to drive people to post to find out more details. If there’s something like an email marketing freebie or content upgrade, use this as the CTA instead.
How to repurpose blog posts
There are tons of different tools out there to use for making videos but I’ll mention the ones I’ve used myself for now to give you an idea.
Lumen5 for all types
Lumen5 is one of my favourite ways to make a video. It is ideal for those recipes with the still shots style that I mentioned above. You can upload your own photos and add captions to them to explain what’s happening.
It is also clever because you can connect your website and when you publish a new post, it will create a video outline for you. I’ve found you do need to tweak these and import some extra photos to make them look a little more branded. But AI gives great ideas for starting out.
Lumen5 has a range of tools available on the free plan and upgrades if you want more options. You can resize the videos within the tool.
Animaker for all types + animated
Animaker is something I’m newly experimenting with but I’m impressed. The video above was made with it. You can do all the usual video editing and creation but they also have animated videos!
You can create a character or use one of theirs. Then there are a ton of expressions, movements, and actions they can take. They can walk across a screen, point at things, and more. There are backgrounds and other elements to add to the videos and plenty of text options and transitions.
It is free for the basic plan and then there are various upgrade options available.
Loom for Slideshow style
If you want to create a slideshow-style video or record yourself doing something on the computer screen, then Loom is your friend. It allows you to record one or more screens and add your own voiceover as you go.
This also works for those how-to videos where you walk through the steps of doing something. I made this kind of video for my Easy Content Planning Assistant to show how to use Notion and for my Pinterest Easy Fresh Pins Planner to help people master Airtable.
Loom can be used for free and there’s an upgrade for extra features including adding transcripts of videos with spoken content.
Canva for all types
Finally, my favourite graphic design tool Canva is adding more features for video all the time. Currently, you can use video clips to make short videos, import videos you’ve created, and make videos within the software.
You could create a series of graphics to explain something and then download them as a video file rather than still images. This would create a video that could be then used with Loom if you wanted to add a voice-over.
Canva offers a good free program but I’m a big fan of Canva Pro for the tons of extra features you get.
Where can you use the video?
Once you have decided to create a video and have an idea of the style and what software you need, then you should consider where to use it. This is because all those different platforms have different formats and requirements.
YouTube then embed the video in the post
The easiest and most obvious one is to create the video and upload it to YouTube. Then go back into the relevant post and embed the video into it. Don’t upload it and add it directly as this can slow down your site. Plus you get the benefit of starting to grow a YouTube channel.
Use it on Facebook
Facebook does love Live content but it also loves to have video content as users watch it. There are a few places you can put it – on your Page, in a Group, or even in a Story. Stories have a slightly different format to the others but are very much the same as Instagram so there’s good cross-posting potential there.
Check out these tips on Facebook video marketing for the best formats and sizes.
Instagram Story, Reels or IGTV
If anything, Instagram loves video more than Facebook and there are at least three formats you can use – Stories, Reels, and IGTV. That’s as well as adding it to your normal feed. Again, there are specific dimensions and lengths of video.
You can see more about Instagram video marketing options here for more.
Video often provides popular on Pinterest even though it isn’t the best for getting clicks to your website. And with the launch of their Stories app, you can reuse that IG content to satisfy the Pinterest algorithm as well.
Other social media platforms
From using video on Twitter to platforms that are all about video like TikTok, there are plenty of places you can reuse that content once you’ve made it.
Clever repurposing step
Taking a blog post and making it into a video of some kind is a clever repurposing step. You have the content, the information maybe even some custom graphics. All you need to do is decide on the style of video, the format for how you want to use it, and what benefit it brings your viewer.
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Love this post! I’ve used Lumen5 for clients and it’s really fun to work with. I also love all the additions Canva is giving for video!