How to Repurpose Email Content for Social Media
By Ovi Negrean September 21, 2021
When creating daily content, regularly coming up with new ideas and implementing them on every marketing channel can become hard at times.
But there’s good news: most people prefer to hear from you on one channel only. That means you can repurpose content, and get a big bang for your content buck.
Let’s take email and social media for example. If you’re an advocate who has build a large email list, you may also find yourself considering social media. But does that leave you wondering how much time it’ll take to create new content?
In this blog post, we’ll cover repurposing content: Why you should and how best to combine your email marketing and social media efforts.
Why is it important to repurpose content?
There are many benefits that come along with a maintaining an online presence in many channels. Repurposing content allows you to be present across the web with minimal additional work.
Maintain a consistent image throughout the online landscape
Where are you talking to your audience? Email, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, etc. — each of them comes with a different audience and tone. Even though your target niche can differ from one channel to another, any internet-savvy individual will look you up on more than one channel.
It is important to maintain a consistent image on all your chosen platforms, so you can build a notable presence and get people to recognize you through your (online) tone of voice and (personal) branding.
Discover and test your audiences
Social media is great for discovery. You can connect with large, global audiences and the information you and subscribers provide is always public.
Email is a more private space, where you can intimately connect with the audience who likes you the most. It’s great for maintaining relationships with your audience and making sales.
In order to see what content works best on which channel, you need to start A/B testing. By repurposing content, you can try out different products, topics, voice, and imagery on different channels. Testing is the best way to discover what is the best fit for each of these different audiences.
However, keep in mind that measuring success on email and social media are vastly different.
The measure of success should be compared email-to-email or social post-to-post. With email, your most important metrics for success are open rates and click-through rates. On social media, you should track reach, engagement, and brand awareness.
Stay relevant
Repurposing content can also help you stay relevant.
Other brands and people are your online competitors 24/7. The internet doesn’t sleep and there’s new information online at any given time.
If you want to stay relevant amidst all the noise, the secret is to embrace different online channels and share value across them all.
How to repurpose email content for social media
Let’s explore how to take the email you’ve already written, and repurpose its content for social media.
Break down your email content into “chapters”
Emails are longer than social media posts. Sure, social media can sometimes have lengthy, storytelling-like posts as well, but what wins likes are catchy posts that manage to communicate their main topic briefly. Some call these short posts or microcontent.
In order to restructure your content this way, you can study your email and answer these questions:
- What is the main topic of your email? (e.g. LinkedIn posting)
- Can you break it down into mini-chapters?
Here are some mini examples you could pull from an email about posting on LinkedIn:
– Successful LinkedIn post topics
– How frequently to post on LinkedIn
– What visuals and copy are the most popular on LinkedIn
Now that you’ve got some already-researched topics, let’s translate them into an engaging social post.
What’s a better way of communicating this information? Could you turn it into a video?
How can you restructure the copy in fewer words? For inspiration, try these copywriting formulas.
Break down the email body into chapters of bite-sized pieces of information. Then turn them into your winning social media posts.
Transform written content into catchy visuals
Did you know that visual content gets to the brain 60,000 faster than text? That’s likely why 52% of marketers consider visual content very important in their strategy.
No need to start from scratch. Repurpose your emails by transforming the content into catchy visuals for social media. Not only is this an opportunity to connect with a broader audience, but it’s also a chance to be creative.
In addition to videos, you can also try:
- Infographics
- Engaging visuals
- Explanatory videos
- Memes
Identify what parts of your content have visual potential and get creative.
Extract stats from your email strategy
If you’re going to blend your email strategy with social media, why not make the best use of it by leveraging your insights into other forms of content?
Social media users usually respond well to a visual statistic. So share your email stats to get more likes!
Here are some winning go-to stats people generally like to see:
- The peak time when people open their emails
- Preferred content types
- A description of your most loyal subscribers
- Calls to action (CTA) that get clicked most
Or even inside tips on how you:
- Leverage email marketing
- Build your list
- Craft your email content
These stats can be used as valuable information to present online if your social media audience is interested in marketing. Also, these stats can inform when you post across channels, as well.
Make a live appearance
Video is king on social media now, and this is a great opportunity to nurture a community if you don’t shy away from recording yourself. Video not only catches viewers’ attention, but it can also be easier to present information.
Start posting live or pre-recorded videos presenting your information. These can be shared on stories or posts. When you’re live, try engaging with:
- answers to polls
- direct messages
- live comments
Find your community and provide them with answers
Online communities are one of social media’s proven methods to have a valuable impact. Apart from just sharing information on the internet, people are coming together in social media communities that can connect them through shared interests.
Communities make it easy for people to ask questions, as they are provided with a safe space made of like-minded peers.
Email marketers looking to embrace this new medium should research relevant social media communities and discover the most commonly asked questions. It might come as a surprise, but the answers may already exist in your email materials and therefore you can provide them with quality insights.
Come full-circle with email subscribers
Now that we’ve gone through the why’s and the how’s of repurposing email content for social media, you may ask yourself how to grow your email list in the process. This takes us back to the purpose. Yes, the purpose of repurposing.
If your main strategic goal for this content recycling is to grow your email list, then you need to keep in mind the following:
- Determine the type of audience you want in your email list and target it on social media.
- Clearly define your tone of voice and branding for social media. But don’t forget to keep it in sync with your email persona, in order to build a recognizable presence.
- Even if it’s the same content, always present it differently so you don’t lose subscribers.
| Pro Tip: Give more to your email subscribers. This is the best hook you can use on social media to get access to their inbox — promise exclusive information to email subscribers. |
Read On: 9 Best Practices for Writing Emails: Get Mileage Out of Your Emails
Repurposing content: the bottom line
Repurposing content can come in many forms: long content to small chapters, text to visual, text to video, etc. Identifying the best channel for each message can become a fun and creative process that reinforces your personal brand.
It can take time to determine when you embrace different online platforms, but experimenting is essential, especially when it comes to social media. There are many factors to keep in mind, from the actual wording to the hours you post.
A secret recipe for success doesn’t exist. What does exist is a large audience that values quality content and unique personalities online. Find them, and communicate clearly to them. Oh, and don’t forget to add that incentive to redirect them to your inbox!
What is your go-to method for repurposing content? Let us know in the comments how you keep your audiences engaged on multiple channels.
