You are almost all the way to a complete content calendar that will help you simplify your content production for the next three months—and remove some of the stress of generating new campaigns and topics each day, week, or month.

You should now have a handful of Big Rock content topics, and these ideas are honed and ready to go. Now you'll be spinning those topics into even more content assets to fill any gaps in your calendar.

But first, start by watching the Repurpose video:

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THE WHY

What a shame to spend so much time and effort creating incredible content and then to use it only once. It would be like buying a $1,000 pair of shoes and wearing them with only one outfit! By repurposing your Big Rocks into more assets, you get the most value from your time and money—and cost-effectively reach more of your audience.

THE HOW

What few marketing pros know is that there are more ways to repurpose content than chunking down a long piece of content into a handful of shorter ones. Here's the process that will let you pretend you’re a penny-pinching grandma, and your content is leftover chicken that’s ready for sandwiches, soup, and pot pie.

DECIDE WHAT AND HOW MUCH YOU NEED

You have your Big Rock content topics all set. The next step is to determine how many additional content pieces you'll need to match the number of content assets you've decided is right for your calendar. (Take a look at the worksheet 1. CONTENT RESOURCES, where you calculated how many pieces of content in total you can reasonably create in three months.)

Depending on your needs, your audience, the original content, and the channels you use to publish and distribute content, your spin-off content might be:

• • Social media posts
  • Infographics
  • Audio/podcasts
  • Videos
  • Short blog posts
  • E-books
  • Email newsletters
  • Slideshows
  • Transcripts

Adjust the types of repurposed content to fit your brand's needs. Maybe your audience prefers videos to infographics. Maybe you get more engagement from longer content like e-books than shorter content like blog posts. Or perhaps you want to focus on a particular social media platform.

If you don't know, take your best guess. Remember, you're a smart professional! The key is to just get started and not overthink it. The next steps will work for all types and amounts of content. And if you do end up needing more assets later, you can always go back and brainstorm more Big Rock topics or spin-offs.

Repurposing can seem complicated since there are so many options for turning X into Y, so here are some ideas to get you started. Grab the worksheet 11. IDEA FILTER to have your Big Rock topics handy. Then use the infographic 13. REPURPOSING INFOGRAPHIC for more inspiration and the worksheet 12. REPURPOSING MIND MAP to record your spin-off topics.

TURN LONGER PIECES INTO SOCIAL POSTS

You probably have enough of an idea of what will go into your Big Rock assets to spin off ideas for social posts right now—such as how many SMEs you might interview, which customers you may be featuring, or if that downloadable report will include boxes. You can then plan to pull out short excerpts that would work on various social platforms, run the copy from text boxes as full posts, or extract pithy quotes from a case study or white paper to use on social images.

For example, for a recent content calendar I included these ideas for social posts:

• "Blurb+link to infographic"
• "Summarize points from blog"
• "Post quote from SME"

You don't have to be super detailed here since the particulars aren’t nailed down yet (because the content hasn't actually been created!).

There's also no need to write out the social media posts now, even if they're just quick tweets. Just record the idea, format (copy, image, video, etc.), and social platform. You can write them up, or delegate the task to a freelancer or content staffer, when you're in content execution mode.

BREAK UP LONG CONTENT INTO MULTIPLE BLOG POSTS

If a piece of content is slated to be very long, you might be able to break it up and run each section as an individual blog post. One good example is a whitepaper: turn some of the best sections into new blog posts, then point people to the whitepaper download for the full story.

Another option: if you're planning a listicle or a round-up—that's an article where you group similar topics into one piece, such as "Top 10 Tech Tools for Financial Planners"—take each point or item and blow it up into a new piece to publish on your blog, share as an email newsletter, or post on LinkedIn Pulse or Medium.

PULL THE DATA, FACTS, AND TIPS FROM LONGER ASSETS INTO AN INFOGRAPHIC

That infographic can then be shared in other channels, such as social media. As a bonus, infographics are like catnip to the media and can help bring more viewers to the original piece of content. We've had infographics published on many popular marketing and PR websites like MarketingProfs and PR Week.

REPACKAGE THE INFO INTO QUIZZES, CHECKLISTS, AND MORE

Fun, interactive packaging like checklists, quizzes, and polls can help you reach those people who learn better from doing than from reading, or who prefer to take in information in bite-sized chunks. They can also serve as companion pieces to a longer piece of content; for example, you might ask readers to take a quiz to test their knowledge on the topic, or offer a checklist, cheat sheet, or template around the topic of the main content as a free download.

USE SIDEBARS AND BOXES AS NEW ASSETS.

Sidebars are boxes of text set to the side of the main copy. They contain additional advice or resources, and you see them often in content like magazine articles, whitepapers, and e-books. Boxes are similar, but are typically set at the end of a section or page and may contain more information.

Sidebars are boxes can often be spun into whole new pieces of content by adding an intro, additional explanation, and a conclusion. In some whitepapers I've written, there are boxes with case studies that are as long as a short blog post! So why not use them for that as well?

COMBINE CONTENT INTO AN E-BOOK

Take various pieces of content around a similar topic and combine them into an e-book. (This is where your themes come in handy!) As an example, I recently helped a client develop an e-book to give away at Thanksgiving that combined four blog posts around the topic of "giving back."

This repurposing technique isn't just for blog posts, though; any repurposed content you spin off from your Big Rocks is fair game to become an e-book.

A similar idea is to bundle all of your content around one topic—both Big Rocks and repurposed content—into a downloadable info packet.

SWAP AUDIO/VIDEO AND WRITTEN CONTENT

People learn in all different ways. Some do better with written material, some prefer audio, and research is showing that more and more people are tuning in to video. While writers like me tend to gravitate toward written content, it makes sense to create content that fits our audience's actual preferences and not just our own.

However, it can be time-consuming and expensive to produce audio and video content. So smart content marketers on a budget will turn written content into audio or video and vice versa. This also makes your content more inclusive, as you now have different formats that can be used by people of differing abilities.

Examples: have a transcription made of a podcast or webinar, clean it up, and publish it as a blog post or downloadable PDF for those who prefer to read their content. On the flip side, if you have a nice piece of written content, create an audio version or a video of it. (Short animated explainer videos cost as little as $300!) Or if you're planning a piece of written content that will include insights from an expert, interview the expert for a podcast or video at the same time.

REOPTIMIZE OLDER CONTENT AND REPUBLISH AS NEW

If you discovered any content during your Brand Content Audit that was out of date, was off brand, or wasn’t promoted well, consider updating, improving, and republishing it to fill in any remaining gaps in your content plan. (It’s great if that content also fits into one of your monthly themes, but don’t stress—as I said, not every piece of content needs to fit strictly into a theme.)

Use these ideas as a jumping-off point to develop as many repurposed content types/topics as you need to fill your content calendar.

Want to see how your repurposed content might come into play in your content calendar? This excerpt from a recent calendar presentation illustrates how the thought process works: