How to Turn One Blog Into 21 Social Media Posts

How to Turn One Blog Into 21 Social Media Posts

Get the most social media content out of one blog post

Since automating my social media content and setting up repeat posts I have been giving myself daily high fives.

The biggest win has been the bucketloads of time I have saved. Time that can be spent on other marketing activities.

As a busy marketer, anything that saves time is worth jumping at. However saving time shouldn’t be the only motivator. Marketers must never forget the reason we do social media. Our goals.

Whether you want to increase reach and engagement, as well as traffic and potential leads, your automation and repeat strategy must help you achieve your goals. And what I’ve discovered is that the success of your social media marketing, depends on how you approach repeat content. Undoubtedly there is a right way and a ‘not so right’ way of repeating social media content. The ‘not so’ right way is to recycle the exact same post too frequently, set it to repeat, and then forget about it.

The right way is to stagger your repeat posts and use a variety of different content in between, as well as take into account frequency and timing norms for each platform.

It’s also important to regularly review posts in any repeat campaign for currency.

But there’s another way to reuse content: creating variations of your posts.

Tweaking your posts for repeating is critical to not being perceived as a spammer and to engaging your audience. Having several variations of the one post, enables you to repost and repeat, what is essentially the same content, even more frequently.

Creating different versions of a post also means you may appeal to a wider range of people.

How to tweak your posts for repeating

The type of posts that can most easily be tweaked and turned into multiple versions, are posts that link to a content piece.

Blog articles and other long-form written content provide the most opportunities to create multiple posts. Lead magnets, such as an e-books, whitepapers and how-to-guides are also excellent sources.

While it’s entirely possible to use other forms of content, such as videos and images, it’s much easier to use written content.

You should start by identifying a key content piece that you know is interesting or useful to your target audience.

Social Media Experts Social Media Examiner encourages marketers to then “identify important takeaways, quotes and data points from your content piece” before using a social media management tool to schedule repeated postings of the content.

Specifically, they recommend that marketers use the points identified from the content to create hooks for social media posts.

Using this method you can tweak one post and create dozens of variations that could be included in a long-term cyclical campaign.

You can use the same approach for new posts as well as revisiting older posts or content.

Getting more bang for your…content

Similarly Marketing Land plans a series of different posts based on the “deep content” linked to in the original post.

“Most content shares on social media lead with the title of the post…that’s usually the form of our first share…then we might share a tip from the post, or provide an interesting statistic (because) there is a chance that a specific tip might grab someone where the title didn’t.”

Creating 21 Unique Versions of One Post

#1 Post title with link

This is often the first and simplest post linking back to your content.

#2 Ask a question

Ask a discussion-provoking question. You could use a variety of questions to create several snippets.

#3 Cite a fact

Share a fact or figure from your content piece.

#4 Use a quote

You can highlight a pull-quote from your article.

#5 Add intrigue

Write a teaser message that urges the user to want to read more.

#6 Ask an influencer for a quote

You can reach out to an influencer and ask if they would be willing to provide a comment on your article.

#7 Mention your sources

In your snippets mention (and tag) any key sources used in your content piece. This may lead them to re-share and further extend your reach.
You can even completely change the focus of your snippet to an influencer or a source, creating whole new versions of your posts.

#8 Use different keywords and hashtags in your post

This will reach different users and means you don’t have to cram all of your desired hashtags into the one post.

#9 Use a different image

Choose several suitable, but completely different, images that can be used in different versions of your post.

#10 Include a video instead of an image

If you don’t have a video that goes with your post, consider filming a short one that highlights the key points from your content.

#11 Share a tip from your content

Focus on one of the tips or ideas presented in your article.

#12 Use a bold statement

For example, “Nobody Likes Your Social Media Posts & What You Can Do About It”.

#13 Link to a current date

Introduce your article with a current date or event: “The Social Media Tips Every Marketer Needs in 2017”.

#14 Link to a current event or news story

Double points for a funny celebrity flub. “How to Avoid a Social Media Disaster like [insert event]”.

#15 Use lists

Rewrite your post title to have a numbered list: “10 Marketing Secrets The Big Companies Don’t Want You to Know”.

If you’re struggling to come up with different ways to say the same thing, you can use the classic journalist technique of the five Ws and one H as inspiration for snippets, or even use them to form a variety of questions:

#16 Ask a ‘What’ question

Present the focus of your content and what they will learn from it. For example, “Find Out What has Marketers Excited About Social Media”; “What Were They Thinking? The Biggest Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them”.

#17 Make a ‘When’ statement

Describe in what situation or what time is this content relevant. Eg. “The Best Social Media Posts for the Holidays”; “The Latest Facebook Algorithm Changes and How They’ll Affect You”; “When do I Give Up on a Marketing Campaign?”.

#18 Tell people ‘Why’ to click through

Give the reason why someone should read your content. Eg. “Get the Tips Right From the Experts”; “Why Marketers Love Native Advertising?”.

#19 Name drop with a ‘Who’ title

Give away brand names or the kind of people that are relevant. Eg. “Social Media Marketers Turn Away Now”; “Google is changing its search algorithm again but what does it mean to you?”.

#20 Tell us ‘Where’ the content matters

What physical or non-physical location is the content relevant to. Eg. ‘How Bloggers Can Escape the Keyboard and Create an In Real Life Profile’; “Where Have All The Good Marketers Gone? And How To Be One Of The Them”.

#21 Show the ‘How’

What’s the method or way someone can do something? Tell us. Eg. “Save 6 Hours a Week with Automated Social Media Software”; “How Can Thousands of Marketers Be Wrong?”.

That’s great but what about tweaking other types of content?

Of course it’s possible to tweak posts that promote other forms of content, such as images or videos, but the key is being able identify enough snippets to describe the same item.
A much better strategy is to repurpose the content to create truly unique posts—a strategy that is also useful for leveraging written content.
There are loads of ways you can repurpose your content. These include:

  • Converting an article into a pdf or presentation shared on SlideShare.
  • Using several articles as the basis of a white paper or ebook.
  • Creating an infographic from facts or data points in an article.
  • Using facts or quotes to create an image that can be published as Instagram posts or Twitter cards.
  • Creating a short video that can also be posted on YouTube and other video platforms.
  • Converting a video to audio only that can also be uploaded to a site like Soundcloud and used as a podcast.

Using the above tips you will be well on your way to creating 20+ versions of your best social media posts. High fives to you!

Then all you need to do. to make the most out of your social media posts. is put them on repeat—find out how simple it is with cyclical campaigns.

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