91% of businesses rely on some type of video content as a marketing tool.
Done right, it’s a type of content that consistently provides a positive ROI in terms of engagement, clicks, brand awareness, and customer retention.
Make it a priority to repurpose video content so that it works across multiple channels (social media and otherwise) and can reach a wider audience in the process.
Here’s a quick run-down of what to expect in this article:
Ways to repurpose video content for other platforms and formats, such as turning a long-form video into something short and shareable with Pictory’s auto-highlight tool.
The benefits of repurposing content.
How to turn a video into a completely new type of content like a blog post or even a podcast episode.
Real-life content repurposing examples to inspire your next moves.
It’s time to make the most of your video creations!
TL;DR
Content repurposing is all about transforming existing content to suit different sites and formats without having to create new material from scratch each time.
It allows creators to get far more ROI out of their videos.
Integrating repurposed videos into marketing strategies makes juggling social media demands much easier but is also important for providing website content.
There are many benefits of repurposing videos, such as:
It extends a video’s reach across different social media platforms and audiences.
It’s an opportunity to refresh the content you already have and in doing so, keep audiences engaged.
Content creation is more streamlined as the most is being made of existing videos, rather than always making new ones.
Videos can be updated to take advantage of trending keywords and thus help sites rank better and increase their organic traffic.
Transforming videos into ads offers the unique advantage of the content already being audience tested and as such, more likely to perform well.
Video can be repurposed into many different formats, including:
Podcasts: Audio extracted from webinars, etc. can be used to create podcasts and reach new audiences.
Blog and Other Written Content: Pictory offers an auto-transcription tool that can be used to create a transcript from video content which can then be adapted into blog posts, white papers, etc.
Long-form to Short-Form Video: Another great Pictory feature is our auto-highlights tool which edits longer videos down for platforms such as TikTok or YouTube Shorts.
Other Visual Elements: The addition of video captions, animations, or new footage and images can be used to update content without having to create a whole new video each time.
Tools such as Canva, ElevenLabs, Audacity, and Pictory can make repurposing easier.
Pictory especially includes the full range of features needed.
Understanding Content Repurposing
Video content repurposing can play a vital role in any marketing strategy, but many still don’t understand what it is or why it’s so important.
What is Content Repurposing?
Content repurposing is the act of taking existing content and adapting it for different mediums or platforms.
For example, YouTube videos that are shortened and edited into Instagram Reels, or screenshots and GIFs turned into more static social media posts for LinkedIn or X.
Why is It Important for Social Media Platforms?
Most businesses are juggling a variety of social media platforms that require constant posting.
Creating unique, engaging videos for each can be both expensive and time-consuming.
Repurposing video content across different social media channels means that a business can benefit from the ROI of a great idea a few times over, while simultaneously reducing strain on their content marketing budget.
This is especially useful for maximizing the value of strong video content.
Video also happens to be a particularly adaptive format.
Learning how to repurpose it yields results far beyond social channels.
The Benefits of Repurposing Video Content
Video made up about 82% of internet traffic in 2022.
There’s no doubt about its dominance in the current content marketing landscape, but most businesses still aren’t getting as much as they could out of their videos.
Here are some of the extra benefits that repurposing videos can help unlock from this powerful content format:
Extend The Reach of Videos
Each social media platform has its own demographic of dominant users.
A social media channel like TikTok has a very different audience base to LinkedIn or Facebook.
They also have very different demands in terms of content.
Some social media platforms prioritize short-form videos, others longer, and YouTube now does both.
Repurposing video content to suit those different demands means that you can extend the reach of a piece of content beyond where it may have originally appeared.
This increases your overall chances of reaching both new audience bases and your existing customers.
Like any good investment, diversifying videos can multiply the returns.
Keep Audiences Engaged
One of the trickiest aspects of the way social media users consume content these days is how quickly they move on to new trends.
As soon as someone masters the art of a traditional YouTube upload, Instagram Reels and their trending audios pull the rug.
Keeping up with these changes and keeping audiences engaged throughout isn’t always a matter of creating entirely new content though.
Sometimes it’s just a matter of repurposing existing videos.
Whether that means editing long-form content down to shorter clips or updating a video’s audio, repurposing video makes it easier to refresh content, stay relevant, and boost engagement in the process.
Streamline Content Creation
Making repurposed video content a part of your marketing strategy can streamline your entire content creation process.
Instead of spending money and time constantly creating brand-new material, businesses can make the most of what they already have.
If you’ve had video content that’s already performed well, this multiplies the ROI and means that you have more time to dedicate to other content tasks.
SEO Advantages
Updating and repurposing video content also has SEO benefits.
It’s an opportunity to target newer, more relevant keywords, reinforce existing ones, and improve the crawl frequency for otherwise stagnant content.
Search engines are hungry machines that constantly need new content to feed off.
Repurposing videos is a cost-effective way to boost Google search rankings and get more organic website visitors without having to constantly come up with brand-new ideas.
Repurpose Video Content as Advertisements
Another way to repurpose video content and make the most of its benefits is to create video ads.
Instead of shooting and creating separate ads, your best-performing videos can be re-edited into effective advertising.
What’s great about using repurposed content for ads is that it’s already audience-tested, so paying to promote it will likely yield a better ROI than using new material.
5 Real-world Examples of Video Repurposing
Many brands have been able to maximize engagement with their video content simply by repurposing it for different platforms.
Here are some examples:
GoPro: This famous camera brand often repurposes video content across YouTube and its other social media channels, with the same piece of content being edited into fresh videos for each platform.
Patagonia: Similar to GoPro, content is repurposed between platforms.
Here’s a great example of a YouTube video creation that then appeared as a shorter version in an Instagram Reel.
Vogue Beauty: You’ve probably seen some version of Vogue’s “Get Ready With Me” series pop up online and that’s because this YouTube series is regularly repurposed into video-rich snippets for Instagram stories, reels, and TikTok.
Dove: The cosmetics brand has been highly skilled at creating engaging YouTube docu-videos which then become video ads and content for various social media posts.
It’s meant that a single video can go viral multiple times as it finds new life and new audiences on different platforms.
Zara Home: This charming YouTube series follows Italian grannies making pasta and has been repurposed into Instagram content and recipe blog posts.
How To Repurpose Videos into Different Formats for Different Platforms
People can often get trapped in the notion that once video content has been made, it has to live in that format, but that simply isn’t the case.
While repurposing a long video into a shorter one is possibly the easiest change out there, there are plenty of other formats for you to sink your teeth into, as we’ll see below:
Why Your Videos Should Be Podcasts
With over 4 million registered podcasts on the internet, there’s no doubt that we are living in the time of the podcast boom.
Audio content has become a hugely lucrative space for brands to connect with different audiences.
And with the right know-how and passion for creating audio and video content, anyone can create a successful podcast.
The issue that stops too many businesses from taking advantage of this growing format, however, is panic over finding “enough” content to warrant a podcast.
We’d argue that you probably already have podcast-worthy content at the ready.
It just needs to be repurposed.
In-depth discussion videos and webinars often have information-rich audio that can be extracted from existing videos and uploaded as podcast episodes.
And if you use Pictory to extract the transcript from your videos, you’ll have a working podcast script in no time.
This allows brands to double the output from their video creations and access audiences through a fresh format.
Turning your podcasts into videos
The reverse is also true.
At Pictory, we offer an AI-powered tool that allows users to turn their podcasts into videos.
Our software takes the audio transcript and matches key phrases with images and videos from our stock library to create high-quality visual content in just a few clicks.
We also offer a library of royalty-free audio that can be used as background music.
This is extremely useful for creators who want to promote their podcasts on multiple platforms.
It’s also worth noting that a big podcast trend right now is for podcasters to upload a YouTube video of each episode, as well as the audio on podcast platforms.
And it’s easy to clip these longer vodcasts down into quick teaser highlight clips that sell your content to viewers.
Sticking exclusively to audio or visual content isn’t enough to stand out and certainly, tools like Pictory mean that you get to do both without having to do more work.
Turn a Video to a Blog Post
No matter how much podcasts or videos trend in the content space, written content will always hold value.
It’s how websites are indexed online and, as such, is key to increasing organic site visitors.
With the growing popularity of online videos, however, many businesses and content creators have found themselves ignoring the potential of the humble blog post.
When it comes to effective digital marketing though, the best content marketing strategy doesn’t pick between videos, podcasts, or blog posts.
It includes everything.
Finding the time to juggle all this can seem impossible unless you’re a Pictory user.
One of our best AI features is an automated transcription tool that can turn any video into text within seconds.
This means that to repurpose a video into a blog post, all you have to do is upload the content or link to it, and our software will automatically turn it into text for you.
In creating that blog post, it is also worth embedding the original video into the piece as this will have SEO benefits for the video itself and help lead people to it on platforms like YouTube.
Transform Video Content into eBooks, Guides, and White Papers
In the very same way that Pictory can help transform videos into blog content, it can also be used to create eBooks, LinkedIn Guides, and white papers.
Longer-form written content is an integral part of the content marketing funnel but creating it can be time-consuming.
Educational video content such as a webinar recording, or explainer video tend to translate best into this type of content.
The best repurposing efforts match up tone with format, while still providing added value.
Transcribing a webinar into a downloadable eBook, for example, allows businesses to disseminate the information more easily while still fitting the expected style of that content.
Balancing Long-Form and Short-Form Video Content
In the world of video marketing, the biggest tension these days lies between posting short-form videos and longer video content.
YouTube videos were once the standard social media video, focusing mainly on content over 10 minutes long.
Now, with TikTok and Instagram Reels, some of the most popular videos online are under 5 minutes.
The impact of this was made particularly apparent with the introduction of YouTube Shorts – a sure sign that shorter videos are now an integral part of a completive video strategy.
However, longer video content doesn’t seem to be going anywhere either.
We’d argue that the best way to balance these two video mega-forces lies not in choosing a side but in repurposing long-form videos into shorter clips.
As we mentioned earlier, many brands will edit down their YouTube uploads into short-form videos for other social media sites.
The virality potential of short-form video content like on TikTok is just too significant to ignore.
Pictory makes it particularly easy to maximize the value of both long-form video and short-form video content with our auto-highlights feature.
Using AI, the software can condense a longer piece of content into a short video with all the key points.
You just upload or link the video and the software does the heavy lifting.
Repurposing long-form videos into short-form videos doesn’t just require a length adjustment though.
The aspect ratio needs to be updated too.
Short-form video content usually takes the shape of a 9:16 ratio which can be tricky to crop landscape videos down to.
At Pictory, we’ve made changing your video’s aspect ratio as easy as possible so that this no longer needs to be a concern.
Other Visual Content
Another way to repurpose video content is to add new visual elements to it, such as animated graphics, so that key points are emphasized better.
This is especially useful if a brand realizes some adjustments may be needed to reach a new target audience, or if they just want to refresh old content for better engagement.
Pictory’s editing suite includes options to add images and videos from our stock library, captions, other text, and even animations which can help repurpose old content like explainer videos so that they feel exciting and relevant again.
Here are some other ways to get extra visual content out of your videos:
Take screenshots from videos and upload them as carousels onto social media sites like Instagram or X (Twitter).
Create GIFS and animations from the content.
Use a combination of stills and text from videos for infographics or web graphics.
Leveraging Video Content for Advertising and Engagement with Pictory
Video content leads the pack when it comes to online advertising.
It tends to get more views and engagement than static images but as many complain, shooting a full video ad can be very expensive.
The best way to get around this, and to make your video ads more engaging, is to repurpose video content you already have.
For example, explainer videos and customer testimonials can be cut down into shareable, video-rich snippets that show off the best of your brand.
To make it a more interactive format, you can include shoppable links or tags.
These allow customers to click on your video ad and be taken through to the correct product pages.
Creating more organic video advertising can be as simple as repurposing client interviews into slick, customer testimonials to be shared on social media.
This kind of content can also be used on website support pages, extending the life of it even further.
What can’t be avoided, however, is the necessity of good editing software.
Pictory offers a full suite of AI-powered editing tools that make it easier and quicker than ever to create polished video ads.
Hot Tip: Create Themed Video Series with Pictory
We’ve spoken a lot about how to take one original video and strip it down to an audio file, or a piece of short-form content, but repurposing a video can sometimes be a simple matter of re-framing.
Grouping your videos into themes or playlists on sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and TikTok makes it far easier for a target audience to find them.
Instead of posting one, full video, they can also be segmented with a tool like Pictory into a series of shorter pieces of content that help build anticipation and subscriptions.
As we lead up to the festive season, holiday-themed series that cover Christmas or end-of-year tips perform well, but brands can build series around just about any theme relevant to them.
Tools and Software for Repurposing
Here are some great tools and software choices that can help you repurpose your video content and maximize its benefits:
Pictory AI: Our software encompasses the full range of features needed to repurpose video – from auto-captions to auto-highlighting and more.
We can get your content ready for any format or platform with only a few clicks.
Since our software relies on AI, it also speeds up the repurposing process and further helps marketers save time on content creation.
Canva: A useful app for creating and adding new graphics to content.
ElevenLabs: This AI voice-over software can be used to add new audio to a video.
Certain Pictory memberships even include an integrated ElevenLabs tool.
Audacity: Can be used to edit extracted audio from video files for podcasts, etc.
5 Examples of Video Content Repurposed with Pictory
Pictory can be used to create and repurpose content in several ways.
Here are some examples from our incredible community:
Robin uses Pictory to balance both long and short-form video content so that she can get more done in less time.
Adam turned to Pictory to help support a more robust video strategy and repurposes his videos in his blogs to help boost their SEO.
Tom works in quite a technical field and needed to simplify and repurpose jargon-heavy content into something more manageable.
He uses Pictory to repurpose and create more engaging content.
Brian relies on Pictory to repurpose content and keep up with changing marketing trends such as the shift to short-form video.
Monico is a teacher who uses Pictory to not only cut down lengthy educational videos but to repurpose them with auto-captions so that they are more accessible for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.
Start Now: Make The Most of Your Video Content
There are so many ways to repurpose video content and breathe new life into your creations.
To start your own journey, sign up for a free Pictory account today and gain instant access to the full range of repurposing tools you need.
We can’t wait to see what you make!
FAQs
Why is repurposing video content important for businesses?
It streamlines content creation processes and multiplies the ROI of your videos.
Why is repurposing video content important for brands?
Repurposing helps diversify content for different platforms and formats so that it can reach wider audiences and further build brand awareness.
How does Pictory help with video content repurposing?
Our editing suite not only provides all the features necessary to repurpose content, but it’s powered by AI which means that tasks are also sped up.
A great example of this is our auto-highlighting tool.
