Summary
Everyone tells you to repurpose your content, but nobody explains how to do it without creating a mess or wasting time. Guest writer, Dana Herra, breaks down three tactical frameworks—LEGO, Transformers, and Play-Doh—that show you exactly how to deconstruct, transform, and reshape your ideas across formats and channels. This isn’t about squeezing more output from less input. It’s about building repetition that sticks, establishing credibility, and giving your best ideas room to develop.
There’s good advice, there’s bad advice, and then there’s advice that sounds good but actually doesn’t help you
Like “Invest in the stock market.”
“Follow your dreams.”
Or, if you’re a marketer: “Repurpose your content.”
It all sounds good until you realize no one told you how.
I can’t help you with the stock market. But I can tell you how to repurpose your content.
The Purpose of Repurposing
There are three big reasons to repurpose: value, efficiency, and effectiveness.
Value is obvious. You already made the thing, you might as well use it.
Imagine cooking an enormous holiday feast, eating one plate, and throwing the rest in the garbage.
No way, right? You’d probably invite people over, send leftovers home with them, and spend the next week figuring out how many kinds of new sandwiches you could invent with the stuff in the refrigerator. You would get the maximum benefit from the time and energy you invested in that meal.
Efficiency is also obvious: tweaking is faster and easier than building from scratch.
There’s still work involved, but the idea is already fully developed; no staring at a blinking cursor thinking what to write about.
Effectiveness is the part no one really talks about, but we should. Because as copywriters and content writers, we know the value of repetition.
Your audience needs to hear your words and ideas over and over to make the message stick. Then they need to hear it some more to connect it with you.
Repurposing increases the effectiveness of your content by building those reps.
You don’t need more ideas. You need to play more creatively with the ideas you’ve got. So add these tactics to your toybox, and let’s play.
Repurposing Tactic 1: Treat Ideas Like LEGOs
LEGO content is by far the easiest kind of repurposing. Like playing with LEGO connecting bricks, you stick elements together to build something, then take them apart to build something else.
Break up a long article into short social media posts
Cut up a podcast into a series of teaser clips
Combine a series of short reels into a longer highlight video
Picking up on the idea here? You don’t even change the format. All you’re doing is deconstructing long content or combining short content.
This reinforces the message for people who saw the original content, and introduces it to people who missed the first piece.
Repurposing Tactic 2: Treat Ideas Like Transformers
Another tactic is to transform your content from one format to another. Like a robot that becomes a truck, you turn your original piece into something new.
Turn the stats from an article into an infographic
Turn the best quotes from your podcast into written social media posts
Flesh out your most successful social posts into emails
The “transformer tactic” turns your concept into a new format for a different channel. It’s the same idea (maybe even the same words), but the new look feels fresh.
Repurposing Tactic 3: Treat Ideas Like Play-Doh
Play-Doh is always Play-Doh, but you can shape it to look like anything. With Play-Doh content, you have a core concept, but you take different approaches to its shape.
Let’s say you’ve written an article on “how to prepare your garden for spring.” You’ve LEGO’d it and Transformed it. What’s left?
You take the core idea (prepare your garden for spring) and shape (or expand) it in different directions.
Why prepare my garden for spring?
Why is each step important (unique content for each step)?
What equipment do I need?
How do I time my garden prep?
Each approach to the idea yields new base content that can also be LEGO’d and Transformed.
Your message stays fresh while still building repetition and establishing credibility with the audience.
Repurposing Gives Ideas Space to Play
Remember the three reasons to repurpose content: value, efficiency, and effectiveness? Add one more to that: it gives your ideas room to develop and mature.
Successful writers aren’t always the ones with the most ideas. They’re the ones who make the most of the ideas they have.
📺 Free Webinar: The Only Repurposing Framework You’ll Ever Need
Looking for a practical system to get more use out of the content you create?
Join me (Dana Herra) and video marketing expert Justin Vajko on Wednesday, November 5, as we deliver a FREE masterclass in repurposing your content.
We’ll cover common mistakes, underrated tactics, and the only repurposing framework you’ll ever need.
👉 Claim your FREE invitation here 👈
👤 Dana Herra is the content marketer behind Herra Communications. After an award-winning decade in journalism, Dana pivoted to marketing. Since 2015, she’s been helping nonprofit organizations and small-to-medium businesses develop and execute their marketing plans.
To see more of Dana’s content, you can follow her on LinkedIn or subscribe to her on Substack!
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