photo by azglenn

I am a firm believer in working smarter and not harder. There is so much on many of our plates in any given day and tangling ourselves with the countless activities in social media can be a bit much when faced with other tasks and duties. Today I wanted to touch on a subject that I have been a huge fan of, for both clients I have worked with and in my own work. The concept is to repurpose content through social media.

Like Reuse Old Content?

Not exactly. This isn’t like Back To The Future II when Doc Brown creates a car that drives on garbage. Instead repurposing content is actually about spreading your thoughts, ideas and content over multiple formats to expand your reach without going crazy in content creation.

The content that you repurpose can be as simple as taking the audio out of a presentation and submitting it to Podcast directories. Now your video can be uploaded to video sharing sites like YouTube, Vimeo or Viddler. You can then take the audio and submit it to sites like Podcast Ally or the iTunes directory.

Effective System To Repurpose Content

There are ifinite numbers of ways to repurpose content through social media. Working with small businesses and clients in this space I have found one method to work really well and is a great way to test the waters in different mediums.

Step 1: Create a blog post based around a list. Typically this is your “5 Steps To Doing Something Totaly Cool Article.” Write your blog post as you normally would and post it on your site.

Step 2: Create a slideshow, or powerpoint presentation based on the “5 Steps To Doing Something Totally Awesome Article.” Have a title slide, your main content and a final slide with a call to action. The call to action can be used to send people back to your website, have contact information or drive them to a free report or to purchase your products or services. The most common services to create these are Microsoft Powerpoint or Mac’s Keynote. Free solutions are made possible through Google Docs and Open Office .

Step 3: Use screen recording software to record you talking over the presentation. For screen recording on a PC look for Camtasia Studio . On a Mac, I recommend ScreenFlow . There are some free web based solutions including Screen Toaster and Jing .

Step 4: Strip the audio and render as an MP3. This will give you an audio file of the presentation you recorded and be able to use as a Podcast or audio download. This process can actually be done with iTunes by going to File -> Add File to Library, then get your video. Once in your library right click video (Has a little Camera) and select Convert Selection to AAC, MP3 or other file format.

Step 5: Upload all your media to different social media sites and expand your audience.

For video, using a tool like TubeMogul can upload your video to multiple video sites at one time. TubeMogul will submit your video Blip, YouTube, Vimeo, Riddler and over a dozen others with the click of a button.

For your powerpoint, I recommend using Slideshare . I call them the YouTube of presentations. Just like YouTube, you upload your file and are given an embed code which allows you to take that presentation and put it on your blog or website if you need to. There is also SlideBoom and Slide Serve .

For audio I recommend the iTunes Podcast Directory , Podcast Alley and Blog Talk Radio .

What We Have Done

What started as a simple bog post, is now a great piece of content that is being shared all over the web, in multiple formats which will find their way into perspective customers, fans and people looking for answers. All of these sites receive a great amount of traffic and allow for conversations to talk place within their own communities. Lastly, all of these mediums have legs. They have embed codes, share buttons and are easy to place on your own site and have fans place on their sites.

What content can you repurpose today? Do you have other ideas or have questions on how to take your content from medium to medium? Let’s talk in the comments below.

This post was written by Greg Rollett. Greg talks about the Internet Lifestyle as it relates to social media, internet marketing and lifestyle design on his blog

Tags: content creation, podcast, presentations, video