Repurpose for Success: Your Content Flywheel

Intro: Real quick. I wanna tell you about a free webinar I’m hosting on April 25th at 1:00 PM Eastern time, called Repurposing Content for your Podcast. Depending on the guru of the day, you need a podcast. You need to be on TikTok. You need to be posting on LinkedIn. And don’t forget your own blog and newsletter, and this can lead to burnout fast. But, I’m here to tell you a better way. 

By repurposing content, there’s a reason I’m able to publish three podcast episodes per week. Three newsletters and post on LinkedIn almost daily. So, in this free 60 minute webinar, you will learn how to capture content ideas as easily as possible, how to build your own content flywheel from content you’ve already created, how to keep track of everything, and how to create a two-way street where you’re repurposing for and from your podcast. 

Sign up for free today at [profitablepodcaster.fm/repurpose]. If you are struggling to create content, you need this webinar. Again, that URL is [profitablepodcaster.fm/repurpose]. 

Content use is a tale as old as time. Disney, when making Robinhood famously reused steals from Snow White and the Jungle Book in order to save money when their budgets were low. But instead of looking at this as a bad thing, we should look at it as a smart thing. We’re saving time, we’re reusing our message to reach new people.

Dickie Bush says, “Don’t say a thousand different things once. Say one thing a thousand different time.” And that’s what I’m gonna talk to you about today. Creating your content Flywheel so that your content can reach more people and you can be a more consistent podcaster.

Welcome to the Profitable Podcaster where I help coaches, course creators and authors launch and grow their podcasts to help them build authority, generate more leads, and sell more through actionable advice and expert tested systems. 

I’m your host, Joe Casabona. And I’ve been podcasting for over 10 years. I’ve generated millions of downloads and hundreds of thousands of dollars from my shows. I’ll teach you everything I know here on The Profitable Podcaster. 

Okay. So, first let’s talk about why you should repurpose. I think I mentioned some of this in the cold-open, right? Which is you already have this message. And there are a bunch of ways that you can reframe it to reach more people, right?

If you send it as an email, only 30 to 40% of your email list is opening it, right? That’s the average open rate. If you’re posting it on social media, your organic reach is even less. I’ve heard single digit organic reach, right? So if it’s 1% and you have 3000 followers, what is that? 30 people? Did I do that Math right? That’s a tiny amount of people who are seeing your…No. It’s probably a little bit better than that. It’s better than 1%, right?  

My content usually gets like 500 to a thousand views and like 25 comments but, again, like 25 comments, so almost 4,000 people. That’s less than 1% of engagement. But if I rephrase it or reframe it now, more people are listening to it, right? And so you want to make sure that your content is reaching as many people as possible. 

Similarly, it’s hard work to come up with a new piece of content everyday or every week. And so I wanna tell you about my content Flywheel. This is how I make LinkedIn posts that produce my podcast, that then turn into a newsletter.

So, first of all, I will say like I have a back catalog of lots of content, right? I’ve been writing about podcasting for several years. I’ve been writing on my blog since 2000. I mean, I’m not gonna count the very high school esque, like, what was it? Live journal style posts I wrote, but that’s a deep cut. But I do have a lot of content that I can pull from. I have a lot of social media posts that I could pull from. But as you build this up, right? If you’re starting from scratch today, write 300 words a day or every other day, right? Do it the best you can and then take that content and put it everywhere. 

So, you know, stop trying to come up with new content for your solo podcast. I see too many people trying to reinvent the wheel because they think their episodes need to be unique. But here’s the dirty little secret, right? I may have talked about this already. I may have talked about this already in a previous episode, but I’ve been making episodes of this show for over a year and the content could be refreshed. And the content could be reaching new people. Right? 

Over on Mac Power users, every year they do their gift guide. I do a gift guide episode every year as well, right? Pat Flynn does like these. Where are they now? Episodes for Ask Pat 2.0. It’s good to revisit topics, especially as you get new audiences. 

Your content doesn’t need to be unique. And in fact, even if somebody is hearing that message multiple times, it takes at least seven times for a message to stick, right? So if this is the third time you’re hearing me talking about my Content Creation Flywheel, great. You’re almost halfway. You’re almost halfway to getting this idea to stick, right? 

So, if you’re going to make solo episodes, use something like my Content Flywheel. Instead, I will include  a screenshot of my Flywheel. You know, this graph I made of the Flywheel. 

But here’s what I recommend you do. Look for content that you can repurpose. So this is going to be blog content, newsletter content, social media posts, emails you send to people, right? Maybe someone emails you or DM’s you a question that they have in your area of expertise. Answer that. You don’t have to name them or you can ask them if it’s cool, but you can talk about that topic, right? Something I routinely get asked about is how do I get more downloads for my podcast, which is why I think the first episode of this year, the year 2023 was 6 Ways to Increase Downloads for your Podcast. It’s because that question is a question I get a lot and I was able to successfully double my download last year in the year 2022. So I took what I did. I generalized it a little bit. And I gave people advice for how they can do that. People find that hugely helpful. 

So, look for content that you can repurpose. It doesn’t have to be long form writing. It doesn’t have to be formal blog posts. It could be email. Turn that into a social media post. 

Here’s why I’m telling you to do that first, because you will get social proof that this is a good topic to cover, and you will get comments that allow you to add more context to your podcast episode, right? Because the social media, I mean, the social media is gonna be…right? Like LinkedIn is different than Twitter is different than TikTok or Instagram reels or whatever. But taking LinkedIn because that’s the one that I’m most active on right now, right? You need a hook first. It’s gotta be two or three lines cuz that’s all you see in the preview. And then you get to the meet of the matter. And it really shouldn’t be too long, right? Again, this is not long form writing. Maybe you have a carousel with some images that are eye-catching, but either way people are gonna start liking and commenting on that, reacting to it. And then you can add more context when you go to convert this post to a podcast episode, because that’s what I recommend, right?

I have… I’ll give you a quick insight into my process. I know I’ve talked about this on the show before, but I have a little button on my stream deck called Social Post. I press it. It creates a Google Doc in a specific folder. I title it. I write out the social post. My VA knows to take that content and schedule it on LinkedIn, but I then dig into this folder and I look for, all right, what am I gonna talk about for the next few weeks?

So I have the Content Creation Flywheel post or Word doc up on my computer screen right now. I have the Linkedin post up on my computer screen right now because this allows me to have all of the information in front of me that I can then use to create an outline for this show. So, I add a little bit…I add more content and more context. But the meat of it is all in this post. And this I, again, this works especially well for solo shows, for mini podcasts because it’s just going to be you talking. But putting it on social media first is going to give you that social proof. It’s going to let you organize your thoughts a little bit better. And so, it’s going to kind of make you structure. right? because you’re not just gonna write all willy-nilly or say ums and ahs in the middle of your LinkedIn post. You’re going to write in a way where there’s like a bullet in a list that allows people to consume this quickly. Right? And so, you know, looking at my LinkedIn post right now, this did pretty well impressions wise. It got a bunch of comments. And the reason that I gave the disclaimer or caveat about having a back catalog of content already is because that question came up. 

What happens if you don’t have content to pull from? So, I knew to answer that in this episode. So that’s why you wanna post on social media first, and then you can turn that into an outline on your own, in Google Doc. And you can use that or whatever, like Notion, whatever. And then you can use that as the basis for your episode. So then you record the episode, right? You’re gonna do exactly what I’m doing right now. You’re gonna have the post up, you’re gonna have the document up, maybe you have a blog post that you’ve repurposed this from. Maybe you’re gonna have that up as well to add some context. 

Last week’s episode on being a good podcast guest. I’ve written about that a bunch of times, and so I had all of those blog posts up and I was kind of switching between them grabbing the information that was pertinent to what I was talking about. Which I mean it, that which takes practice. I will say that much. It takes practice to do that, but you can script or put everything together in one document and then do it that way so that you’re not switching screens, right. Maybe you’re a little bit more organized than I am, but the idea is to take this content where you have your social proof, where you have extra comments and turn it into a podcast.

Then, I take that podcast and I turn it into a newsletter. So I’m recording this. I’m going to take probably that exact LinkedIn post, add a little bit more context to it for the newsletter and send it on Thursday to my newsletter subscribers. I’m also going to include a box that says, “Do you…Would you rather listen to this? Here’s a link to the episode.”

So now, from one piece of content, I got a LinkedIn post, I got a podcast, outline an episode, I got a newsletter. And then I can go back and take what I talked about. Here I have the transcript because I’m doing this in Descript. My VA will go through and actually properly transcribe it. Maybe I can turn that transcript into a blog post. Maybe I can add this episode to a blog post I already have. But now I’ve got this Content Flywheel, and then newsletter goes right back into the content to repurpose, right? 

So one of the places where I’ll look for inspiration is my Evergreen newsletter. and I’ll look for topics I didn’t cover or topics where I can add more context. So this is a review that I do every few months where I look at what I’m sending out in my Evergreen newsletter, and I’m like, what’s changed? What doesn’t make sense anymore? Am I referencing something from 2021 or 2023? I make those updates and then I think, “Okay. How can I repurpose this for future episodes?”

So, to recap. the content creation, and this is gonna be different for you. if you’re not posting to LinkedIn, if you’re posting to TikTok, like maybe you wanna record the podcast episode first, I know that undercuts. Everything I said about posting it to social media first.

But maybe you want to record the video. Let’s say you want to record the YouTube video first and then clip that up for TikTok and then export the audio, right?  I know a few people who are doing that these days.

So, but my recommended Content Flywheel, this is the one that works for me. Change it as it works best for you. Look for content that you can repurpose with your blog, your email, with newsletters you’ve sent with social media posts. Anything, especially social media posts. You can post the same social media.  You can post the same thing on social media slightly reworded like monthly. And it’s probably gonna reach new people or resonate with new people. 

Justin Welch does this. I use a tool called Taplio and all of his most popular posts are like the same, almost the same exact thing that he’s just posted months apart because he knows he’s growing his audience. Because he knows it’s reaching new people. Because he knows that the people who are seeing it today are not the same people who saw it three months ago. So, think about that as well, like if you’ve posted on social media, great. Reword it and post it again on social.

So look for content that you can make purpose. Turn that content into a social media post. That way you’ll get social proof that this is a good topic. And maybe you’ll get comments for you to add context to your podcast episode. Use that post as the outline for your episode. Record that episode and turn that episode into your next newsletter. 

Now, I go deep on this in my podcast mastery program. There’s a whole section on content capture ideas and how to stay consistent. And as I record this, I am planning my next cohort, which is all about repurposing content.

There’s a webinar coming up, which you probably heard about at the top of the show. And that is really exciting. So if you are interested in doing more of this, doing it effectively, check out [podcastmastery.co]. There you will be able to get access to over a hundred videos I’ve made on podcasting, but you’ll also get one-on-one time with me. so you’ll get an hour of my time where we can talk about, Hey Joe, how do you track your content? How do you… What about me? How can we put this system in place for me? You’ll get that one-on-one time with me.

So again, that’s [podcastmastery.co] and there is your Content Flywheel. We’ll check the description or the show notes,  for how I have visualized that.

And with that it’s time for the episode idea of the week. I bet you can guess what my episode idea of the week is going to be today. It’s turn a blog post or some other writing into an episode. 

So if you have a blog where you have 500 or a thousand words, take that. Update it if you need to and turn it into an episode. These are the best ones, right? Because they’re like scripted. They’re well written.  so you can read it and then you can have your episode ready to go. 

So that’s your episode idea of the week. 

Thanks so much for listening to the Profitable Podcaster. For all of the show notes, you can head over to p[profitablepodcaster.fm/315]. And don’t forget. if you want more context and hands-on guidance from me, some one-on-one time, head over to [podcast mastery.co] and check out my podcast Mastery program.

Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, I can’t wait to see what you make.