How to Expand, Reduce, and Repurpose Content

By Charles George

People learn and consume content in different ways.

Some people prefer learning visually, some through listening, some kinetically.

Some people may read when they wake up or listen to a podcast while driving.

Some may enjoy watching videos during the day.

You can use content to connect with people in different ways.

Plus, you can leverage each piece of content to connect with people in various ways.

What is the Purpose of the Content?

When creating content, the very first thing you need to decide is the purpose of the content.

For instance, are you writing an article to promote a book?

Are you promoting a workshop?

Does this piece of content promote a paid product?

Or is the purpose of the content to promote an article on social media?

What’s the purpose of the content that you are creating?

Once you’ve established the purpose, then create the content.

Remember, every piece of content must have a purpose before creating it.

If not, you can end up on the endless hamster wheel of content creation that can drain your time with little overall results.

Creating content requires time and often a financial investment.

The good news is that each piece of content you create is an asset for your business.

Here are three ways to leverage your content to connect with more people.

Expanding Content

Expanding content involves taking content you have already created and developing it to provide a more thorough understanding of the topic.

Let me give you a few examples:

An article can be expanded into multiple articles.

For instance, I can expand this article by creating three additional articles on this topic.

One could be about developing the purpose of the content.

One article could be about developing content ideas once you establish the purpose.

Another article could be about how to turn articles into paid products. The paid products could be a report, book, or course.

Expanding content provides different experiences for the end user and customer.

It can also provide faster access to results.

For instance, the content of a book can be turned into a paid course, speeches, mastermind groups, and a community trying to apply and master the book’s content.

I’ve done workshops and taught classes based on articles I’ve written.

I’ve expanded workshops into classes. The workshops and the classes included worksheets, checklists, and step-by-step guides on achieving a specific skill, process, or result.

Most of the class and workshop content came from articles I had already written.

I organized these articles and included them as a report to help the workshop and class attendees achieve the result faster. I took these same articles and created presentations. Plus, the presentations became handouts so people who attended could take notes.

So, expanding content is taking existing content that you already have and expanding on it more.

Often, expanding content can become a paid premium product.

Remember, before you create long-form content, check to see if you have previously produced content that you can use as a foundation for the content you’re going to develop.

Reducing Content

Reducing content is taking content you already have and turning it into smaller content.

For instance, you can take a course module and pull articles from it to promote the course. You can share these articles in your newsletter and website as blog posts.  

We can pull content from the article to create social media posts.

For example, this article can become multiple social media posts.

• One post could be a short description of this article, with an image and a link back to the article.
• Multiple quotes from this article can be used for social media posts.
• And I can share this one section on reducing content as a text post.

Also, when writing promotional emails for a book or course, content can be pulled directly from the product to create the foundation of the emails. I can create articles from a book’s content that can promote the book.

Reducing content is taking longer forms of content and creating new content with less work or effort.

The main thing when reducing content is you want the content to stand on its own and be one thought with one main idea and one purpose.

Repurposing Content

Repurposing content is another great way to create content.

Repurposing content is when we take a piece of content and turn it into additional content.

Let me give you a few examples.

• A blog post can be recorded as an audio and shared as a podcast.
• The audio can also be embedded with the article on the website.
• A YouTube video can have the audio stripped to create a podcast episode.
• Plus, audio can be turned into written content such as articles.
• An infographic can be created from each bullet point in an article.  

Repurposing content saves you time and reaches people in different ways.

Another example of repurposing a product is a book. Books can be translated into different languages to reach people in different countries. Repurposing your content helps reach new people, expand your audience, and increase your reach.

In conclusion, when you think of content creation this way, it makes it much easier.

You can create more content faster when each piece of content has a purpose. The smaller pieces of content can promote the next step in the journey, such as an article, a link to a workshop, or a link to a product.

You can expand content to create longer form premium content. And you can reduce longer pieces of content to share on your website and social media posts.

The key is to make sure each piece of content is unique, has one main idea, and can stand on its own. These simple steps will make it easier for you to create your content. Plus, it will save you a lot of time.