The Repurposing Playbook: 5 Anchor Formats That Fuel 50+ Pieces of Content

[00:00:00] Are you, that's right, you, are you sitting on a goldmine of content and not even realizing it? In today's episode, I'll show you how to turn just one piece of anchor content into dozens of posts, videos, emails, and more without burning out. So make sure you stay tuned for this next episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach Podcast.

[00:00:30] Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, Email Marketing. There's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neal on your side. Because Neal Schaffer is your Digital Marketing Coach.

[00:00:58] Coach. Helping you grow your business with digital first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your Digital Marketing Coach and this is Neal Schaffer. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach Podcast. I am your host, Neal Schaffer, and this is episode number 422-422.

[00:01:23] Thank you for joining me on this digital marketing journey. Did you know that this podcast started way back in 2013? There have been some years, not since COVID, but earlier on where I was a little bit infrequent in publishing. But I want to urge you, not only to subscribe to this podcast, if you haven't already, but dig back into some of the evergreen content that I have in past episodes.

[00:01:46] Or you can go to podcast.nealschaffer.com and do a search and find the episodes that you might be interested in. All right. So, this is going to be an episode on repurposing. Now, let me take you back to when I was recording one of my podcast episodes. And if you've been a longtime listener, maybe you'll remember, but I had a realization that changed everything. That the same podcast recording could also be live streamed, meaning it could be saved as a video.

[00:02:16] It could be live streamed to multiple social networks. That saved video could be clipped into shorts. It could be repurposed into a blog post, sliced into a carousel, transformed into an email, and repackaged into social media posts. I call this epiphany my content chain. Now, this concept was so foundational that I dedicated an entire chapter to it in my book, Digital Threads. Why, you ask?

[00:02:44] Well, repurposing content is not some fringe idea. It's not something that you do once in a blue moon. Because content is the currency of digital marketing. And I've said it many times, and I will continue to repeat it. And because of that, if we're not repurposing it to maximize every bit of its value, we're wasting that currency. We're leaving money on the table is the other way to look at it. So, today, I am going to break down my exact framework.

[00:03:14] Let's call it the repurposing playbook to help you generate more content, more engagement, and yes, more ROI from what you're already creating. So, let's start with the basics. The basic is going to be anchor content. The content from which you are going to repurpose that into other content formats. So, anchor content is long-form, high-effort content designed to live a long life.

[00:03:40] Think blog posts, webinars, podcast episodes like this one, and YouTube videos. As I wrote in digital threads, and I quote, content is an asset, a gift that keeps on giving. That quote captures the mindset we need to adopt vis-a-vis content creation and therefore content repurposing. Because when you treat content as an asset, you don't just publish it and walk away. You repurpose the heck out of it.

[00:04:10] Anchor content builds your library of content. That I talk about in digital threads and I've talked about in this podcast. It becomes your source of truth. The thing that you mine for future posts, videos, emails, lectures, speeches, courses, future books, and more. Now, the core of the playbook is deciding on what type of anchor content that you're going to use that can then be repurposed into dozens of smaller assets.

[00:04:39] So, let's walk through the five main ones. And you're going to notice that some of these are text. Some of them are audio. Some of them are video. But let's start with the textual. Blog posts. I assume that you're creating blog posts because even with generative AI search, you still need content. And often that content is in the form of blog posts that get indexed by search engines and AI search engines.

[00:05:06] But they also help you build thought leadership, et cetera, et cetera. They become the engine of discoverability. Obviously, a blog post could be turned into a LinkedIn newsletter. It could be broken into X threads or Instagram threads. It could be turned into carousel posts on LinkedIn or Instagram. You can pull out quotes for image posts. You can create short tips or visual cards. You can use these blog posts as the foundation for e-books, email series, or lead magnets. That should be easy to understand.

[00:05:36] And it's not just about sharing a link in social because that doesn't work. It's about repurposing that content into platform authentic content, which does work. All right. Number two, podcast episodes. Use your script to write a blog. Funny thing is this episode does not come from a blog post. I have other episodes that do. This blog post, or I should say this podcast episode, was heavily influenced by a chapter in digital threads on repurposing.

[00:06:05] So if you consider that a blog post, it was probably, let's see here, about 3,000 words. Then you could see how that now becomes a podcast episode. Now, with the podcast episode, we can, like I said, use a script to write a blog. We can clip audio for audiograms. I don't think that they do well on social media, but prove me wrong. You can grab quotes for text overlays and images. We can extract segments for reels or shorts. And once again, we can turn key takeaways into carousels.

[00:06:34] And these are just some ideas. There are more things you can do. Don't get me wrong. But just to get you thinking and hopefully inspire you to action. All right. Number three, YouTube videos. You can cut into shorts, reels, TikToks. And in fact, you can publish short form video on any social network. When I publish my short form video, I literally publish them on every single social network in which I have a presence, including Pinterest, right? We can transcribe for blog or captions. Transcribe that video, right?

[00:07:03] We can turn the lessons into standalone tips for carousel posts. We can use screenshots for step-by-step visuals. All right. Number four, webinars. So if you, I assume you have a blog, but let's say you don't have a podcast or you don't do YouTube videos. I know it's not for everybody, but maybe you do webinars because you're a B2B brand. Well, webinars are videos. So similar to YouTube videos, we can slice up the webinars and the highlight clips.

[00:07:32] We can repurpose the slides and infographics. We can extract lessons into a blog series. We can use the full replay for gated lead magnets, which we should be doing. We can turn Q&A sections into social media posts. Number five are newsletters. So if you are doing a weekly newsletter, maybe bi-weekly or even monthly, we can rework those in the LinkedIn articles. This is something I've done in the past. I currently rework my podcast episodes actually into LinkedIn articles, meaning LinkedIn newsletters, right?

[00:08:01] We can pull story intros from those newsletters for hook style reels. We can turn newsletters into threads or email drips. We can use quotes or ideas in the newsletters for graphic content. Now, in digital threads, I mentioned how I use Adobe Express. A disclaimer, I am an Adobe Express ambassador, but I do love the tool and I do use them to build visuals. I use AI tools to generate reels. I'm currently using Opus Pro.

[00:08:27] That's neilshafer.com slash Opus, which is an affiliate link if you feel generous and you want to subscribe through there. And even carousel templates. And there are tools that I've used before. There's not one I'm using presently, but allows you to create carousel templates to make this whole process faster. And I will say, in addition to this, obviously tools like ChatGPT, when they are fine-tuned with your voice, they know your brand. They know your target persona, right?

[00:08:55] It can also be used to greatly enhance the efficiency of doing everything that I just talked about. Above and beyond the Adobe Express, the Opus Pro, even using freelancers, even using people to help with that process as well. So I use AI tools and people to empower all this, but it does not take up a lot of my time outside of creating that original piece of content. And it doesn't have to cost a lot of money is the key thing here.

[00:09:22] If you're an entrepreneur, small business owner, it can be done very, very effectively and on the cheap. It doesn't have to eat up a lot of budget. So now I mentioned the types of anchor content and, or I should say the anchor formats. So now we need to talk about how to turn this into a system. So in digital threads, I shared my workflow that I call the content chain. It looks like this. You need to start with one of those formats I just talked about, right?

[00:09:50] You can start with a script, record a podcast episode, live stream it to YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook X. I currently use StreamYard, which allows me to live stream into three platforms. I choose YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook X. You need a paid account to live stream there right now. Instagram is a little bit tricky. TikTok, I don't have a thousand followers for yet. So, but to me, that's plenty. In fact, for me, YouTube and LinkedIn are really the two key ones, but it might be different for you, right?

[00:10:17] Publish the audio podcast, which then goes out to Spotify and Amazon music and obviously Apple music and what have you. Then adapt the script into a blog post, into a LinkedIn newsletter. Slice the video into vertical shorts and reels. Use Opus Pro. Take blog quotes and convert them into carousels. Turn each point into a thread. The tools I use to make this all possible? ChatGPT for rewording and formatting. Opus Pro for clipping videos. Adobe Express for carousels.

[00:10:46] As I said in digital threads, when digital threads like repurposing become part of your DNA, it all becomes much easier, just like muscle memory. The key for me are live stream interviews, either the ones that I have been on or ones that I have been recorded on. The ones from my podcast, I'm interviewing guests and I include a lot of thought leaders who offer a lot of value, but it's also important for me to have a voice.

[00:11:14] And when I am featured on, when I am the one being interviewed on other podcasts, I will repurpose those. So I have a good mix of me speaking together with guests speaking. And the system I use basically, I have someone on Fiverr and hey, reach out to me. I'd be more than happy to make the introduction. Basically, I've been working with him for a while. He knows my style. I use Opus Pro, which recommends 30 different clips, regardless of the podcast interview was 30 minutes or an hour. That's overkill.

[00:11:42] And until I made a system, I was spinning a lot of cycles in Opus Pro going over all these different 30 videos. What I decided to do was let's look at the first 10 above the fold and let's just take five, right? If I can get five good videos out of a podcast interview, that's publishing one a day on all these different platforms. So that's basically the system. When my Fiverr dude is done with the five videos, I then send him another batch.

[00:12:13] And the way that Opus Pro works is you get, I believe, five hours of credits per month. So I'm basically, you know, once or twice a week, I am going through, I'm doing my own editing on the five videos that I chose. And then I'm handing them off for the final editing. And then every week when I get those back, I'm basically scheduling them in Buffer, which I talked about in episode number 420. And then I'm moving on to the next batch.

[00:12:39] And now I have a stockpile of two months worth of short-form videos that are going out almost daily on, you know, five, six, seven different social networks. So that is how you systemize it so that it becomes automatic over time. And now I go back, as I mentioned, this is an asset. I go back into interviews I did last year and the year before. There was so much amazing evergreen content. I haven't even touched my webinars, the courses that I teach, right? It is unlimited.

[00:13:05] But right now I want to focus on really that thought leadership content coming from my interviews as well as when I have been interviewed recently. But I think, you know, I just want to give you a look at what that system looks like over time and how it can help sustain this publishing of content. Now, there are some common pitfalls. So let me share some traps to avoid.

[00:13:30] Reposting the same piece of content across all platforms without adapting it. Algorithms and audiences can smell a lazy repost. This is really key. I think sometimes what gives something away is the use of hashtags, for instance, right? Facebook doesn't use hashtags. But other platforms use hashtags. Or you try to put more than one hashtag into a threads post, they only want one hashtag.

[00:13:58] So as I've mentioned before, LinkedIn for me is the platform where I create everything unique to that platform. But I will repost the same video on a TikTok, Instagram, YouTube shorts. Could I get a little bit more juice if I pushed that video to the app and then I added some native stickers and what have you on the app? Absolutely, right? And if TikTok or Instagram or YouTube are your primary platforms, you probably should do that. But so long as you understand, like I said, hashtags is a key one.

[00:14:28] Obviously, length of post is another one. So long as you believe you have a similar audience across all these platforms and they are not your most strategic platforms, I think it is okay. But, you know, beware as well. You know, if you find that your audience speaks in different tones, different languages on these platforms, especially TikTok, you might want to reword things. The other pitfall is that you spend all your time creating instead of repurposing.

[00:14:55] You need to be constantly creating, ideally on a weekly basis. This podcast is weekly. Sometimes I do additional webinars. Sometimes I am interviewed for other podcasts. But I highly believe if you want this to have a consistent flow of content to repurpose, a weekly investment is best. Maybe you do a webinar a month and you do, you know, a podcast every other week. So you get three a month.

[00:15:20] Whatever that is, the closest you can get to one week, I think the more it'll be able to sustain what you're doing. And obviously, if you're blogging, that counts as well. The other thing is treating content as a one-time use asset. If I was to record an episode, and sometimes I do, these are the influencer marketing trends of 2026. And I make it really, really specific by saying 2026, 2026 throughout the episode. It's going to be really hard to make that evergreen.

[00:15:46] If I don't mention the date, it makes it a lot easier to make it evergreen. This is something that I painstakingly went over in digital threads and edited to make sure that almost no dates are mentioned. I do this a lot of my blog posts as well. So don't treat your content as a one-time use asset. Treat it with repurposing in mind. And then you begin to see how you will structure that content very differently to make it easier for you to repurpose. The other one is ignoring how each platform communicates.

[00:16:17] TikTok is not LinkedIn. Your content needs to speak the native language. So like I said, in an ideal world, you would customize the language. At least with Buffer, I have the ability to customize the language. It will not let me schedule if I'm trying to publish to multiple networks without allowing me to customize things. So in an ideal world, yes.

[00:16:34] And if you were to take comments from your fans on TikTok versus Instagram versus LinkedIn versus Facebook and feed those into separate personas in ChatGPT, you probably could make really, really specific AI-powered captions that are specific to each of your networks and each of your audiences. I have not gone that far. As my Gen Z daughter would say, it's not that deep. But if you really wanted to aim for perfection, you could.

[00:17:01] What I'm trying to give you here is a process that doesn't take up your entire day, right? That's the whole idea here. So in digital threads, I do talk about how Instagram penalizes, a lot of us think it does, TikTok watermark content. So ideally, we post natively, which is what I recommend, what I'm doing with LinkedIn.

[00:17:20] But if we can't post natively, we want to make sure that we post the same original content to all the networks instead of, you know, I know that there are some platforms out there that will look for new videos on TikTok and then try to strip the watermark and republish them everywhere. I just recommend you upload a non-watermark content to begin with. All right. So the 50 plus content formula. Let's quantify the impact.

[00:17:45] So one of my podcast episodes becomes a YouTube live stream, which is fed on YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook. And then it becomes archived, right? It can become a blog post. I prefer to repurpose my podcast into LinkedIn newsletters, but I do have an automated blog post creation on podcast.neilschafer.com, which automates, you know, the show notes and transcript for every episode.

[00:18:11] So LinkedIn newsletter, a quote unquote blog post, I could repurpose it further into a blog post should I want to. I get five vertical videos normally, which I post to every single one of my platforms for every podcast episode that I do. I could probably get one, two, maybe three carousels based on what I'm talking about. So I can do an email campaign or at least I feature a podcast episode in every one of my email newsletters.

[00:18:39] And I feature the top 10 news, by the way, go to newsletter.neilschafer.com if you want to check out what it looks like. But, you know, my weekly podcast does count for 10% of my weekly newsletter because I only feature 10 things. I can create multiple threads if I wanted to. I could create image quotes and much more. And if you add all these up, you know, piece of content per platform, I believe that would add up to over 50. I haven't done the math, but take my word for it. All right.

[00:19:06] So in digital threads, I mentioned the case study of metadata.io. This is a case study that comes from a good friend, Amy Woods, who specializes in content repurposing. Check out her content 10x podcast if you want to learn more. And she has been on this podcast as well. I'll put the episode number in the show notes. But basically, they did their first virtual event. This is a B2B company.

[00:19:29] And they took 11 event videos and repurposed them for over six months into a full podcast series. That is what is possible. Now, Gary Vee is famous for creating 30 plus pieces of content from one keynote. Brian Dean, a backlinko for those that are familiar with this SEO guru, turned a blog post into a YouTube video with over 240,000 views. The process that I talk about is the same sort of process that everybody uses.

[00:20:00] It is real and it is replicable by anyone and everyone. So what did we learn? Well, hopefully, you already know. But we're reminded that content is your most valuable marketing asset. You don't need necessarily more of it. You need to get more from it. So this week, I challenge you. Pick one piece of anchor content. Follow the playbook. See how many pieces you can extract from it.

[00:20:28] And let me know, what's your favorite way to repurpose content? DM me or tag me on LinkedIn, Instagram X. I'd love to feature your ideas. And maybe, heck, interview you on future podcast episodes. Thanks again for tuning in. Next week, I have a very special interview with Dane Golden, who is one of the YouTube gurus that I follow. And it's going to be all about YouTube ads. It's Dane works with a lot of B2B companies.

[00:20:55] But I think the YouTube ad advice is going to be applicable to anyone and everyone. And, you know, we talk about Facebook ads, Google ads. Why not YouTube ads? So make sure you hit that subscribe button and you stay tuned. And hey, until then, keep it smart. Keep it strategic. Keep it digital. This is your digital marketing coach, Neil Schafer, signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. Questions, comments, requests, links.

[00:21:24] Go to podcast.neilschafer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilschafer.com to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on Your Digital Marketing Coach.