How to Choose a Content Repurposing Service

If you’re familiar with content repurposing, you know it’s the best way to boost your ROI from content production in just about every way. From giving you more content for more platforms to turning that content into a tool to learn more about your audience, the potential is enormous.

That said, there’s an art to repurposing content and most marketing teams don’t have anyone on staff with any experience doing it. That’s why turning to a specialized content repurposing service makes sense. But considering how new this marketing strategy is, you may not have a clear sense of what to look for.

Fortunately, we’ve broken down everything you need to consider when choosing a content repurposing service.

Familiarize yourself with content repurposing

Content repurposing isn’t just about cutting up content and posting it wherever you can. Beyond the basics, it’s about combining an understanding of the process with knowledge of your audience to best choose what microcontent to produce and where to distribute it. It’s also essential to have a good sense of experimental design so you can use that microcontent to gather valuable data.

So before you begin, you need to consider these aspects and what your needs are.

To quickly get a good sense of the whole process, we recommend you check out this ultimate guide to repurposing content for a more detailed breakdown.

Understand your needs

When evaluating a service, you need to start by asking them if they have experience repurposing content for different use cases like brand awareness, sales enablement, retention, etc. Considering how closely integrated all of the steps of the process are, you want to find a service which can help you with the whole process (or at least the portions you can’t handle internally).

Let’s go into more detail on what those needs might be to help you understand them better.

Types of media

In general, you want to at least try as many media types as possible when doing content repurposing. This is because you never know whether video, audio, etc. might resonate well with a specific audience on a specific platform until you try. So you want to look for a service capable of working with video, images, charts/infographics, and audio.

That said, if the content you’ll be repurposing is something like a complex video series with quality production values, you’ll want to ensure the service you hire can match that high standard.

Quantity

There’s no denying that content repurposing can be very labor intensive. Considering how many moving parts there are to the process, delays can quickly grind the entire process to a halt as you wait for someone to catch up. While new technology is automating some parts of the process, most services are still stuck in manual mode.

So you want to ensure the content repurposing service you hire is capable of handling the quantity of content. But just as important is the pace of work.

Frequency

You need to ask any service a few key questions about frequency: can the service you’re considering plan around your social calendar? Can they commit to specific workaround times? Even if everything else in the process is working well, if you can’t be nimble when responding to content opportunities or keep up a specific pace, you’ll be losing out on chances to connect with your audience.

Level of domain knowledge needed

This is an enormous consideration. If you’re marketing some straightforward ecommerce products, then it’s less of a worry. However, if your content is about something like artificial intelligence in global supply chains, you’ll want the people managing your content repurposing to have a general grasp of that topic. This way, they will be able to identify relevant themes when creating microcontent.

Consider ROI

We mentioned ROI as a primary advantage of using content repurposing, but that doesn’t mean you can take it for granted. You want to choose a service which can show you your ROI and savings upfront before commencing. Things like how automated the process of cutting up existing content is will have an enormous impact on the cost of putting out microcontent.

So don’t go into choosing a repurposing service taking ROI improvements as a given. Indicate that this is something you measure and take seriously to ensure the service you hire als takes it seriously.

Choose a proven methodology and framework

With content repurposing being a relatively new marketing strategy, plenty of marketing agencies will be ready to say “sure, we can do that.” However, considering the investments needed for this strategy to succeed, you can’t afford to leave it up to an untested team.

Besides experience, different content repurposing service providers will have different approaches to the process. It’s important to compare and evaluate them. A good service will have case studies and data to back up their approach.

Also see if they can push you further in your marketing, not just maintain your current level. If you're already doing video, you shouldn't just "delegate" video work to an agency. Instead, consider how they can help you better turn that into audio, image, and written content.

So, be sure to pick a service with a proven methodology and approach.

Find a partner that will save you time, not demand more of it

We left this consideration for last because it’s too rarely considered when hiring an outside agency for any marketing help. If a partner is getting great results but requires constant input from your team, the ROI of their work suddenly doesn’t look so great. They might require some initial training to get up to speed with your team, but you want to find an agency capable of working largely independently after that point.

From the earliest stages, ask the agency about their efficiency, and how they will free up your existing marketing resources. Asking about efficiency from the start will help establish it as a core goal of your partnership going forward.

Have more questions?

If you’re still unsure what you might need from a content repurposing service, book some time with us. With our years of experience, we’re happy to guide you through the process and better understand what content repurposing can do for you.