Have you come across the phrase ‘re-purposing content‘ before? It’s a term I personally use a lot when talking to other business owners or online content creators. If you’re creating any form of content, re-purposing it into other formats and media should be a big part of your marketing strategy (if you have one). Crafting fresh and original content that meets your clients’ needs is great. But re-working your existing content to help it go a bit further for you has its perks too. And if you already produce content regularly as part of a podcast show, I’d invite you to consider re-purposing your podcast episodes into blog posts (or to hire someone like me to do it for you).

But let’s take a quick step back first. What does re-purposing actually mean?

What does re-purposing mean? 

When it comes to podcasting, re-purposing an audio episode means turning your recording into a different piece of content. This could be a short audio clip or a video, but for the purpose of this post, re-purposing your podcast episode means adapting the audio into a standalone written piece of content (i.e. a blog post).

I should probably clarify at this point that a re-purposed blog post is not a transcription. A transcription is a piece of text that replicates, word-by-word, what was said in your podcast episode. With a transcription, you literally take the words as they were spoken and change the medium from audio to writing.

However, when you translate the spoken word directly into writing, you end up with an end product that doesn’t quite fit the bill. Not for your business blog anyway. When you think about it, different pieces of content follow different ‘rules’. If you were at school, for example, you wouldn’t just take a poem you’ve written and submit it as an essay. (I mean, you could, but you’d probably get very low marks, as a poem doesn’t quite respect the structure you’d expect to see in an essay!).

In the same way, if you took a piece of audio recording and used it, word-by-word, as a blog post, it’d make a terrible blog post. It’d be too long, not structured enough, not user-friendly enough, and generally too repetitive. This is because the spoken language is by nature quite repetitive and much less structured compared to the written word. And we all know that repetition (while a great tool to help us remember information) isn’t great in writing. It makes for not-very-engaging and not-very-compelling reading. So we shouldn’t be surprised if web visitors don’t read podcast transcriptions to the letter.

What is a re-purposed blog post?

So now that we’ve established what a re-purposed blog post isn’t, let’s talk about what it is. A re-purposed blog post is a transcription that’s been adapted and turned into a well-written, well-structured, entertaining blog post that people will actually want to read. It’s a ‘standalone’ piece of content – something that exists in its own right and independently from the original piece of content you created – the podcast episode.

It’s a business blog post with a clear topic and message, a clear structure of sub-headings and paragraphs, with enough white space (or breathing space) on the page and enough visual and graphic elements (photos, images, screenshots, etc.) that will make it appealing and enticing to your readers.

Sounds good, right? So why would you want to re-purpose your podcast episodes into blog posts?

1. Your target audience may not read your transcriptions

A lot of podcasters have started adding transcriptions of their episodes to their show notes. This can be quite useful if you’ve missed a piece of information or want to double check a name or the spelling of something. If the transcription is time-stamped, you can easily head to that point in the episode and read anything you may have missed.

But would you read a transcription beginning to end?

When you think about it, transcriptions are not very user-friendly. They tend to be very long – a half an hour episode can easily turn into a 5,000-6,000-word transcription, and web users don’t tend to read content word by word anyway. When reading online, we tend to scan and skim through content, and we do this by looking at the headings and sub-headings in search of the information we’re after.

As much as I’d love to think you’re reading every single word of this blog post, I know you’re not! And because a transcription can be very long and not very structured, it’s not easy to skim read. So when people come across a big block of text where they struggle to find the information they’re after, they’re more likely to give up and click away.

2. Your transcriptions may not rank very well

Considering that the Google algorithm is one of the best-kept secrets ever, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I know that your transcriptions won’t rank very highly in search results. But what we do know is that one of the things that matter in how well your content ranks in Google is user behaviour. When your readers spend a while on the same page, Google interprets this as a signal that your content is valuable, interesting, and engaging.

But if your readers head over to your website and stumble across a 7,000-word transcription and click the back button straight away, the Google bots will know not to show this page to other users. Because chances are that other users will do exactly the same.

So it stands to reason that if your web visitors don’t read your transcriptions word-by-word, Google won’t rank that content very highly. After all, they aim to give their users the best possible experience – the content they display on the first page is content that has received the virtual thumbs up from tons of other people. So if your readers don’t spend much time actually going through the amount of text in your transcriptions, that content may not perform very well in search.

It makes sense, right?

3. Tidying up a transcription to make it readable takes a lot of time and effort

I regularly work from people’s transcriptions and believe me when I say that you do not want to publish a transcription exactly as it’s returned to you by the piece of software you used to produce it. While the words (and creative spellings) that creep in there can make the process quite entertaining, I can guarantee you that you wouldn’t want to publish a transcription as it is. It’d just be full of nonsense – think misplaced punctuation, misspelling of names, and random words that got in there because the software couldn’t pick up your accent correctly. Gibberish.

And if your content doesn’t make much sense, would you blame your readers for clicking the back button?

Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t publish your transcriptions. But if you do, bear in mind that you would need to spend a considerable amount of time going through thousands of words, and (as a minimum) correct spelling mistakes, grammar, and punctuation. And considering the text would be quite long and hard to read, wouldn’t you be better off spending your time turning that content into well-written blog posts instead?

4. You want to give your existing audience a choice to consume your content in different ways

People like to consume content in different ways. It’s to do with personal preference and with people having different learning styles – some people just don’t like listening to podcasts! But the way we consume content is also dependent on our habits or the situation we’re in. For example, I love listening to podcasts, and if I’m out for a walk or folding the laundry at home, I’ll happily tune into my favourite shows and listen. But if I’m on a busy London train (with no earphones) or at home with the children, I might read a blog post instead of listening.

So if you choose to turn your audio content into written form, you’re giving your existing audience a choice. They can either listen or read, depending on their general preferences or on what’s going on in the moment. And that’s pretty cool, right?

5. You want to reach more people

As things stand (and as far as I know), Google can’t pick up the words or phrases that are spoken within your podcast episodes. Of course, your podcast title, description, introduction or show notes (i.e. anything that’s in written form) can be optimised. But the audio side of things can’t. Now, this will probably change in the near future, but for now, this is where we are.

So if you choose to re-purpose podcast episodes into blog posts, you can then optimise that content for other keywords. And if that written content performs well in Google and gets found, you get to expand your reach! When you produce additional written (optimised) content at the back of your podcast episodes, you give more people the chance to find out about you and your business.

6. You get to double the amount of in-depth, long-form content you have

If you already host a podcast, you know how time-consuming content creation can be. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes to allow for that content to become available week in and week out so that your fans can happily tune in and listen.

• Can you put a similar amount of time and effort into creating written content too?
• Would you want to maintain a separate blog for your business?
• And could you realistically commit to it?

If you’ve struggled with lack of time or lack of consistency in the past, those days are over! By re-purposing that content (or having someone do it for you), you get to do the work once and double your results.

You won’t just share your amazing podcast with the world.

You’ll have an active business blog too!

7. You can re-purpose the blog posts into other pieces of content 

Once you’ve turned the audio content into written form, there’s a lot more you can do with it. You can break it down and use it for daily social media updates, for example. Or you can take things a step further and create more visual content. Think infographics, quote cards or memes, or other marketing material. Re-purposed content can become an integral part of your content marketing strategy. And over time, you can build a library of additional content on the key topics you cover in your podcast that beautifully complements your show.

And wouldn’t it be amazing if more people got to find out about you and your work because of that content?!

Wouldn’t you love it if your content could work a lot harder for you?

So tell me, have I managed to convince you that re-purposing your podcast episodes into blog posts is the way to go?