How To Make Your Content Last Longer With The Remix & Reuse Method

I hate the word 're-purpose' when it comes to content creation. It makes me cringe so hard.

The thing is the tools we use to make it really easy to create one piece of content, press a button and then spray it all over the internet. I call this the spray & pray method.

You post everywhere hoping & praying that as many people as possible see it.

But just because your content is EVERYWHERE doesn't mean it's EFFECTIVE.

Instead I use the Re-mix & Re-use method. With this method you choose a main platform to focus on and test out content and as content resonates you remix it onto other platforms.

There are two benefits to this method:

1. Your content lasts longer. Every content platform has a short post-life. On Twitter, a post might hang around in the feed for 90 minutes, and on Instagram for a couple of hours. So if you post your one piece of content on all the platforms at one time, then you only get that one burst of activity. Whereas if you spread it out over days and weeks that content lives on for a much longer time.

2. You can FOCUS on building one platform at a time. A big mistake I see most creators make is thinking they have to be on all the platforms all the time. This leads them to be mediocre at all of them. Instead, I focused on building a big audience on Twitter first - all my focus went into it for over a year. And then I branched out to other platforms and had the focus to build those.

So let's look at how the Remix & Re-use Method Works:

Step 1: Choose a Main Platform

My largest audience is on Twitter and I find it a great platform to test ideas and get signal or feedback on my ideas. I use tweets, atomic essays & threads to test out content ideas and I look for the ones that resonate the most.

Step 2: Choose your best ideas to Remix

Each week & month I look through my posts in Twitter Analytics and look for the ideas that got the most engagement.

I'm looking at both likes & comments. Likes are not as strong a signal as comments, but they still indicate a positive-ness towards that post.

Step 3: Remix

Once you have an idea of the posts that worked, you can then use those ideas to remix content for new platforms. And when I say REMIX I mean you are taking the idea and you are mixing it with the style of the new platform (not just copying & pasting).

You see every content platform has it's different nuances. Instagram is different to Twitter and to LinkedIn, and TikTok is definitely different!

So if you want to win on any platform you have to learn the format of the content that works and take your idea and fit it into that format - which is why this is called the remix method.

Here are some ways I take ideas and REMIX them

Turn atomic essays into short-form videos. I take an atomic essay from Twitter with a hook, context & 3 points and turn it into a quick video.

Turn Articles into tweets. Take long-form writing like articles and break them up into single tweets or turn it into a thread.

Illustrations. If you like illustrating, you might also like to turn an idea into a concept by illustrating it.

Post a long-form caption on Instagram. Take an image that represents your idea and turn an essay, thread or article into a long-form caption on an Instagram post.

Expand a short essay into a long article. I take my best-performing atomic essays on Twitter and turn them into longer pieces for Medium.

The best part of this method is that you can be 99% sure that content is going to work on a secondary platform because it has already resonated with people on the original platform.

So start with low-risk content, listen for signals & then turn it into more content!

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