In this episode, Chrissy Rey interviews social media expert Heidi Schmidt about content repurposing strategies and the relationship between websites and social media. Heidi shares valuable insights on turning existing content into multiple formats, using AI tools for efficiency, and creating an effective content ecosystem.
Listen to the Episode
Show Notes
Social media expert Heidi Schmidt discusses how to maximize content through strategic repurposing. She explains how to transform blog posts, webinars, and other content into various formats while maintaining consistency and engagement. The episode covers practical tips for using AI tools and maintaining a balance between fresh and repurposed content.
Guest Bio: Heidi Schmidt
Heidi Schmidt is an award-winning marketing professional with over fifteen years of digital marketing and communications experience. She is passionate about helping brands create social media content that authentically showcases their expertise and solves problems for their ideal customers. In 2020, she founded Heidi Schmidt Creative to help busy business owners consistently show up online while getting results. She lives in Pasadena with her husband and son, and serves on various boards in her community in her free time.
Connect with Heidi:
- Website: www.heidijschmidt.com
- Instagram: @heidischmidtcreative
- Facebook: Heidi Schmidt Creative
- LinkedIn: Heidi Schmidt
Key Topics
- Website and social media integration (0:02:07)
- Content repurposing strategies (0:03:14)
- Using AI tools for content creation (0:09:19)
- Email marketing and social media synergy (0:21:56)
- Meta advertising strategies (0:21:34)
- YouTube as a traffic driver (0:23:20)
- Pinterest marketing potential (0:24:21)
Resources Mentioned
Transcript
[00:00:09] Hello everyone. I’m Chrissy Rey and we are back for another episode of Website Success. And today I have Heidi Schmidt with me. She is the owner of Heidi Schmidt Creative, and she is a social media guru.
[00:00:35] I’m not going to go more in depth than that because I would love it. Heidi, if you could. Tell me a little bit more about yourself and what you do.
[00:00:41] Sure,
[00:00:42] thanks for having me. So I own Heidi Schmidt Creative, and basically I help overwhelmed business owners kind of take the overwhelm out of social media. A lot of business owners just don’t have the time for social media, and so we have done for you social media management.
[00:01:00] We also do strategies and VIP content days. I started my business in 2020. I had been a marketing director. I’ve worked on the agency side. So when you know, the world shut down, I lost my job and had a first grader at the time, and I was like, well, don’t know if I can go back to the office anytime soon.
[00:01:23] So I had wanted to work for myself for a really long time, so I just kind of dove in and here I am. , and , I love my clients. I’ve worked with most of them for many years.
[00:01:32] We focus mostly on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. And there are social media places that do TikTok. We don’t do that.
[00:01:40] , and we also do email marketing, , because I find that they fit very nicely together.
[00:01:44] Awesome. Thank you. So, most of my audience is here because they want to make their websites better and social media, obviously not your website, but how can your social media work together with your website?
[00:01:59] So when you look at your marketing funnel, I find social media to be kind of a really good piece of the marketing funnel puzzle. Like it’s great for building your audience, for building your brand awareness, for driving that engagement, which in a lot of cases is driving traffic to your website. Like if you have a blog, you want to drive traffic to it, as you know, organic traffic can be really slow to build. So it’s a really great way to drive traffic, drive engagement, and if you have a conversion point on your website, social media is a really great way to get those conversions. So , that’s really how they play very nicely.
[00:02:39] And you know, if you have content that You’re creating for your website. How are you promoting it? You know social media is one of those great promotion tools for anything that you put out on your website any sort of content that you’re Producing lead magnets all that kind of fun stuff.
[00:02:56] Okay, and so you’ve got all this content that you’re promoting Are you always promoting fresh content or can you maybe reuse some of that content?
[00:03:06] I am the queen of repurposing. , I definitely think, you don’t have to constantly be recreating the content wheel. And I’m sure, you know, as a website expert, like refreshing old content on your website is super helpful for Google, right? So on social media, like if you’re in a situation where you’re If you’re in a creative stump, , I always tell my clients, let’s go back and look at what performed well three, six, twelve months ago, especially if it’s evergreen, because you’re just gonna try to say the same thing, so why don’t we look at, hey, this is what we did, how can we refresh it for social media now?
[00:03:47] I work with a lot of defense contractors. And there are only so many ways that you can say, “Hey, we’re hiring for software engineers.” You can certainly get creative. But sometimes those creative engines, like they, they get a little stale.
[00:04:01] It’s always helpful to just go back and look at what’s performed really well and find new uses for it. When was the last, if you have a blog that performed really well, when was the last time you sent it out to your email list? When was the last time you promoted it on social?
[00:04:17] Content doesn’t have an end date per se, unless, it’s a specific event. Then, you can’t really repurpose that stuff, although there is repurposing that you can do for that kind of stuff in the sense that, when you think about repurposing your content, you got to look at your whole content ecosystem.
[00:04:33] So you create a blog. Okay, if you have a number of blogs, you can create a lead magnet, right? And you can create an email, you can create an ad, you can create multiple social posts, like when you create one piece of amazing content, there’s so many different ways that you can repurpose that throughout your marketing funnel.
[00:04:54] Okay. And, what types of content are good for repurposing?
[00:04:58] What type of content isn’t good for repurposing? Is how I would counter that. Blog posts can be, like I said, like lead magnets. They can be turned into videos, taking a point out of that. Webinars, with the rise of short form video, you can take soundbites from webinars and turn them into short form reels with tools like Descript or, there are a number of video editing tools that turn long form videos into short snippets. So really, the opportunities are endless.
[00:05:30] If you have a blog, you can turn it into a carousel for social media. Carousels perform really well. So, any type of content can be repurposed.
[00:05:39] If you have a really great performing social post that might have been a little lengthier, send it out to your email list. Drive them back to something on your website that you’re trying to promote, whether it’s a lead magnet, whether it’s a blog post, whether you’re trying to sell a service, whatever the purpose of that social post was, because everything kind of has a purpose, right? Everything that we put out into our marketing universe has a purpose, even if it’s just to kind of make you relatable, that’s still kind of brand awareness.
[00:06:06] So yeah, any type of content can be repurposed any number of ways.
[00:06:11] Okay. That’s good to know. And then when you’re getting started with repurposing, how do you actually do it? Could you give an example of, you mentioned using blog posts as lead magnets, but what, would be the pathway to do that? How would you turn a blog post into a video or a lead magnet or something like that?
[00:06:31] So you kind of have to have a over arching library of your content. Because you have to know what you’re working with. So, if you realize, Hey, I’m missing a lead magnet for X service that I offer.
[00:06:48] But I have five blog posts that are kind of intro posts talking about , the five main points you know, why someone needs it, the challenges And turn those pieces into an ebook.
[00:07:05] Or if you have a blog post that kind of goes into how to do something, maybe you turn that into a checklist. Personally, I have a kind of content strategy planner. It’s more like a content planner that I have, that also has a couple strategy pieces, like an audience worksheet. That kind of came from an offering that I have , my strategy sessions, like I was using it a lot. So I kind of repurposed the service that I offer and I don’t want to say dumbed it down, but made it a valuable freebie.
[00:07:36] So, if you have a webinar, there’s a good opportunity to turn that into a video for YouTube. If you’re on YouTube. If you have a series of blog posts, that’s a good way to kind of create an email funnel, especially to be engaging a welcome funnel if you don’t have one. , and then, you know, any sort of content that you put out into the, interwebs. How are you promoting it? Because if you’re not promoting it, , it’s like waiting for paint to dry to really get the organic results sometimes.,
[00:08:05] Always be repurposing any sort of content that you create. Otherwise, why are you creating it? Inbound marketing works. Yes. But inbound marketing is kind of an ecosystem of marketing and marketing tactics.
[00:08:19] Can you define what inbound marketing is for us?
[00:08:23] So inbound marketing, as opposed to outbound marketing, inbound marketing is where you really kind of put marketing resources out into the world, like blog posts, where you’re kind of waiting for people to come to you.
[00:08:35] You are attracting people to you versus like advertising, think billboard advertising, where you’re kind of going to your audience. That’s outbound marketing. Inbound marketing, content marketing, and all kind of is the same thing. And it’s really kind of creating a space for yourself online where you can be found.
[00:08:53] Okay. , and then this is a big question I know for a lot of my audience because we are big fans of using AI to help with SEO and creating content and everything. But can you use AI to help you with repurposing your content? And if you can, how would you do that?
[00:09:11] Absolutely. , so I, you and I kind of talked about this before.
[00:09:17] I use a tool called Descript. I also have a podcast, and I use Descript to turn my video for my podcast, which sometimes goes up on YouTube when I have time. And I turn that into Instagram reels.
[00:09:30] And I use a tool called, cast magic, which helps me turn my podcast into it. It’ll summarize it for show notes. It’ll give me captions for social media. It’ll give me a sample email. So there are so many tools out there.
[00:09:48] You know, if you’re very new to AI and you’re like, holy crap, that’s overwhelming. You can go into ChatGPT and you know, I’m sure you’ve talked about this, Chrissy. I know you did when you spoke at a luncheon that I was at, the more specific you are with ChatGPT, the better the results are going to be. So if you say, I am a whatever service provider you are, I help. Your audience do how you solve their problem please help me turn this link, you know, your blog posts into five social media posts. It’ll churn out five captions for, you know, I would be specific. If you were talking about Instagram versus LinkedIn versus Facebook versus threads versus X, I will forever call it Twitter.
[00:10:34] But. the more specific you are with your goals, who you’re trying to attract and who you are, what you do, any sort of content that you put in there and you’re like, Hey, help me create, you know, 30 topics to talk about, I, I have clients who are like business coaches or therapists, you know, help me create X number of topics about X.
[00:10:59] It’ll turn out captions for you. So if you have a link to a YouTube video, ChatGPT can pretty much turn that YouTube video probably into five or six different captions. Then that becomes kind of evergreen content. You plug that into whatever content calendar you have, and then you’re showing up consistently.
[00:11:21] And that’s kind of how you, how you nurture your, , content ecosystem.
[00:11:26] Okay. Okay. Yeah. I, everybody that’s listening, that’s been listening for a while knows I’m a big fan of using AI to sort of help you with your workflow and speed things up and, and for any of you that, , follow me on social media, if you’ve seen, I do little, I guess they’re called audiograms of the podcast episodes and Descript, I don’t know if you knew this, but Descript has a feature that does that for you now, in it.
[00:11:52] Did you know that?
[00:11:52] Like the little, like with the little, like. Talky line thingy.
[00:11:58] Yeah. Yeah, it’s called, uh, there’s a newish feature called Underlord . and one of the things it’ll do is you can, you can ask it to create clips for you of your video or audio.
[00:12:09] Oh, interesting, because I have seen yours on social media, and typically, like, I, my podcast editor, she will take the clips and just drop the, like, mp3 file, and I just upload it into Canva, and I have, like, a Thank you so much. And a template that I use, but it doesn’t have the little like talky line thing, which is always fun.
[00:12:31] I’m always like, how do people do that? But now if you can do it on Descript, that’s amazing.
[00:12:35] Yeah. Now you know.
[00:12:36] Yeah. And it does the, it’ll do the line ones and it’ll also do like the circle, you know, the circle with the spikes on it. Yeah. It does both of those. Yeah.
[00:12:45] Yeah, so, I mean, if you’re, I don’t know if your, your audience is more likely to have blog posts or to do, like, longer form videos, but either way, there, there are tools out there.
[00:12:54] There’s another tool, like, uh, Jasper AI, you know, there’s a small fee for it, but it specifically helps you create that marketing content. , and it’s really nice. Like some of these tools, like you can say, you know, create a blog post about this podcast. And so then you have a podcast and a blog post, and then you can get your social posts for it.
[00:13:14] And then you can also get your, you know, talking head reels. So you’re kind of showing up in all of the places that you want to be showing up with when you use kind of these, these great AI tools that are out there and hitting the markets.
[00:13:28] And you mentioned Cast Magic. Is that specifically for podcasting?
[00:13:32] No, because you can do videos. I learned about it from a training. And you can probably also insert a link that’s like, you know, turn this blog post into X, Y, or Z. You can kind of give it those prompts, similar to what ChatGPT. Yeah, I’ve been using it for my podcast to help me create the show notes.
[00:13:57] It’ll also find the keywords. So as you know, as you know, uploading your podcasts, you typically enter the keywords. So I don’t even have to think about that. I’m just like, oh, here are my keywords. .
[00:14:08] I use, so I use ChatGPT lot, but I also started using Claude.
[00:14:14] One of the things I like about ChatGPT is that it can access the internet so you can get some more real time updated information, but, and Claude can’t, but I’ve been finding that Claude is really good at writing in your voice. So, yeah, it’s really good. So I’ve, I’ve used it for, Taking podcast episodes, the transcript from a podcast episode, and turning it into a blog post that sounds like the people or person speaking in the podcast using their, their terms of their, their phrases, what they say, How they say it and, and it’ll, if you tell it to, if you crunch it correctly, it’ll pull,, strings or words and sentences directly from the podcast episode and use examples that are given in the podcast episode within the, blog post. So it’s, it’s been very helpful for that.
[00:15:07] Oh, that’s fascinating. I’m going to have to try that.
[00:15:09] Yeah. Check it out.
[00:15:10] Cause yeah, like any, any sort of podcasting or video that you do shouldn’t, you know, Easily we turned into a blog post and, you know, I always, when it comes to repurposing your content, I always start with the biggest thing, like what’s the biggest piece of content that I have?
[00:15:26] Like, do you have an ebook or, you know, some sort of lead magnet that you can turn into blog posts or that you could, a webinar that you’ve done in the past or workshop that you could turn into blog posts and then how do you repromote that via email and via social media? So I always kind of start with the biggest piece of content that takes the most amount of work and then break it down from there.
[00:15:49] How often, I know there may not be an answer to this, but how often should you use repurposed content versus using fresh content?
[00:15:58] I don’t know that there is a specific answer to that. I try not to repurpose content. Well, if I’m repurposing a social media caption that I used before, I try not to do it too frequently.
[00:16:11] Like, I might repurpose it once every six months, three months. If you have a blog post that you’re Repurposing for social, like, you could do, I think, back in my pre freelance agency days, we used to repurpose that kind of content once or twice a month. You know, it’s ever, especially if it’s evergreen.
[00:16:33] Because otherwise, like, does it just go on your website to die? How are you, how are you promoting the content that you’re putting all of this work into? So there’s not really a right or wrong answer as to how frequently you should use repurpose. But if you have fresh content, you know, obviously you want to keep fresh and everything.
[00:16:53] But if you’re in a slump, if you’re in like a creative slump, like, Oh my God, what the heck do I post on social media? Like, go back and look, look through your old blog posts. I was just chatting with a client this week and she’s like, Hey, can we start reincorporating some of the older blog posts into our social strategy?
[00:17:10] And I was like, absolutely we can. So if you’re, I say, if you’re scrambling with ideas, For how to show up on social media. That’s when you really dive into repurposing. If you have things that are going on that, hey, you know, you’re putting out a blog post every week, great. We’re gonna promote that on social.
[00:17:28] You know, everyone has a slow season. Everyone has a season where it’s like, God, what are we gonna post about?
[00:17:36] Yeah. And I’ve, I’ve seen, , like on podcast, a lot of podcasters, they’ll do like a best of. So I don’t know, would that be considered, if you’re just republishing it on social, would that be considered repurposing or is that just republishing?
[00:17:50] I don’t know. That’s a really good question. I mean, it’s definitely, I mean, it’s definitely repurposing. Why can’t you republish, especially if you have all sorts of new listeners who may not be going back that far. Why not? I think it’s definitely a form of repurposing. Typically when I think of repurposing, especially when it comes to the longer form content, I think of refreshing.
[00:18:14] So adding something fresh, something new. But if there’s a segment of your audience that you know is new that hasn’t ever seen some of that old content before, then absolutely just repurpose and republish. Especially when it comes to like podcasts or videos, I think.
[00:18:31] Right. Now, if you republish content, so let’s say that you’ve got like the podcast example, you’ve already published an episode in December and then six months later, you say, you know, it’s relevant again, I’m going to republish it.
[00:18:48] Can that hurt you in, on social media or like, is there, are there any downfalls to doing that?
[00:18:56] I don’t think so. Honestly, I really don’t think so. Okay. And I and I say that because content on social media has such a short lifespan It doesn’t like, no, it doesn’t go away, but the chances of someone seeing an older piece of content six months from now is really, really slim unless like go through your entire feed and on LinkedIn.
[00:19:21] So LinkedIn only saves content for a year. So if you scroll back a year before that, like you’re not going to have that content. So, you know, keep a. Keep a repository somewhere, especially if you have really great performing content on LinkedIn so that you kind of know like, okay, I know that I wanna repurpose this, you know, eight, nine months from now because otherwise it’s gonna go away and I’m gonna lose that information.
[00:19:48] That’s interesting to know because, , for those of you that are working on your websites, having duplicate content, so it would be the same content posted twice on your website, that can actually hurt. As far as SEO, you’ve got to indicate which one is the, the primary one. So, yeah, having duplicate content is not always a good thing on a website, but sounds like for social media, there’s a little bit different strategy to use there.
[00:20:13] Yeah. And, you know, definitely, if you’re going to duplicate content like that, like, definitely space it out. I have, I have a client who remembers, she’s like, but I remember that post from a year ago. And I’m like, but your audience probably doesn’t. Right. We’ve posted like at least, you know, 150 posts since then.
[00:20:34] So, you know, thinking about it from that perspective, oftentimes we are our own worst critics. So don’t think, you know, oh, well, I remember this. So I shouldn’t use it again. Because your audience is constantly growing. Even if it’s growing slowly, it is probably constantly growing. And there is an opportunity to get that old content in front of new eyeballs.
[00:21:00] What are some other strategies that we can use to drive traffic to our websites with social media?
[00:21:06] I highly recommend some form of meta advertising for most of my clients. Some of them take, take me up on it, others are kind of like, meh. But it is a great way, one, to drive traffic to your website, and two, to grow your audience.
[00:21:26] There’s a lot that you can do with meta advertising. I am not a super duper expert on Facebook advertising, but it is a great, great strategy to complement your goals of driving traffic back to your website and getting in front of new audiences, because, you know, those are kind of typically two of the main goals of our marketing.
[00:21:48] I am a huge, huge fan of email marketing. I say social media is rented space. I think, you know, most of us business owners probably remember when Facebook was down for like eight hours and. What, what do you do in that, you know, if, if Facebook and Instagram are the only ways that you’re marketing your business, how else do you get in front of your audience? Well, you send them an email. Collecting emails is, that is your owned audience. That is your audience that you own. So the more that you can build that through, you know, lead magnets on your website. Promoting those on your social media is such a great way to drive traffic to your website. Like if you have a podcast going out each week and you know, I’m terrible at sending this to my own list, but it should go out to your list because like people forget, people get busy, but you know, if you have an engaged audience, you want to stay in front of them.
[00:22:45] So email marketing, definitely advertising. I. I have been really kind of intrigued by YouTube lately, and it feels overwhelming because video can be, I think, super intimidating for a lot of us, but YouTube is basically Google 2. 0. Like it’s a giant search engine and that’s how people use it. They go there to search, they go there to find.
[00:23:12] So if you’re solving someone’s problem, if you’re answering sales questions, Put out a short video about it. Why not? If you’ve done a workshop and you’ve recorded it, like, why isn’t that video on, on YouTube? Right. There’s, there’s lots of opportunities there and because there’s also, you know, you can link to things in there, unlike Instagram.
[00:23:35] It’s a great way of driving traffic to your website. I had a business coach that I worked with who focused specifically on freelance marketers and kind of making that leap from freelancer to agency model. And she has grown her business so much just by showing up on YouTube. It’s the point where you’re like, she doesn’t really do much on Instagram anymore because she doesn’t have to.
[00:23:59] So it’s, it’s a great tool to kind of get traffic over to your website.
[00:24:04] Okay. And what about Pinterest? I know a lot of, a lot of bloggers love Pinterest because it’s a visual search engine.
[00:24:12] I just did an interview on my own podcast about, a marketing agency who decided to really dive into Pinterest.
[00:24:21] And Pinterest can feel overwhelming, but like, Again, there’s a lot of repurposing that you can do, and you can share the same links, and all you have to do is, you know, create templates in Canva, update those templates, , or a tool like Tailwind, which is a scheduler for Pinterest that has an AI component that will actually create the pin covers for you. So, another, another fun AI tool for everyone.
[00:24:49] But Pinterest is a great tool to drive traffic back to your website. Again, it’s another search engine. It’s a more visual one. but it works more like a search engine than it does a social network.
[00:25:01] For me, Pinterest feels overwhelming because in order to really kind of gain that traction, like you have to be super, super consistent. And when I say super consistent, I mean like three to four pins a day, every day. Now it’s really easy to batch that content to schedule it ahead of time and repurpose things, but Yeah, it can feel overwhelming.
[00:25:23] So in other words, hire somebody to do it for you.
[00:25:25] Yes.
[00:25:27] All right. ,
[00:25:28] is there anything else that you’d like to share about using social media repurposing or anything like that?
[00:25:34] You know, I, I think a lot of business owners that I’ve talked to, they tend to kind of, I feel like repurposing is, you know, a sign of failure. It’s not, you know, you don’t always have to have fresh ideas. You don’t always have to be reinventing the content wheel. If you’re creating any sort of content consistently, then repurposing is a strategy to save you time.
[00:26:02] Like I consider it a time saving strategy more than anything. So don’t, don’t be afraid to repurpose and reuse. I always say that repurposing your content is self care. Because creating content for social media consistently can feel so overwhelming for business owners who are like, I don’t have the time for this.
[00:26:21] So looking back, looking at what you’re already creating for other points, Other, other marketing, whether it’s your blog, whether it’s, you know, podcasts, whatever it is, and consistently promoting that or re promoting that content that you have. Like, if you have a blog that you haven’t promoted in six months, why not? Repost it. No one’s gonna know. And if they do know, like, oh, hey, I remember that blog. That was really good information. Let me go back to it. And then, you know, they, they confer. There’s no reason. Her attention spans aren’t so long that someone’s gonna get hung up on you republishing, reposting something that you posted.
[00:27:04] You know, even a month ago, repurposing is self care. That’s my, that’s my final message.
[00:27:09] I like that. I like that. Now, what are some ways that you could help people, business owners with their social media? So if, if they want a DIY or if they want somebody to just do everything for them, how can you help them?
[00:27:25] Yeah, so if you want to DIY, but you’re not sure where to start, I offer social media audits and social media strategy sessions. So we can look at your current social media, see kind of opportunities for improvement, make some recommendations. The strategy session is really, you know, it’s really kind of a ask me anything over 90 minutes.
[00:27:45] Like, hey, what are you studying? Stuck on sometimes my clients, you know, they’re, they just need content ideas. They need help with their content pillars and I can help with that. And then obviously for if you have a bunch of content but you’re not sure what to do with it, I do offer VIP content days and we can kind of map out what you currently have and ways to repurpose it.
[00:28:06] We can help you create reels and help you create some captions to promote that evergreen content that might just be kind of collecting dust on your website.
[00:28:15] How can people get in touch with you?
[00:28:17] I can be found on Instagram at Heidi Schmidt Creative.
[00:28:21] My website is www.heidijschmidt.com and you can also connect with me on LinkedIn and Facebook. Facebook at Heidi Schmidt Creative and LinkedIn is, Heidi Schmidt. Yeah, I think that’s my LinkedIn
[00:28:35] yeah, and I have on my website a content strategy planner. So if you’re kind of like, hey, let me try to DIY this and you want to kind of map out. So every, every strategy that I do, every client that I work with, the first thing that I ask them is who’s your audience? So my strategy planner kind of really starts by deep diving into your audience, talking about your content pillars. What’s your value add? , And then helping you map out some content ideas to build out kind of that content strategy.
[00:29:07] Well, I appreciate you coming on. , let me interview you. And I really appreciate the discussion about repurposing. I, I do it all the time. And I know a lot of, a lot of creators do it.
[00:29:18] It’s as you said, it’s self care. It really can save a lot of time and a lot of, frustration. So I appreciate it getting getting you on here to talk about that.
[00:29:30] Thank you so much for having me.
[00:29:32] Everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you want to get in touch with Heidi, I will have her information in the show notes.
[00:29:38] So make sure you go to websitesuccessacademy.Com, go to the podcast, you’ll be able to find the episode there, grab the show notes and get in touch with Heidi. So I will catch you in the next episode. Thanks for listening.
[00:29:51]