Are you making the most of your ideas?
3 ways to repurpose your book into social media content with Pooja, The Content Repurposer
If you hang around these parts for long enough you’ll hear me talk about the importance of repurposing your blogs, essays, carousel posts, captions, short form videos, powerful quotes, interviews, research, and pages of your book, into different formats that you can make use of on Instagram (or anywhere else on social media), so imagine my excitement when I came across
whose literal job it is to repurpose content!
Pooja is speaking with the TOO MUCH INSTAGRAM members next week (find out more about the membership here) when they’ll have the opportunity to ask her questions about repurposing their content. You can join the membership by upgrading your subscription from FREE to PAID.
You have until FRIDAY 6th September to take advantage of the Pilot Price which offers a 30% discount so you pay £8.40/month or £84/year. This will be increasing to £12/month or £120 per year from the end of the week.
In the spirit of ‘shower[ing] love on everybody in different ways’ (credit to for that quote) however, Pooja has also kindly pulled together some useful examples so you can see how other writers have repurposed ideas across different platforms and placements.
Huge thanks to and make sure you check out her publication where she has been posting some really useful resources, including a recent series of podcast episodes all about the art of content repurposing.
Over to Pooja…
Congratulations if you’ve ever published a book. You know first hand how hard it is to market it, especially on social media, when things are changing by the minute. Let me present you with an alternative way to reduce some of the workload off of you! By leveraging the power of content repurposing.
What is Content Repurposing?
Content repurposing is taking a piece of content and its ideas and converting it into another piece of content. It’s the art of taking old ideas and giving it new life!
Why Is It Important to Repurpose?
You might wonder, if I repurpose content, what is the real value I will get out of this? Why do it in the first place?
Content repurposing can help:
Extend the ideas and reach to a new audience
Hit several touch points which in marketing terms is simply the number of time some one needs to be contacted - or touched - by you before they take the action you desire
Increase the lifespan of the content
Content repurposing is essential for an ongoing marketing strategy that you want to be consistent that can withstand overtime. And I will share 3 simple ways to repurpose your book’s content into social media posts.
Microblogging
Microblogging involves posting short, concise messages or content on platforms. It’s a powerful way for authors to share their work, connect with readers, and build their online presence.
James Clear, the author of ‘Atomic Habits’, is a prime example of microblogging done right. He shares quotes and excerpts from his book, newsletter and blogs on Instagram.
This approach allows James Clear to interact with his audience across multiple platforms while conveying his core message from his book.
Short Form Video Content
Short-form content refers to any piece of content that is quick to consume, typically ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes in length. Reels on Instagram is one placement for short-form video, although Tiktok, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook and now Substack also offer this format.
Ramit Sethi, the author of ‘I Will Teach You To Be Rich’, is a great example of leveraging short-form content.
After he published his first book, he got the opportunity with Netflix to produce a series “How to Get Rich” in which he helped people in different financial situations using the principles in the book.
Once the show ended, he then started a podcast where he brought the prior guest from the show to follow up with their financial situation.
To complete the trifecta of repurposing he then used short form video content to showcase clips from his podcast, which in turn showcased the principles of his books and the guests on his Netflix show.
Carousel Posts
A carousel post is a single post composed of multiple photos or slides. Its original purpose on Instagram was to share a collage of photos. But now, it can be used to educate or be able to convey a story for a longer period.
Jessica Zweig, the author of “Be” and “The Light Work” uses a carousel post to describe different terminology she has in the book. For example, she has a post that explains what is a light worker as she explores in her book “The Light Work”:
This post teases people into knowing more about the book, without having to give everything away.
[aside from Nicola: for writers who worry about ‘giving too much away’: the experience of consuming snippets of ideas on Instagram, fragmented over time, is very different to reading a book so I don’t think you need to worry about people not buying your book because you’ve ‘given everything away’. Also, it’s worth considering how people will know whether your book is for them without you giving them a flavour of what they can expect?]
From the authors I have discussed, you can see a pattern of how they promote their book - or don’t. Most of the time, the authors I mentioned aren’t directly selling their books.
Instead their marketing content spreads the ideas in their books over different channels, formats and placements, so they can reiterate the same idea in a different way, and give themselves the best chance to connect with the most relevant audience for their books.
If you are interested in learning more about how to repurpose your content, feel free to subscribe to my newsletter where you can get a more in-depth examples on how to repurpose your content.
For more ideas, support, and advice with how you can use Instagram to reach your readers and promote your books please consider upgrading your subscription to become a member of TOO MUCH INSTAGRAM.
Upgrade before the end of the day on Friday 6th September and you will receive a 30% Pilot Price discount which means you will pay £8.40/month or £84/year.
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This sounds so useful for nonfiction writers! Wondering if/how novelists can apply the lessons?
Hi Nicola! I really enjoyed the Instagram wake up! I used to share snippets of my writing on insta but now that Meta is scraping public data for AI with no way to opt out (here in the US) I am reluctant. Any thoughts or ideas on how to share this content without feeding the AI machine? Thanks.