Being Everywhere vs Being Effective, Rethinking Social Media Repurposing

Do you repurpose your content across multiple platforms? By that, I mean, do you create one article or post and publish it everywhere without making any edits? I do.

For the past three years, I believed I was saving time and covering all my bases by using a software tool called Repurpose.io. The concept is straightforward, you create workflows that decide where each piece of content goes. For example, I might upload a short video to TikTok, and Repurpose.io would automatically publish that same video as a Facebook post, an Instagram Reel, and a YouTube Short.

Note: The platform does not support Substack and I treat my work here entirely separate from all the other channels on which I appear.

At $349 per year for the basic starter package, it isn’t cheap. Still, I justified the expense because it seemed to save me a significant amount of time compared with repurposing content manually.

The problem is that this “set it and forget it” approach comes with several drawbacks:

1. Broken mentions. References to collaborators or accounts using the @ symbol are often removed if the account names don’t match across platforms. This results in captions with missing or blank references that have to be fixed manually anyway.

2. Reduced reach. I’m convinced that platforms owned by Meta, Instagram, for example, can identify content that didn’t originate on their platform and quietly reduce its reach. (I have far fewer follower on Instagram than any other channel).

3. Audience mismatch. Each platform attracts a different audience. A caption that works well on one channel may not resonate on another. In addition, each platform has its own requirements for tags, account mentions, categories, and formatting, details that tools like Repurpose.io don’t adequately account for.

4. Formatting and frequency issues. Content doesn’t always transfer cleanly between platforms. A portrait video on YouTube, for instance, may be displayed in a landscape frame with black bars on either side. There’s also the issue of volume, I post a daily video on TikTok, but I don’t necessarily want every one of those videos published on YouTube.

In the end, what looked like a time-saving solution created its own set of problems, many of which still required manual attention.

After reviewing what is and isn’t working for me, I’ve come to the realisation that repurposing content has more drawbacks than benefits. So here’s what I’m planning to do instead.

First, I’m going to focus on the channels that best reach my target audience and optimise them for depth and reach, rather than spreading myself too thin. For now, that means prioritising YouTube. I’ll be creating YouTube-specific content and spending more time on thumbnails, titles, tags, and descriptions to attract subscribers and improve my monetisation prospects. I’m also experimenting with a tool called TubeBuddy to support this process, I’ll report back on how that goes (should their customer support respond back to me in a timely manner!).

For short-form content, I’ll be focusing primarily on my Facebook page, where I currently see the highest engagement and generate the most income of all the platforms I use.

Recently, I recorded videos in a studio using two cameras, one in portrait and one in landscape, so I can reuse similar content across formats, although the landscape version will require more editing.

As for TikTok and Instagram, these are the platforms where I see the least engagement from the audience my videos are aimed at, despite having over 150,000 followers on TikTok. I’ll likely continue posting there on an ad hoc basis, but without the same level of focus or expectation.

Finally, instead of using Repurpose.io, I’m going to try a scheduling tool called Followr, which I purchased through a lifetime AppSumo deal and is far more reasonable than Buffer or Hootsuite, which perform similar functions. It will allow me to bulk upload videos and schedule them, along with captions, weeks or even months in advance, while still tailoring the content to each platform.

When you’re considering your own social media channels, it’s worth thinking about a few key questions.

• Which platforms does your target audience actually use on a regular basis?

• What level of posting frequency does each platform prefer? Substack, for example, may work well with a weekly post, but that same cadence is unlikely to be sufficient for platforms such as Instagram or LinkedIn.

• How can you optimise your reach on each channel? One tactic I’ve recently started using is the Collaboration feature on platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook when I share interviews with podcast guests. This allows posts to appear on both my channel and theirs, significantly extending the reach of each piece of content.

• Finally, scheduling posts in advance can dramatically reduce the amount of time you spend on social media day to day. Just make sure the content you schedule is not time sensitive, or likely to feel out of date by the time it goes live.

Social media takes time, and making your posts effective requires real effort. By focusing on the channels that best reach your target audience, that effort becomes worthwhile. Ultimately, it’s through trial and error that you discover where the greatest opportunities lie to create the impact you’re aiming for.

In the end, the goal isn’t to be everywhere, it’s to be effective where it matters most.

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