LESSON 5 OF 6
Repurpose without repeating yourself
BY THE END OF THIS LESSON
Turn one piece into a week of content that is not the same thing four times.
Reformatting is not repurposing
Chopping a blog post into four shorter posts gives you four worse versions of one thing. Anyone who sees two of them sees the repetition immediately.
Real repurposing takes a different idea from the same source material each time.
Mine the source for separate claims
A decent 800-word post usually contains three or four distinct claims, an anecdote, a number, and something you assumed without arguing for it.
Each of those is a separate piece. The assumption you did not argue for is often the best one — it is the thing you believe so firmly you forgot it was contestable.
Change the shape, not just the length
The same claim can be a short opinion post, a walkthrough of how you do it, a counter-argument to the common view, a before-and-after, or a question to your audience.
Different shapes reach different people, and they do not read as repetition even when the underlying claim is the same.
WORKED EXAMPLE
CHOPPING IT UP
Take my 800-word post and split it into four shorter LinkedIn posts.
MINING IT
Here is an 800-word post I published. Find every distinct claim it makes, including any assumption I relied on without arguing for it. For each claim, propose a standalone piece with a different shape — opinion, how-to, counter-argument, before-and-after, or open question. Say which shape and why it suits that claim. Flag the one where I assumed something a reader might genuinely disagree with. That is the one I want to write next.
The first produces four fragments of one argument. The second produces several genuinely different pieces, and surfaces the unexamined assumption — usually the most interesting thing in the original.
YOUR TURN
Find the assumption you did not argue for.
RUN THIS
Here is something I published. List every claim it makes. Then separately list every assumption it relies on but never argues for. For each assumption, tell me who would disagree and what their strongest objection would be. Piece: [paste yours]
What a good result looks like
The assumptions list should be uncomfortable — those are things you believe so firmly you stopped noticing they were arguable.
KNOWLEDGE CHECK
Answer all 2 correctly to complete this lesson.
1. Why is splitting a post into shorter posts weak repurposing?
2. Which part of a piece is often the most interesting to develop next?
REMEMBER THIS
Take a different idea from the source each time, not a different slice of the same one.