There is a good chance that within your organization you will sometimes (or perhaps even with some regularity) rewrite old articles, reuse fragments from articles and reuse existing photos for other content. Whether this is for online, social media, brochures or newsletter. It does not matter. So, why would you not reuse it for video?

Is that possible?

Almost everyone will emotionally say that that is not possible. First of all, because video contains so much information in one large file. You have moving images, you hear music, there are titles in it. So that will be incredibly complicated to extract pieces from.

Well, with a bit of smart planning and a thorough way of archiving, reusing video is pretty easy! You may not believe it, but there are dozens of ways to reuse video. A video can ultimately be used in countless new ways.

Why should you reuse videos?

There are a number of reasons for reusing video:
Better target targeting
Broader distribution
Improvement of SEO scores
Many more views
Update older videos
And perhaps most importantly, you save on your expenses!

How do you do that?

As with many jobs, the start is the craziest. Similarly here. To give yourself a good estimate of your existing content, it is very important that you transcribe your videos. It sounds silly, but put an intern on this piece of work and let him or her write down everything that is told in the video. Also make sure that this is done in chapters with time code, this way you can find content in your videos in a fairly simple way. You can also use these transcripts as subtitles for your videos. Handy, if your videos are viewed without sound.

In addition, if you upload your video to YouTube, you can add the transcript to the video file so that the video can be found if the search terms are in the text. Boom SEO! Do you have nobody to make the transcripts? Then hire a desk to unsubscribe from your video. Let it preferably be done by a local company, but you can also go to SpeechPad.com for this. That costs you from three dollars a minute.

Split your videos into short clips

How your target audience reacts to your videos also depends on where they are viewed. To keep your audience involved, it is important to adapt your videos to the platform / medium on which it is published. Whether it is your own homepage, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, narrowcasting or any other medium.

If you do it well, that means that your videos are interesting enough and you organize the click-through route properly, you will see that they click through to your YouTube channel or website from Facebook or Twitter. Did anyone say Funnel there?

So from now on it is important that you take into account the usability of your video content. Therefore, make agreements with the agency that makes the videos for you and about saving and archiving projects and media. We are happy to help you with that.

Ten ways to reuse video

Now that the most annoying work is done and you have split your videos into short clips, you can use them in your other content. Add the clips to news articles, blog pages and social media expressions that you would normally only do with text and images.

That’s why two hands full of smart ideas for reusing your videos below:

Use the text of your explainer video (video explanation) and process it into a “how-it-works-page” that you have subdivided into steps. With every step you can now show that specific piece of video in addition to a written explanation!
Testimonials, even better testimonial videos, are so important for your credibility. If you have many of these testimonial videos, you can merge them per topic. How nice is it if you let several customers tell something about that one service of yours, and that you can do that for your other services too !?
If you have a corporate video you can use snippets of it to focus on specific parts of your office or show a kind of Behind-the-Scene clip that reflects your corporate culture.
If you have how-to videos or e-learning videos, you may well be able to reuse them as a podcast. For example, you can choose to upload only the audio track to iTunes in addition to the video.
Webinars! If your organization occasionally organizes webinars, you can make a big step by using your videos in addition to the webcam and powerpoint.
Reuse your video transcripts into blog content, social content and newsletter. Rewrite your transcript into an attractive text, use the videos as an extra dimension.
Use a snippet from the text and a clip as a lead generator to your site or blog. Post and promote a piece of text with a clip on Social Media such as LinkedIn or Facebook with a link to the extensive post on your site.
There is a good chance that your management or board will have a particularly inspiring quote in your corporate video. You can use that quote on the “About us” or “Our story” page of your corporate website.
Suppose you have a video on the shelf that was shot in interview style. You can then divide this video into short clips and use it as the basis of a FAQ page.
Subtitles is the new voice-over. Nothing is more annoying than people around you watching noisy videos that you have to listen to inadvertently. Use your transcript to make subtitles so that your video can also send its message without sound! Handy for people who are hard of hearing, but certainly also for people who want to watch video without sound.
You don’t have to throw out an outdated video. You can still use it with perhaps some minor adjustments. For example without sound, in the background on an internal narrowcasting channel. That way you also work on branding within your own organization.

Well seen, not ten but no fewer than eleven good tips to smartly reuse your videos!

You see it: video is a great medium for reuse. So get started with unsubscribing your videos and reuse them as if it were a sweet treat! Improve your SEO scores, target your target group better and increase your reach!

If you have other tips for reusing video, leave it in a comment.