White papers are among the most demanding types of content to create, requiring a considerable investment in research, technical expertise, and time. They are often authoritative, run to 50 pages, and can take 4 to 8 weeks to produce. 

With all the time and effort that goes into creating a whitepaper, it is understandable that you want to get the most out of it by repurposing it for social media. In this article, we guide you on how to repurpose your white papers.

Benefits of Repurposing White Papers

While professionals, especially in the technology space, love white papers, they may not have the time to read through them. That is why you need to repurpose your whitepapers so you can provide readers with alternative ways to read them. A white paper can, therefore, be an important source of information when repurposing social media content. Here are some of the benefits of repurposing white papers:

• Higher readability. White papers are usually complex and detailed. When you repurpose them into long-form content, it becomes easier to digest and understand.
• More credibility. When you publish your content across different platforms, it becomes easier to position yourself as a subject matter expert and gain your audience's trust.
• Reach a bigger audience. A report by the Content Marketing Institute suggests that contest repurposing can help put your content in front of more people, especially when it is put in their preferred format.
• Reinforce the message. Studies indicate that for a customer to buy from your brand, they need to hear about it 7 times, a phenomenon known as the rule of 7. That means repetition is important for tech buyers before they reach out to a sales representative.

Creative Ways of Repurposing Whitepapers

To turn your whitepapers into useful and easily digestible content format, you can repurpose them into:

Videos

Video content is the most popular format for driving engagement on social media. That also means you can repurpose the information in your white paper into videos to draw attention to it. However, as with other social media content formats, create high-quality videos.

It's also worth noting that short videos are now the thing on social media and are likely to remain so in the near future. That means you should keep your video content short to make it suitable for different social media platforms. For instance, you can repurpose a key quote or statistic from the white paper into a short snippet to encourage viewers to read more.

You can also create explainer videos to clearly show the solution. You can create some short video segments to repurpose the key details of the white paper.

Infographics

The goal of a visual graphic is to explain data or a concept. That means infographics are a great way to repurpose the facts and data that are so common in white papers. Infographics help to simplify complex data and make it more appealing because they are visually appealing.

When you turn your white papers into engaging, captivating, and shareable infographics, these can then be posted on social media platforms. Therefore, go ahead and review the white paper to identify the key statistics, data points, and facts you will use to build the infographic. You can also include appealing illustrations, interesting quotes, or graphs.

Graphics Interchange Format (GIFs)

GIFS are short animated visuals that can be used to capture attention and convey a message in a crisp, concise way in less than 2 seconds. While these look like videos, they are a series of still images without audio, combined to create a looping graphic. You can use GIFs in the same way you do with infographics to quote facts or data from the white paper. You can use branded GIFs to make your brand stand out.

However, it's worth noting that GIFs have a short lifespan, so you can only quote one statistic, quote, or fact from the white paper. You can animate data points using GIFs and highlight facts about your product from the whitepaper. One of their advantages is that they are usually cheaper to produce than videos, are easy to view, and can even be shared on mobile devices due to their small file size.

Social Media Posts

The above content formats can all be part of your social media content. However, you can also capture a quote, fact, or statistic from the white paper and use it for your standalone social media post. Make sure you highlight your quote or fact and add a captivating visual to drive engagement. You can even add a voiceover or music to drive more attention and interest to the post. You can add a link to your website or to the white papers to help your audience find more.

Interactive White Papers

Most white papers are in the old, boring PDF format. This means there is still room to transform them into interactive, engaging content filled with animations, background videos, parallel efforts, and other interactive elements. This can be a great format for holding readers' attention as they interact with different data points. Therefore, go ahead and animate those whitepaper graphs and charts to draw interest and increase their impact. White papers can be an important part of your interactive content strategy.

Quizzes

You can also repurpose white paper content by creating it into an interactive quiz. Quizzes are especially powerful in the technology niche and are often presented as knowledge tests, complete with questions that assess the audience's understanding of a particular process or service. When you target your audience in the white paper content, you can easily increase your content reach and make it more captivating.

eBook

You can format your white paper as an ebook, highlighting its key details more creatively. You can summarize the insights from the white paper into an ebook in the form of a list, infographics, videos, bullet points, and other interactive elements. You can lift charts, images, and graphs from the white paper and format them for an ebook. Since ebooks have a conversational tone compared to whitepapers, they can offer a lighthearted way to inform and convince readers.

In Conclusion

A white paper is arguably one of the biggest long-form content formats you will ever invest your time and effort in. That means you need to make the most of it by turning those large, long-form documents into several digestible content formats. This can be a good strategy for increasing your ROI and boosting your SEO efforts. It can also help drive engagement and position you as a thought leader in different industries. Therefore, go ahead and use the tips above to repurpose your white papers.