25: How I Refresh, Repurpose, and Repost My Instagram Content to Save Time as a Solopreneur

Feel like you have to create fresh content every week just to stay relevant? You’re not alone. In this episode of The Creative Bodega, I’m sharing the exact way I refresh, repurpose, and repost content so I can stay consistent on Instagram—without spending hours in Canva. You’ll learn how to reuse your best-performing posts with confidence, save time, and actually enjoy your summer without going MIA. If your schedule is packed and your creativity is low, this episode is your permission slip to stop overcomplicating content and start working smarter.

Let’s make your content do more for you—with less effort.

For the full show notes, CLICK HERE.

Things I cover inside the episode:
✨ The difference between refreshing, repurposing & reposting content
✨ How I use my Instagram Analytics Tracker to find top-performing posts
✨ My exact system for organizing & scheduling recycled content
✨ A mindset shift to stop overthinking what you’ve already created
✨ Tools I use (and love) to make this process way easier

Resources & Links Mentioned in this Episode:
📌 Grab my Instagram Analytics Tracker
📌 Podcast Ep 04: Streamlining Your Canva & Content Workflow: Organize, Batch, and Create Social Media Posts with Ease
📌 SnapInsta tool (for downloading previously published Reels w/o the watermark)
📌 Later.com, where I auto-schedule my content to publish
📌 Follow Coven member & tech wiz Amanda J HERE

Connect with me:
🫶🏼 Follow me on Instagram for daily insights
🫶🏼 Join my 321 Create Newsletter for weekly content tips
🫶🏼 Check out The Content Coven Membership

Be sure to hit "Subscribe" or "Follow" so you never miss an episode!

Transcript

0:00

Reposting is not lazy. It's smart, it's sustainable, and it's honestly being kind to your future self and allowing you more time to work on other parts of your business that are gonna light you up or that you only have time for in this busy season. Welcome to the Creative Bodega, a podcast about content marketing, Instagram growth, and personal branding for female service-based solopreneurs who wanna grow their business. Without letting it take over their lives. I'm your host, EM Connors, and each week I'll share actionable tips, expert advice, and unfiltered truths to help you create engaging content, connect authentically with your audience, and turn followers into loyal customers, all without the burnout. If you're ready to simplify your content creation, navigate the ever changing trends and build a business that works for you while staying sane in this crazy season of life, then you're in the right place. Hey there. I'm here and I wanna talk about a subject that I get asked about all the freaking time. How do you repurpose your content or how do you just. Refresh your content or how do you repost your content? And for me, those are three very different things. And I just wanna break it down for you. I'm gonna keep this really simple, somewhat short,'cause we're doing these little summer episodes, definitely under 20 minutes, but I just wanna focus on these time saving strategies. That are gonna feel really strategic and hopefully aligned and just free up a lot of your time in the summer because we're all busy as I'm recording this. It is June 26th. My kids got outta school a week and a half ago, and the episode is coming. Out July 21st, so that is like the dead middle of the summer for us. And we we're gonna be coming off a vacation and it's just, it's hard. It's a very hard time of year and, but it doesn't really have to be, to be honest, like I don't work that hard on content in the summer. I'm gonna be honest. That is my kind of chill out, slow down time, and that's kind of how I built my business and I'm, I'm okay with it. Okay? And, and you need to be kind of okay with it. But if you ever feel like you're just constantly creating content, but still wondering what to post next, that's like basically being stuck on a hamster wheel. And that's not fun for anyone. And that's really how you lead yourself to burnout. So today I wanna break down the exact way that I either refresh, repurpose, or repost. My Instagram content so that I'm not glued to my phone twenty four seven because that's not fun and that's not me, me being present. And in fact, I asked you guys to reach out to me and tell me to take off the week of my vacation because. We only go away for one week in the summer as a family. It's to my absolute most favorite place in the entire world. I am a lake girl. I've been going to this lake up in New England my entire life, and it's like sacred. Honestly. My grandparents, it's where we would go with them every year, and now I take my kids. It's just special. It's just special. So last year I did post and I messed things up. You know, I messed up a ManyChat. I had to leave the dock. I was so annoyed with myself and I just felt kind of off, you know, the entire vacation. And I kind of attribute it to being a, a little stuck to my phone because I was still posting and things were kind of going wrong, or I had to reply to people. And so this year. I, I'm not doing it. Okay. And so, but what that means for me is in the summer, like I really do need to lean on this past content that I've made over the years that has done well. And there's absolutely no reason for me to not reuse it. Right. I. If you're ready to save time and get more outta the content that you've already created, like squeeze as much juice out of as you can, this episode's going to be really fantastic for you. So as aor, I'm doing so many things, you guys, even just this morning, it was like, oh, website updates real quick. Okay, now let me hop into my membership and you know, let them know about this challenge that we have coming up. All right, now switch gears and write your newsletter for next week. Like there's just so. Much like I'm a content creator, I'm a service provider, I'm an admin, I'm a marketing team. I'm all these things rolled into one. Oh, and then, by the way, I have two small kids and a full on life outside of my business. Thank God it's a lot. So. Here's the thing. A lot of us are sitting on a gold mine of content that we've either forgotten about or feel weird about reusing, which I'm gonna talk you out of that last part, that that's a mindset shift that we have got to get over. Refreshing, repurposing and reposting is not lazy at all. It is incredibly strategic and every. Top best creator that I know does it. So get over it. If you're worried about posting the same thing and people are gonna judge you, or people are gonna be like, oh my God, why is she posting the same thing? It doesn't happen. Okay? Especially when you know it's already performed well, there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be using it. Uh, again, so this is where my Instagram analytic tracker, which is$19, I'm gonna link it in the show notes. Comes into play for me because it shows me visually exactly what's worked over the past year or more, and I can confidently repackage my content without second guessing at all. So here's what we're gonna do today. Here's the plan. Here's what we're gonna cover. How I find posts that are worth reusing, how I organize and prep that content and the exact tools I use to schedule it. And I'm gonna sprinkle in a little mind some mindset shifts that'll help you stop feeling weird or guilty about reusing content. So let's go find what works. I start by going to my Google sheet, which is an analytic tracker. It's an analytic tracker inside of a Google sheet. It is not. Super special or crazy or like complex, but I update it once a month on the first of the month typically, and I look back at at least the past four to five months to see what content's performed really well. When I'm looking to reuse, repost, or refresh content, what I'm specifically looking for are high shares. Algorithm loves those high saves algorithm. Love those. And high comments. High comments to me means email list growth. So that's always a huge bonus, and here's why I look that far back, because when something is a few months old, it's a emotionally detached. Like you're not second guessing that you're not overthinking it. You're not in that mode of Oh, should I, would I? Could I did. I like. It's there. You know, it did well. It either worked or it didn't, and the data doesn't lie. Okay? So if it was a high performer for you, it's likely gonna perform pretty well again. So I'll scroll through and highlight about five or six solid posts that I know did well. Typically for me, that's carousels and reels. And or whatever format they're in. And boom, that's my next two weeks of content already mapped out. It helps me spot what topics my audience is really connecting with, which I love as well. And it's just a goldmine for repurposing because here's the thing, if it worked once, why would you not use it again? Okay, so. Oh, basically like I feel like people think for like a Netflix series, like no one's binging all my content and watching it from beginning to end. And if you do, God love you, but most of your audience didn't see it the first time because the data doesn't lie. It's not getting in front of as many people as you think it will. And even if they did, they forgot that they saw it in the first place. And even if they didn't forget. They probably need to hear it again anyways. Okay. Because what people need to hear things like seven times, A lot of times all people say to me, oh my gosh, I remember this post and I saved it, but I never, you know, took action on it. Thank you for posting it again. Like that's the kind of stuff I hear and I'm like, Hey, you got it. You know, I've saved myself a lot of time and you needed to see it again. So let's talk about this step-by-step solution. And I wanna break down the whole concept of refresh, repurpose, and repost. They are three different things for me. Refresh it. Okay, refresh it. This is where I take that post that worked and I jazz it up a little bit. I spruce it up. I update the branding. Maybe my branding changed. Maybe I wanna try it with a different font. I. I changed the headline. Maybe I think I could have, you know, used a better headline and it could have performed better. So I changed the headline. Maybe I tweak the design in Canva because something's not quite working, or I remember, oh yeah, when I posted that, like this looked a little funky, so this next time I'm gonna fix that. I'm not gonna delete that post initially if something's wrong. By the way, I know a lot of people stress out about that. Oh my God, I just posted this and you know, this is cut off, or this is spelled wrong. Meh. It's fine. Honestly, if anything, 700 people are gonna comment in your comments like, oh, you did this wrong, and you're like, okay, thank you. Keep commenting and telling me, because the algorithm will think you're, you know, commenting'cause you like it. Or maybe the caption just needs a fresh hook or a story or something. And I will absolutely do that. It feels new to your audience. And it'll save you so much time. So refreshing. It is probably what I do the most, and I will tell you a little pro tip. When I'm refreshing something, I will open up Instagram on my desktop so that I can find that post from six months ago or whenever it was from, and I will copy and paste the caption. You can't copy and paste your caption on your phone on Instagram, which is super annoying, but you can do it on your desktop. By just highlighting and copying and pasting. So that's what I'll do and then I will copy it and I just learned from an amazing member inside the coven. If you have a Mac. And you have an iPhone, you can actually copy on your Mac and then just open up your iPhone and paste. It's insane. I'm gonna tag her in my show notes and I'm going to share what she told me about that. I think she has a post about it, so I'll, I'll link her post. By the way, if you need any of these show notes or any links to anything, make sure that you go to the creative bodega.com/blog/ 25. I will list everything out in there. So refreshing is just jazzing it up, sprucing it up a little bit, but taking something that has already been posted, right. And reusing it, but with a little, a little twist repurposing it is when I take one piece of content and turn it into something totally different. So. Let's say I had a reel that did really well, and I'm like, you know what? That might actually work well as a carousel. So I try it that way. Or I have a carousel that did really well and I turn that into a podcast episode or turn it into a newsletter. I. Or turn it into a reel, right? Or I have a caption that really got people talking to me and I turn that into a quote post, or I turn that into a talking head reel, or I've got a newsletter that did well and I turn it into an Instagram story series, like the options are endless. And listen, you know, I'm a chat GPT Girl, or if you saw my recent story, it called it Chat Chippy Tea. Like chippy, like C-H-I-P-P-Y, and then tea that you drink TEA. So now all I hear is chat chippy tea. The auto captions turned into that and I didn't correct it. I actually thought it was adorable. But you're gonna use chat chippy tea. You're gonna go and you're gonna say, I had this reel that did really well and can you tell me how to turn it into something else? Or I look at this carousel and I'll share the carousel images and I'll say, can you tell me how to turn this into a really successful reel? So. Work smarter, not harder, don't burn too many brain sills trying to figure this out. But it's really just repurposing it. Your audience consumes different content in different ways, so when you repurpose it, you're really increasing your chances of that message landing with someone new or differently. Right? I'm so visual, I need to see it or hear you saying it and see you saying it. But when you did it as a quote, you know, as a graphic, that doesn't land with me as much so. So there's no right or wrong there. It's just a different types of content. We've got different types of learners, right? And different types of consumers and that's totally cool. So repurposing it is taking a piece of content that you already used and turning it into a different type of content. Okay, last but not least, we've got just reposting it. Just repost it. This is the simplest one and still the most underused in my opinion. When I am struggling to figure out what to post, I don't struggle, to be honest. I'm just like, let me open up my Instagram analytic tracker and see what did well four to five months ago, and I'm reusing that baby and I do not change anything about it. I literally grab it in Canva, or maybe it's in a later.com, where I auto schedule things. I grab the caption from either Instagram on my desktop or it was in later.com'cause I auto scheduled it through there and I literally just reuse it completely. Okay. So I, I really don't change anything. It's. Really glorious if it's a reel. The way that you can repurpose reels without having your logo or this, I'm sorry, not your logo, this the Instagram logo show on it if you are downloading it, is you put it into a tool called Snap Insta app, and they don't charge anything and it takes your reel and downloads it from Instagram without the Instagram logo. So that's a great tip. Uh, I would say the quality is not as good, but it's better than having to redo the reel. It's either that or I edit most of my reels in Canva now, so I can just go into Canva and download that whole video again, which is really cool. That way it doesn't affect the quality at all, but honestly, I use Snap, Insta, I'm not gonna lie, and I actually think they. Redid their name, snap, Insta to slash en. I will put that in the show notes so that you can grab it again. That is how I download any of my reels that I've already posted on Instagram to my desktop or to my phone without a watermark on it. Basically an Instagram watermark. So reposting it is so simple. And remember like. New followers haven't seen this content. And your OG followers, they're likely not even gonna remember when you posted the first time. So guess what? It's still gonna perform well and it's gonna be such a low lift for you. So in busy seasons, for me, that's summer. And holidays like December, I am so leaning hard on repurposing, refreshing, or reposting content. It's glorious. So I remember one time I posted a carousel. I originally shared like, I don't know, six to eight months ago, same graphics, same caption, and it actually outperformed the original. And that's one of those, I just don't get it. Like I literally don't get the algorithm. I didn't do anything different and I, I don't know why it performed. Differently. I just don't, and I'm not gonna overthink it too much, but I gained, honest to God, like a thousand followers that second time I posted it and most of them had never seen it. So win win the best part took me 60 seconds to schedule this post, and that's the kind of time saving when I'm all about and why my Instagram analytic tracker. That's what gave me the confidence to hit post. Again, that's what had all that content that's done well over the past year, just right there, visually available for me. And so I didn't have to second guess it. I didn't have to wonder, is this gonna work? Is this gonna flop? I knew it'd do pretty well and listen, that one that I posted and I got a thousand followers from the second time, that's ki, that's rare. I'm not gonna lie. For the most part, the post doesn't do. As well as it did the original time, but it's good enough for me and I'm still showing up and I'm still top of mind for people because guess what? When you are not posting and not showing up, your competition is. I don't know about you, but I'm super competitive, so I know that if I'm not posting, my competition is, and I can't handle that, so you better believe that I am in these busy seasons of life, reposting, repurposing, or just refreshing content and using it. Again, and my analytic tracker gives me that confidence to hit post again, because I'm not guessing. I see visually right in front of me what posts I've done well in the last year and a half, and I'm like, oh yeah, I haven't done that in a while. I'm gonna do that. And, and that's what I do. I find it, I dig it up, and everything's organized in my Canva. If you haven't listened to my episode about how I organize my Canva folders, you need to do that. I'll link it in the show notes. But I don't have to wonder if it's gonna flop. Like I, I know it's gonna do pretty well, so I repost with zero guilt. Just because I posted something once doesn't mean it's done. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I'm kind of constantly refreshing retweaking and squeezing as much juice out of certain types of posts as I can. I think we have this false belief that everyone sees every post we make, and they're gonna judge us and they're gonna call us out for repeating ourselves. But that's literally. It almost never happened to me. Maybe a couple people, and they're just like my amazing super fans that just see everything I do. But most people, they didn't catch it the first time, and those who did, they're probably gonna appreciate the reminder. So reposting is not lazy, it's smart, it's sustainable, and it's honestly being kind to your future self and allowing you more time to work on other parts of your business that are gonna light you up or that you only have time for in this busy season. So. The creators that are burning out are the ones that are trying to make brand new content seven days a week. That is just literally unsustainable. The ones that are thriving are the ones that are recycling, reusing, and being really strategic. So some quick tips before you go start a tracking system so that your content performance is visible and available to you. I don't just rely on pulling up. My analytics on my phone whenever I need to know what could do well for me. Okay, you don't need a fancy system. Again, I'm using a simple Google sheet and I do sell it. It's$19 and you'll have it at your fingertips, and of course it becomes with a video recording of exactly what I'm tracking and why and how to use it. Look for those shares, saves and comments, not just likes. In fact, I don't track likes at all. That's just not in my wheelhouse. I just don't really care. I want people taking action. And to me, action is, is not alike. It's a little like a lazy man's like repost confidently, no one's watching you or judging you as closely as you are as the creator. And give yourself permission to simplify your content creation in these really busy seasons of life. So this is your permission slip. Stop making content harder than it needs to be. Start opening up those analytics, find a post from four to five months ago and then refresh it, repurpose it, or simply repost it. And if you wanna make this process so much easier, definitely just grab my in Instagram analytics tracker. If you're in my membership, it is of course a part of that membership and you do not need to buy it. It's a tool I swear by. I open, it's actually open on my desktop 24 7, and I've got a recurring calendar alert on the first of the month to go and look at the last 30 days so I can grab those. Top performers. Okay. If you found this helpful, share it with a solopreneur friend who's drowning in content planning or DM me and let me know which strategy that you are going to try this week because your content deserves a second or third, or honestly like sixth life, in my opinion, and your time is way too valuable to waste. That's what I got for you this week. I hope this is helpful and um, yeah, shoot me a dm. Let me know your thoughts on this and if you're gonna do it. Thanks so much for hanging out with me on the Creative Bodega Podcast. If you love this episode, please be sure to share it with a fellow solopreneur who could use a little content creation inspiration. And hey, don't forget to check out the show notes for any resources I mentioned on the episode. To help you create content that feels easy and actually gets you results. If you want even more Canva and content tips, head over to my website, the creative bodega.com, or find me on Instagram under the same name. Until next time, keep creating, keep showing up, and most importantly, try and have a little fun with your content. I'll see you on the next episode.