If you make recipe videos for your blog posts, I know you know that they take a lot of work.
There’s the planning, the shooting, the editing, the promoting… not to mention cleaning up the kitchen after the whole ordeal is over. 😉
So if you’re doing all of that hard work for just one video, is there a way to make that content work for you long-term? A way to take that content and repurpose it in a different way that will allow you to reach more people without doing more work?
The answer: Yes!
And in fact, we’re talking about three different ways that you can repurpose your recipe videos in this article.
Let’s dive in:
📱 Re-Crop and Share Across Social Media
The most obvious way to repurpose your recipe videos is by sharing them across your social media platforms. All major social media platforms –– Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter –– let you share videos with your audience!
For example, you can share videos in your feed, in Stories, and in Reels on Instagram. That’s three different ways to share your video content on just a single platform!
Not all of your followers will see the video in each place, so repurposing your video in this way helps you maximize your video’s reach. And if the same person sees the video in a few different places, they may be more likely to engage with it.
Repurposing your videos on social media means re-cropping the video you have in your blog post based on that platform’s video dimension recommendations and potentially re-editing the video if it’s too long for the place you’re sharing it.
If you’d like an example of what this could look like, check out this video on Pinch of Yum –– it’s horizontal and fits the blog feed nicely. Now check out this video on Pinch of Yum’s Instagram feed –– it’s the same video, just cropped into a square to better fill their followers’ Instagram feeds. The Instagram video also has a slightly different end card to remind people where the recipe was from.
Tips for Repurposing Video for Social Media
- Consider the fact that you’ll share the video across your social media platforms while shooting to make sure frames are composed in a way that several different crops will work. Cropping a video to vertical, for example, eliminates quite a bit of the frame.
- Re-crop in your chosen editing software and adjust each frame and text to be sure nothing gets cropped out. Some shots in standard dimensions are off-center for visual interest, but when cropping for square or vertical videos, those shots might need to be moved to the left or right of the frame. This only takes a few minutes, but it’s worth it to have an intentional crop of each version of your video.
- Consider a slightly different edit for different platforms. For example, on some platforms, a shorter, snappier video that features more of the end product will perform better than a longer, instructional video. On some platforms, having a bite shot or something very compelling will pull viewers in from the start, while other platforms don’t need that. Consider experimenting and paying attention to the features in each video that might be best for each platform. The same footage can be used, just rearranged, sped up, or slowed down to cater to a specific platform.
- Different music on different platforms may be helpful to allow a video to grab that specific audience. TikTok and Reels allow for use of some popular music from their libraries, but something like YouTube or Facebook might not.
- Different clips can be helpful in different settings, and planning what you need to include before shooting will help you get the most out of your footage.
🤠 Roundup Videos
Roundups are a great way to feature popular recipes and videos all in one video. The idea is to take a few of your videos to mash them up into a brand new video. Then you’ll share that roundup video on social media –– whether that be on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube –– or in a roundup blog post.
Yes, it probably requires a bit more editing than scaling a blog feed video down into a social media video, but the results can be worth it because you’re exposing your audience to a bunch of your recipes all at once. It’s a really fun way to package similar recipes into a single, easy-to-digest format as well.
Here’s a great example from Tasty. In this nearly 45-minute video on YouTube (with over 9 million views), they’ve gathered 31 of their favorite cookie recipes. What a great video to share during the holidays!
Tips for Creating Roundup Videos
- On YouTube, a longer-form roundup video might work really well since people are used to watching long-form videos on YouTube.
- For a roundup video on Instagram or TikTok, something shorter and snappier might be a better fit.
🍴 Recipe Card Videos
The last repurposing video idea that we’ll talk about today is actually repurposing it within your blog post. You can actually embed videos in your recipe card… and in two different ways!
First, you can embed your full video into your recipe card. It’s a recommended field for recipe schema (aka the data you send to search engines about your recipes –– more on that here), and it can be valuable for your readers to have the video right there within the recipe card.
Second, you can include step-by-step videos in your recipe cards. These videos are simple and easy to make, yet they can be powerful tools that help your readers recreate your recipes with ease. You’d cut your existing recipe video into “steps” and include the correct video within each step of the recipe in your recipe card. You can see an example here on Pinch of Yum using the recipe plugin we developed, Tasty Recipes (if you’re using a different recipe plugin, reach out to their support team to see if it’s an option for you!).
We also have a lesson for Food Blogger Pro members that shows you exactly how to create these step-by-step recipe videos like a pro. Learn more about that here!
Tips for Adding Video to Your Recipe Cards
- While a lot of videos for social media are sped up or slowed down for entertainment purposes, real-time speed seems to be more helpful in recipe card videos.
- Focus on pulling out the steps of a recipe that might be particularly helpful for a reader to see. For example: the color on a piece of browned chicken, the translucency of onions when they are done, the specific method of layering a casserole, etc. Showing these in real-time can feel more approachable.
- If you’re interested in including step-by-step videos in your recipe card, it’s helpful to make note of the steps or techniques you’d like to highlight before you begin shooting. This way, you can make sure you capture those specific steps on video.
Those are just three of the many ways that you can be repurposing your recipe video content for your audience. It’s something that Brita from Food with Feeling chatted about on our podcast a few years ago as well.
And we’re curious: Have you ever repurposed any of your video content? If so, how did it go? Let us know in the comments!