If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ll probably know I’m a big fan of recycling and repurposing content.

So in this week’s update, I’m going to share something I’ve been experimenting with in the last couple of weeks.

I joined Pinterest years ago in the run-up to my wedding, as it was a great place to find inspiration. We’d also only recently bought our house, so it was useful for finding home decor and furniture ideas.

Not long after I went full-time as a freelancer, I attended an event where one of the speakers was from Pinterest. She said something interesting that always stuck with me. She explained how people don’t go on most social media sites to shop, but Pinterest was different. People did go on there to shop. Or at least they used it for shopping inspiration.

Like me, lots of people sign up for Pinterest for a specific reason. Planning a wedding or event, buying a house, starting a business, planning a trip, gift ideas, starting a new hobby and so on. So they are looking for ideas. They are in the mood for buying.

And if we’re on a platform for a specific reason and we’re in the mood for buying, it makes sense that we’ll be more responsive to ads.

So as well as using Pinterest for personal stuff, I also started using it for business for a while.

But a few years ago, I stopped using it. There was no specific reason I stopped - I just gradually used it less and less until I stopped using it completely.

Then a few weeks ago, I was going through my bookmarked sites as my favourites list was getting a bit long, and I decided to have a clear out.

I noticed Pinterest and was reminded how much I used to like it. So I decided to have a look at it to see how much things had changed.

I quickly got sidetracked from clearing my favourites list and realised the share images you can generate on Substack make really good pins. It’s super easy to add the image and link back to the blog post or web page.

So I ended up starting two new Pinterest boards and added some of my posts. Now, whenever I add a new post to Substack, I can create a share image and add it to the relevant board.

Whether or not it will generate any new readers or subscribers remains to be seen. But it’s a two-minute job, so it’s not like it makes extra work, and it gets my content in one more place where it might get discovered.

Creating share images on Substack is super easy. Whenever you publish a new post, you’ll find an option to get images in the settings.

Alternatively, go to your dashboard, click the ‘posts’ tab, select the post you want, and then click on the three dots and choose the ‘share as image’ option.

Substack will then give you a few design options, and once you are ready, you can download your image.

This can then be used as a pin or as an image to go alongside the link on your preferred social media platform.

Another way to generate share images is to do it from inside the post. Select a line or two of text and right-click. Choose the ‘share’ option and you’ll get a choice of images that contain your selected text.

As I say, it’s a two-minute job that can help you get your content on more platforms without having to do a lot of extra work.

If you don’t use Substack, you can create your own images using a tool such as Canva. It might take you a little bit longer to do, but once you’ve created some templates, you can go in and tweak them as and when you need to.

Here’s an example of a template I made on Canva. All I need to do is change the date each month, and it’s ready to use again.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people think you constantly need to be creating new content for social media. You don’t. You can recycle and reuse the same content multiple times, either in the same format or in slightly different ways.

I’m going to be talking more about this (and sharing more ideas for how you can reuse and repurpose content) in my next lunch and learn session.

This event is included in my monthly membership (along with my monthly co-working session) for only £20 per month.

P.S If you like my content and would like to show your support, you can buy me a beer here.