Beyond repurposing. How to remix your content like a storyteller
Repetition is reputation. Remixing is reinvention.
Remixing is not reposting, and it’s not recycling either. Remixing is reinterpretation. It’s storytelling through transformation. Think of it like this: A remix takes the essence of a piece, its mood, its truth, its voice, and reshapes it into something that hits differently.
Same story, new spine. Musicians and filmmakers do it. Storytellers like us should be doing it, too.
From memo to movement
Ideas don’t have expiry dates. They have second lives.
Let’s say you wrote a newsletter in 2024, or even in 2023, called “Why burnout is not a badge of honor”. You felt good about it and it got some replies. And then you moved on, as we do.
But what if that idea didn’t need to be one-and-done? What if you turned that same insight into:
- A three-post storytelling arc on LinkedIn, showing your journey from overworking to recalibrating.
- A carousel titled “Things I believed before I burned out”.
- A 90-second audio reflection, paired with slow visuals, perfect for Pinterest or Reels.
- A one-sentence knockout post, like “Burnout was never the price of admission”.
This is remixing, not recycling. It’s treating your words like raw footage and giving them new form, new rhythm, new weight.
When the intern has no soul. Remixing with AI
Let’s talk about the machine in the room. AI can assist in remixing, no question. Tools like Jasper Remix, Cohesive, and Canva Magic Rewrite can help you brainstorm angles, rewrite in new tones, or extract micro-content from longer pieces.
But the danger is that AI can’t feel your content. It doesn’t know where the power is. It can’t hear the gasp in your paragraph or the ache in your metaphor, which means that you’re still the storyteller. AI is the intern. Use it to speed up the boring bits.
Never let AI rewrite your voice.
Think like a literary adapter
When Greta Gerwig adapted Little Women, she shuffled the chronology, but kept the ache intact. That’s the art of remixing; same truth, new tension.
Writers and content creators often resist content strategy because it feels mechanical, but remixing, when done right, is actually a literary exercise. When a novel becomes film, the screenwriter doesn’t just transcribe the dialogue and call it a day. They rewrite, restructure, collapse characters and invent visual metaphors. They keep the soul, but change the shape.
That’s what good remixing does. It asks:
- What core idea still matters here?
- What new format could amplify it?
- What tone would speak to this season, this mood, this medium?
This is where content marketing turns into story architecture.
When to remix and what to watch for
Not all content is worth remixing, and not all ideas can stretch across platforms. However, if you’re sitting on pieces that once sparked responses (comments, replies, conversations, sales), chances are that there’s still juice in them.
Start with content that:
- Ignited emotional reactions.
- Taught something timeless.
- Felt like a breakthrough when you wrote it.
- Still reflects what your voice wants to say now.
When you remix:
- Don’t flatten the magic. (Don’t sand off the edges. That’s where the voice lives.)
- Don’t over-optimize until the remix sounds like a robot trying to be inspirational.
- Stay human. Stay strange. Stay rooted in the moment that made the piece matter in the first place.
Remixing is about voice, not visibility
Here’s what most marketers miss: Remixing isn’t just about reach. It’s about deepening your voice. When you explore your own ideas from multiple angles, you get clearer. You develop signature language. You find new entry points into the same truth and that’s how people start recognizing you.
Telling the same story with deliberate variation is so much more powerful than just posting more. It’s similar to a composer working with one unforgettable motif.
What’s next? Scaling without selling your soul
Next week, we’ll shift from narrative to infrastructure. Once you know how to remix your content, the question becomes how much of your content should be original vs. reimagined. Or, how do you keep showing up without burning out or blending in.
We’ll talk about:
- The 70/30 rule for content output.
- How to build a hybrid editorial calendar.
- How to scale your storytelling without becoming a content machine.
Until then, go find something you once wrote that you still believe in. Don’t post it, not yet. First, remix it. Reimagine it. See what else it wants to say.
