Doing more with less is an ongoing requirement for marketers. So how do you find ways to maximize your assets easily and without additional costs? The answer: within your existing content. A single white paper or webinar could be stretched into dozens of smaller, impactful pieces of content, each reaching a unique audience at the right time.
For years, content creators have struggled with the time-intensive process of repackaging long-form content into other digestible and versatile formats. The emergence of AI has changed that. AI is an indispensable tool that can unlock smarter ways to engage, inform and inspire your audience. It can be a game changer for marketers.
This playbook explains how you can harness AI to repurpose long-form content into modular and derivative assets. With expert insights and practical recommendations, this playbook unpacks the capabilities of AI, outlines the challenges of content repurposing and recommends strategies to build a more agile content plan. As a bonus, we provide some best practices and prompts to get you started.
Marketers have been using modular content—the practice of slicing and dicing larger pieces into smaller, reusable assets—regularly. Producing modular content at scale is a challenge for many organizations, and AI can change that. Imagine never starting from scratch again.
Instead, you could create slide decks, newsletter content, social posts and more using an AI assistant that extracts the details you need for each derivative asset. As a bonus, AI tools can deliver content that’s already optimized for search.
THE RESULTS
Efficiency
AI reduces time to market for modular content
Consistency
Your brand’s voice and tone remain cohesive across platforms
Optimization
AI ensures every asset serves a specific purpose (e.g., raising awareness, delivering leads, deepening customer relationships, etc.)
By definition, modular content refers to strategic, smaller pieces of information derived from a long-form asset. The modular assets are then customized for specific platforms or user preferences while staying true to the original purpose of the long-form asset.
Example: A healthcare company hosts a webinar featuring a leading subject matter expert (SME) on new legislation affecting biosimilars. The marketing team spends hours creating slides for the SME, the SME spends hours refining the slides and rehearsing, the sales team spends time inviting their clients and prospects to the webinar. All of this time is devoted to producing a single one-hour webinar.
Now, imagine breaking this webinar into digestible pieces—a blog, a quote graphic, an email header, a social post, etc. That’s modular content. Rather than thinking of that webinar as a one-and-done initiative, extend its lifespan while reaching audiences in their preferred formats and platforms.
EXAMPLES OF MODULAR ASSETS
A case study turned into client-ready sales decks or other sales enablement content
Infographics built from detailed data within a long report
Short video snippets featuring major takeaways from a webinar
With AI, these modular transformations happen in minutes, not hours. So instead of spending time creating derivative assets, your marketing team can focus on outcomes. The time they would have spent on execution can now be devoted to strategic thinking.
UNDERSTANDING LONG-FORM ASSETS
Definition and Examples of Long-Form Content
For most organizations, long-form content is the backbone of their content strategy. Long-form content connects with a target audience because it’s detailed and authoritative. Examples of long-form content include:
White papers that tackle industry challenges
Webinars featuring key thought leaders
In-depth reports backed by custom research
E-books introducing new ideas at higher levels
Long-form content is something you should already be doing.
For instance, a tech company’s white paper might focus on cloud migration strategies. The entire 10-15 page white paper is aimed at an IT staff member who is deep in the throes of cloud migration. The fact is, however, that IT staff member can’t make purchase decisions—that’s the role of the CIO or another executive.
The decision-maker doesn’t have the time to consume a massive white paper. She might, however, see an infographic on social media that drives her to a blog post highlighting the ways cloud migration can help her organization. The challenge? Developing a blog post or infographic that resonates with the decision-maker.
If you’ve tried repurposing long-form content, you know it doesn’t come without hurdles. The process can be labor-intensive and often requires manually sifting through the long-form asset to identify stand-alone value.
Ongoing questions include:
- “How do I pull smaller chunks without losing context?"
- "How do I make each element independently meaningful?"
- “Who has the time to develop the derivative assets?”
These are among the reasons why long-form content often gets parked in the archive, underutilized at best or ignored at worst. This is where AI proves its worth.
For example, AI can quickly identify relevant portions of the long-form asset for a series of social posts with the right prompts. Your team could certainly do that as well, but it would take them a lot longer. AI can also recommend ways to reframe content based on trending industry conversations.
THE ROLE OF AI IN ASSET DERIVATION
How AI Transforms Long-Form Into Multiple Formats
AI simplifies and amplifies your capacity to turn one piece of content into dozens of compelling assets. Imagine uploading a white paper into an AI tool that highlights its most impactful statistics, summarizes each section into a social caption and extracts insights for a blog post.
For example, our team used an AI tool to analyze a stakeholder interview transcript to discover the key points. AI identified the core themes, and we used them to develop a content strategy for a client. Versatility is the key here—AI doesn’t just find what’s valuable; it reshapes it across formats.
AI USE CASES
Use Case #1: Cheat Sheets
A consulting company uses AI to convert a 40-page regulatory guide into a series of digestible compliance cheat sheets that can be used in an email campaign.
Use Case #2: Blog Content
A software firm leverages AI technology to extract blog content from video transcripts, reducing back-end work time from days to hours.
Transform Your Content With AI
AI is no longer a “nice-to-have” for marketers—it’s the difference between a reactive strategy and a proactive one. By amplifying and modularizing your long-form content with AI tools, you’ll save time, engage meaningfully, and create a constant cycle of fresh, relevant assets.
Like any collaboration, working with AI starts with strong communication. It may take some trial and error to integrate the prompts into your workflow, but doing so will help simplify tasks, make your efforts more scalable and enhance the value derived from your AI tools.
Good news: You can get started now. Identify a tool and dive in. Start by auditing your existing long-form assets and experimenting with simple AI tools for modularization. From there, build momentum by integrating AI into every stage of your marketing workflow.
Still not sure where to start? Here are some practical AI prompts to guide your content creation process and transform long-form content into modular assets.
Download Our Sample Prompts to Get Started
Want additional guidance? We can help. Contact Max Berkelman, Senior Director of Strategic Growth at mberkelman@mspcagency.com.
