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- THE SMART CONTENT PLAYBOOK
THE SMART CONTENT PLAYBOOK
How to identify, refine, and repurpose your best content for maximum impact...
Niall Ratcliffe
February 02, 2025
In partnership with
Morning!
I just got back from playing tennis for the 2nd time in 10 years. Do I feel posher than before? Yes. Am I any good at Tennis? No. Do I think I could compete with Andy Murray in his prime? Yes.
But while I was playing tennis I gained 130 new LinkedIn followers without even posting today and it’s all because of this new content cycle I’m about to tell you about.
I shouldn’t be spilling my secrets, but today… that’s exactly what I’m going to be doing.
Let’s get into it!
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION
BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY
I’ve been posting on LinkedIn for over 3 years now. Yet I gained more followers in the last 90 days than I did in the 12 months before it.
It’s completely exploding.
I’ve gained 16,000+ followers.
Had 2.2M+ impressions.
And 15K+ profile views.
(Not to mention the amazing leads and conversations that came about off the back of it.)
But as much as I’d love to tell you that my LinkedIn is growing quicker because I’ve worked harder, put out more content, or found the silver bullet… that isn’t the case.
I’ve been spending less time on my content than ever.
The truth is, all of this growth came from one simple realisation:
The best content I can put out next week has probably already been posted.
Because the best content I can share next week is the topics, ideas, thoughts, and formats that have already resonated with my audience.
I realised that creating great content didn’t mean coming up with:
Brand new ideas.
Brand new formats.
Brand new concepts.
Every single week. It’s about communicating the key ideas that resonate more clearly and engagingly.
This led me to develop a simple 5-step process that has helped me create a content machine.
If you want to grow brand socials, founder socials, or any sort of socials in 2025 - this is the way to go.
Here’s how it looks in action:
Step 1: Create A Goldmine
Start by gathering all social content you’ve created in the last 90 days.
LinkedIn posts.
Employee brand posts.
TikToks, Instagram posts.
Anything that’s gone out on social media in the last 90 days - gather it all up. Then place it in a spreadsheet.
This may feel like a lift, but it will be worth it.
Step 2: Add A Scoreboard
All “high-performing” content is not created equal. So many marketers make the simple mistake of basing their entire content strategy based on one metric they obsess over.
For some, it’s new followers, for others it’s impressions. But building a content strategy around 1 metric always ends badly.
Instead, you want to track 5 key metrics:
Shares
Leads driven
Engagement
Impressions
New followers gained
At this point, we can see which content moved the needle - not just which posts went viral.
Step 3: Mould Your Content Categories
All that data from Step 2 is priceless for any content or marketing team. But it’s when that data is organised that things get interesting.
Now, you want to split everything into 3 different categories:
A) Reach posts – Content that got high impressions and reached the most people.
B) Shareable posts – Content that people saved, shared, or reposted.
C) Action-driving posts – Content that converted into leads, email sign-ups, or enquiries.
These 3 categories of content play massively different roles in your content strategy…
Reach posts: Boost brand awareness.
Shareable posts: Deepen credibility and exposure.
Action-driving posts: Turn views into new business.
All are essential when building out your content strategy, but the key is to know how to weight them in your content approach.
Once we’ve sorted content into these categories, we can see exactly what type of content is doing the heavy lifting.
Now it’s time to break down why they’re performing so well.
Step 4: Find Your Key Repeatable Content
This is where we get specific.
We don’t just look at which content performed well - we need to find out why it performed well if we want to repurpose it.
So we need to look for key “features” of all the content in each category. I break it down into three questions:
Reach posts → What were the common topics?
Shareable posts → What formats were used?
Action-driving posts → What pain points triggered the most responses?
For example, when I did this exercise for myself, I found that:
My best reach posts were B2B content breakdowns.
My most shareable posts were “Good vs Bad” style comparisons.
My best action-driving posts talked about companies not understanding social content.
From here you need to go and create a list of repeatable topics, formats, and problems based on what the data showed.
This is a clear blueprint of what your audience cares about.
Once you know that, you can stop guessing what to post and just give people more of what they already love.
Step 5: Build Your Content Machine
The final step is turning this into a structured content system.
Instead of constantly coming up with new ideas, you want to have a content machine that cranks the key results you are looking for.
Generally, you want this to be a 5 or 7-day content cycle.
For a 5-day cycle, it may look something like this:
Monday → Reach post (using a proven high-impression topic).
Tuesday → Shareable post (using a format that got high shares).
Wednesday → Another reach post (combining a high-impression topic + format).
Thursday → Authority post (positioning you as a thought leader).
Friday → Action-driving post (highlighting a key pain point).
This removes all the guesswork from content creation - and the risk too.
Everyone seems to treat each piece of content like an MVP. They launch it with no idea how it will resonate with the audience when what they need to be doing is seeing the signals their audience are giving them.
If a topic resonates → your audience wants more of it.
If a format gets shared → that’s how your audience enjoys content.
If a pain point resonates → that’s relatable to your ICP.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel every week.
Once the cycle is complete, you repeat this process every 90 days, using fresh insights from the latest round of data.
Every quarter you’ll refine your topics, ideas, formats, and pain points and your socials will continue to grow. You’re never starting from scratch—just refining what already works.
NOTE: Use The 80/20 Rule
Content from this process should make up 80% of the content you’re putting out. It’s reliable, it works, and it’s pre-validated with your audience.
The other 20% should be pure experiments.
Testing new ideas.
Testing new formats.
Trialing new pain points.
Then the successful experiments will naturally integrate themselves into this process.
This will stop your content getting stale and also make sure you don’t get lost as content formats adapt and evolve.
🌱 THE GREENHOUSE
Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:
TL;DR
Gather content.
Track key metrics.
Sort content into categories.
Highlight topics that drove results.
Build a repeatable content cycle.
Use the 80/20 rule.
For now, I’ve only tested this across LinkedIn, but I’m pretty confident this process will apply across all social channels - it’s not even close to platform-specific.
Excited to see you try this and make sure to let me know how you find it if you do.
Hopefully, you enjoyed this breakdown, if you did… why not share it with a friend?
Until next Sunday.
— Niall
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