This content repurposing checklist has 27 items in five phases: source quality (5), platform-native formatting (8), captions and hooks (6), scheduling and metadata (4), and post-publish review (4). Run it on every output before you publish. Source quality comes first because no amount of polish saves a weak source, and the review phase comes last because it tells you which formats to keep and which to cut.
Key takeaways
27 items across five phases: source, format, captions, scheduling, review.
Check the source first; formatting cannot rescue a source with nothing quotable in it.
Never letterbox: reframe horizontal video to vertical, and strip other platforms' watermarks.
YouTube recommends MP4 with H.264 video, and 16:9 is its standard ratio on a computer.
Track every output by source, platform and performance so you know which formats to drop.
Checklists are operational, not strategic. They turn the editorial discipline that takes years to internalize into a 5-minute pre-publish review. The 27-item list below covers every failure mode that platforms penalize in 2026. Print it, save it, or build it into your team's review process.
The sequence matters. Source quality items come first because they gate everything else — no amount of platform-native polish recovers a bad source piece. Post-publish review comes last because the audit-loop is what separates operators who improve from operators who plateau.
Phase 1: Is the source quality good enough?
The source piece contains at least 3-5 quotable lines per hour. Without them, downstream outputs have no hook material.
Audio is clean enough that the auto-transcript needs only light fixes. Background noise, low mic levels, or mumbling break the pipeline.
Video framing is consistent — face on camera, predictable lighting, single subject in frame for talking-head sources. Inconsistent framing kills auto-reframing.
Pacing has natural breaks every 30-60 seconds. Monologue without breaks is unclippable.
Topic is specific enough that downstream outputs can carry meaningful titles. "How I grew my agency" is too broad; "the 3 hires that 2x'd my agency in 6 months" is specific.
Phase 2: Is every output platform-native?
Aspect ratio matches the destination: vertical 9:16 for TikTok, Reels and Shorts, and 16:9 for YouTube long-form, which YouTube lists as its standard ratio on a computer.
No black bars. If the source is horizontal and the destination is vertical, reframe via face tracking or split-screen layout, never letterbox.
No competitor watermarks in the frame (TikTok logo on a Reels upload, YouTube logo on a TikTok upload).
Export at full HD (1080×1920 vertical, 1920×1080 horizontal, 1080×1080 square) so each platform gets a clean file to compress.
Frame rate matches the original recording. YouTube's upload guidance says to encode at the rate you recorded at.
File format matches the platform spec. YouTube recommends an MP4 container with H.264 video.
Duration fits the platform's current length limits. Check them before you cut, because they change.
Audio normalized so voices sit at the same level across every clip in the batch.
Phase 3: Are the captions and hooks ready?
Captions sit inside the platform safe zone, clear of the buttons, username and caption text the app draws on top of the video.
Caption font is bold and easy to read on a phone, styled to fit the platform you post to.
Caption text proofread against the transcript. Auto-transcription always makes some errors, and a quick read-through saves the post.
Hook overlay in the opening second or two for short-form vertical. Question-style hooks for Shorts, statement-style for Reels, line-of-dialog for TikTok.
Per-platform caption text rewritten — not identical to other platforms. Same idea, different wording.
CTA matches platform conventions — "link in bio" for IG/TikTok, "see comments" for LinkedIn, "thread below" for X.
Phase 4: Are scheduling and metadata set?
Publish time matches your audience's actual active window — not the platform's recommended generic time.
At least 8-hour gap between consecutive posts on the same platform from the same source piece.
Hashtags follow each platform's convention: a few relevant tags, placed in the caption or first comment depending on where you post.
Title text includes the search-relevant keyword for platforms with search (YouTube long-form, blog, newsletter).
Phase 5: What do you review after publishing?
Check engagement metrics at the 4-hour and 24-hour marks. Significant deviation from your baseline signals an early throttle pattern.
Read the first 5-10 comments. Use them as editorial signal for the next source piece.
Archive the output file and metadata to your own storage within 7 days of publish.
Tag the output in your tracking sheet — source piece ID, platform, publish time, performance bucket (top 10% / middle / bottom). Quarterly review of this sheet drives format kill decisions.
What does this look like in Kompozy?
A real output from the Kompozy workspace in the vertical video format, one of the outputs this workflow calls for. It shows the format, not a piece made from this page's example.
Real output · Kompozy Naturalistic video format · from the Kompozy workspace
Who is this for, and who should skip it?
Best for:
Operators and small teams who publish the same source to several platforms each week.
New repurposers who have not yet made platform-native formatting a habit.
Teams that split formatting, captions and scheduling between different people.
Not ideal for:
One-off posts to a single platform, where a full 27-item pass is overkill.
Teams looking for platform-by-platform technical specs; check each platform's current upload guidance instead.
Frequently asked questions
How long does running the full checklist take per output?
It gets quicker once you know it by heart. Splitting the work also helps: a designer takes the formatting, a copywriter the captions, and whoever schedules takes the metadata.
Can a tool run this checklist automatically?
Most of phase 2 (formatting) and phase 4 (scheduling metadata) yes. Phase 1 (source quality) and phase 3 (captioning) need a human. Phase 5 (review) is partly tool-driven and partly editorial.
Is this checklist different for B2B vs consumer?
Slightly. B2B accents the blog and LinkedIn items, consumer accents the TikTok and Reels items. The core 27 items apply to both.
How often should I update the checklist?
Quarterly. Platform conventions drift — safe zones change with UI updates, recommended durations shift with algorithm changes, hashtag conventions evolve.
Do I need to run all 27 items on every single output?
Yes, if you are new to it. With enough reps the items become habit and the explicit checklist takes far less time per output.
What happens if I skip the post-publish review?
You lose the feedback loop that drives format kill decisions. Operators who skip the review tend to keep posting formats that have already died.
Is there a Kompozy-specific version of this checklist?
Kompozy formats each output for its destination platform, which covers much of phases 2 and 4. You still own source quality, the caption proofread, and the post-publish review.
How do we know this?
We checked every figure on this page against the sources listed below on 2026-10-23. Kompozy plan prices, credits and platform counts come from kompozy.io/pricing. File-format, aspect-ratio and frame-rate items were checked against YouTube's upload encoding guidance. The other items are our working checklist, not measured results.