If you've ever handled a company or an affiliate niche site's blog, you've probably noticed that eventually, you run into a serious problem: you start running out of good content ideas.
The amount of time this takes can depend on your niche and industry. But at some point, you may realize that you've already gone through your best ideas, and you're kind of left with the dregs.
But at the same time, those awesome posts you did are probably evergreen. This means they have staying power, and over time, they'll continue to perform well. You may be running low on new posts, but as for the content you already have, it's top notch.
But what if you could get even more out of that epic skyscraper content you worked so hard on? What if each of those awesome posts — the ones that still bring in traffic, brand awareness, social shares, and conversions — could be repurposed, repackaged, and redistributed?
This approach is something you can start doing today. In a recent article at Copyblogger, they reveal that you can get more mileage out of every post by repackaging it into a different media format.
After all, articles are only one of many ways of presenting content online. Video, podcasts, infographics, and other multimedia formats offer a fresh opportunity to reach more people with your ideas.
Here's what Copyblogger has to say about reusing your blog posts:
The blog post becomes a podcast episode (and video!)
Keep in mind as we go through this example that the specific steps and channels that work for me over at The Assembly Call may not necessarily be the steps that you need to take.
That site is built around a podcast, and we’re also trying to grow our YouTube audience. Therefore, getting content out to our podcast audience and publishing more content to our YouTube channel are priorities. That might not be true for you.
But the big idea that I’m describing here — combining the power of quality over quantity with repurposing and smart, widespread distribution — will work for you. Just take the basic principles and apply them to your situation.
The next basic principle for me is this: turn the blog post into a podcast episode … and there just so happens to be a way that I can do that while simultaneously creating a video version too.
Score!
When time is of the essence (and when isn’t it?), you have to take any chance you can to work smarter, not harder.
So here’s what I do:
- Double-check my microphone cables and settings, and do a test recording. (Always, always, always do a test recording!)
- Open up my Assembly Call episode template in GarageBand, so I can record locally.
- Create a YouTube Live Event to broadcast the recording live.
- Open up the blog post in a web browser, so I have it ready for reference.
- Tweet out the link to the YouTube Live Event, so anyone who is interested can watch the live recording. (For what it’s worth, I’ve never had fewer than 16 people watch live online, and occasionally that number is up in the 50s and 60s.)
- Hit Record in GarageBand, hit Start Broadcast on the YouTube Live Event, welcome the audience, and start reading the blog post.
From time to time while reading, I’ll interject something extra — the kind of comment that might have been a footnote to the written piece. But for the most part I just read the blog post verbatim, trying to sound as casual and conversational as I can.I was worried when I first starting doing this that our podcast and YouTube audiences wouldn’t be too enthused about this content since it’s just me (without my co-hosts) and I’m basically just reading something they could get on the blog.
My worries proved to be unfounded. The response has been unequivocally positive.
I’ve received numerous tweets and emails thanking me for finding a way to deliver this written content in the preferred consumption medium for podcast listeners, which make up the majority of our audience.
These folks would never get to see or hear the content otherwise. And it is so easy to do. The entire time investment to record and post the podcast is about 30–35 minutes:
- 5 minutes to set up
- 15–20 minutes to record
- 10 minutes to publish the podcast (the YouTube Live Event is automatically archived on our YouTube channel for on-demand viewing)
Furthermore, while our blog posts only publish in one place — our blog — we are set up to distribute our podcast episodes far and wide, with only a few button clicks required.Every episode goes to:
- iTunes
- Google Play
- TuneIn Radio
- Stitcher
- iHeartRadio
- Spreaker
- SoundCloud
Turn one quality blog post into a traffic and attention engine
So if you’re scoring at home, we’ve now gone from one blog post, one distribution channel, and a few traffic sources to:
- A blog post
- A podcast episode
- A video
- At least 11 different distribution channels
- Countless traffic sources
And here’s the crazy thing … it could be more.I could:
- Repurpose the blog post someplace like Medium, or as a guest post
- Create a slide presentation for SlideShare
- Find additional video channels besides YouTube
- Extract clips of the audio for a service like Clammr
- Make clips or GIFs from the video to post in visual channels like Instagram
And on and on.The main reasons I don’t do those are a) time and b) because I’d get diminishing returns.
I’ve tried to be strategic about investing the limited time and effort resources I have for this project into the channels that will deliver the best and most immediate returns. SlideShare, for example, isn’t going to do much for a sports audience, but it may be a great option for you.
As you can see, there are all kinds of new promotional channels and media formats you can try. And the best part is, you don't need any groundbreaking new ideas to do this. All you need are the ideas from your best text content.
You can learn more about getting the most from quality content from our friends at Copyblogger.
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