How to Be a Content Magician

Written by Alice and Annette

How to Repurpose Your Content Last week, we talked about the different ways you can use a single article to showcase your expertise and promote your business. This week, we promised to talk about the ways you can magically transform your articles into other high-value types of content.

Okay, so maybe it’s not exactly magic, but your readers will think you’ve done something pretty miraculous for them when you provide them with a variety of ways to consume, absorb and apply what you have to teach.

How to Repurpose Your Content:

1. Create a Checklist. The quickest and easiest way to repurpose one of your articles is to turn it into a checklist. A checklist walks your readers through a set of distinct and actionable steps in order to help them reach a specific goal. This won’t be appropriate for each and every article you already have, but when it makes sense for a particular piece of content it can be a quick way to provide added value to your readers.

2. Prepare a Worksheet. A worksheet is slightly more involved than a checklist, and can therefore provide additional benefits. Create a worksheet by identifying the main themes of your original article, with a focus on those sections where you’re asking your readers to consider certain concepts or ask themselves certain questions. Your new worksheet will actually have them write down their answers in the spaces you provide.

3. Write an Ebook. You’ll likely need more than a single article to repurpose into an ebook, but if you already have a few pieces of content on a single topic, consider ways that you can combine them into a more substantial document. You can use this ebook to get new subscribers or potentially even sell it if you’re adding a substantial amount of new information.

By the way, if you need a hand with any of the 3 above, we can certainly give you a hand at All Custom Content. But there’s still more you can do including…

4. A Podcast, mp3 download or Webinar. This might take a little more time than making a checklist or worksheet, but it can really pay off for your business. You might create an audio recording based on a verbatim reading of your article, or you might use it as the basis for a new script. Best of all, you probably don’t need to buy any new special tools to make your own podcast; your computer or smartphone likely already has all the equipment you need. With the amount of time that people spend commuting, there are a lot of folks looking for easy to consume audio content to help them pass the time.

5. A Video. Turning one of your articles into a video will require the greatest amount of effort, but it may also provide you with the greatest benefits. Again, your smartphone may already have a camera that’s powerful enough to let you create a video without having to buy any new equipment. The best approach is to be prepared to make at least several versions of your video so you can choose the best.

If your video will be more than a minute or two long, consider ways to break up the video into different sections that you can edit together with title pages (so that you don’t have to get the entire video perfect in a single take).

6. Graphics. A lot of people don’t think of this, but an article can be turned into as something as complex as a detailed infographic or you can keep it simple with a thought-provoking image with a notable quotation from your article. The nice thing about images is that they do well on social media, in particular on Facebook and Pinterest. Plus you can brand the graphics with the URL where your followers can read your article in its entirety.

It’s so easy to get stuck in the “write an article, publish an article and then move onto the next one” rut, but the reality is you’re just wasting a whole lot of hard work…whether it’s you who wrote the article, a ghostwriter or anyone else. Always take the time to maximize your efforts to reach more audiences using different venues and mediums. Learning how to repurpose your content will help you make your hard work go so much further.

And speaking of maximizing, we’ve still got more ideas coming your way. You’ve published your article in a variety of places and you’ve repurposed it in a number of ways…now it’s time to really promote it. That’s EXACTLY what we’ll talk about next week, so stay tuned.