By now we’ve all heard
the endless chatter about Google’s issues with duplicate content. In the past,
we could easily re-run pieces in a variety of places. Some experts I know
reused articles as many as twenty times, but if you do that now you may find
your site in a lot of trouble and severely penalized by the Google-Gods. So
what’s a marketer to do? I was considering this the other day when I was trying
to figure out what to blog about because the other issue is that Google does
not want “thin” content, which is content that isn’t compelling, thin in data
or light in information. Basically they don’t want people just throwing stuff
on their blog to get traffic.
We’re all in a
creative industry but that does not necessarily mean that we are an endless
font of creative ideas. Then I thought: instead of coming up with new ideas, I
wonder how many times I can reuse old ones in a way that won’t get us into
trouble. So here are twenty of them, a variety of different things you can do
with the same piece of content.
Now I’m not suggesting
that you do this with each and every blog post, but if you have ideas or posts
that seem to have legs (and we all know that not all of them will) then maybe
it’s time to see how far you can stretch them.
- Identify
and Re-run Evergreen Content – Review your posts from
the past and identify those that are evergreen (i.e. content that’s always
relevant and not time-sensitive) and consider republishing them with a
timely revision that acknowledges new statistics and trends.
- Update
Past Posts with Industry Updates – At some point, even the best and most creative posts need to be
updated. Now’s the time to go through your old posts and see what can be
updated and reused. Pull in new content and add a fresh take, your readers
will love it.
- Pull
Blog Content into an Infographic - Combine several of
your text-based posts into more visual content – such as an aggregated
infographic or chart.
- Tips: Create
a tips list from a blog post you did and then create images from it to use
on Pinterest, in Twitter, on Instagram, etc. We did this for our 52 Ways
to Sell More Books: (http://www.pinterest.com/bookgalpenny/52-ways-to-sell-more-books/)
- Quizzes: People
love quizzes, when we did ours on “Which Social Media Site is Right for
You” people just ate it up. Most of the time it’s just grabbing existing
content you’ve done, but it’s a fantastic way to repurpose your stuff. You
can see it here: http://www.amarketingexpert.com/social-media-quiz-site-right/
- Checklists: People
love checklists, too and in most cases content can be easily turned into a
checklist. It doesn’t have to be complicated or long. We did a checklist
about all of our Amazon content (How to Sell Books by the Truckload). You
can see it here: (https://authormarketingexperts.leadpages.net/amazon-checklist/)
- Forms: Can any
of your content be turned into forms or one-page worksheets?
- Top Ten
Lists: Another great use for articles is top ten lists. And
like anything related to checklists, top tens, etc. sometimes you’ll have
to play with the information to get it to fit this format. But most
content only needs a slight tweak to morph into something like this.
- Did You
Know Posts: So let’s say you’ve written a few articles on Twitter.
Why not pull them together into a “did you know” and then refer back to
the posts themselves? Not only is this great, short content (and also
super for graphics) but you can highlight other blog posts, too.
- Compile
a “Best Of” Post – Once a month, create a best-of post of
all your content (or other content) that you really love and want to share.
This does not have to be everything you’ve written so, technically, it may
not be entirely recycled content but it’s still a great way to share
content and become a trusted content aggregator.
- Round Up
Your Posts –Use or Reuse Content for your Newsletter
- Create a
FAQ Post - Identify common questions from your audience, type
up quick answers to each, then turn that into a blog post that refers back
to your evergreen posts
- Expand
On a Recent Blog Comment – If you’re commenting on blogs (and you
should be) why not create a post about a particular comment or viewpoint?
- Create
Bite-Sized Blog Posts or Mini Versions of Some of Your Most Popular Posts:
Many of my posts are long, and by long I mean
longer than 500 words, so I’ll take bites of that and create images with
quotes, or excerpt pieces for social media updates, etc.
- Evolve
Your Webinar into Blog Content or an eBook: I do a ton of webinars and I love doing this. You’ll want to get
permission first if someone else is hosting your webinar but it’s
fantastic for building content that can be used for blog posts and eBooks.
When I did my first How to Sell Books by the Truckload on Amazon session
with Joan Stewart, I got her ok to transcribe it. Now it’s a book series
on Amazon.
- Leverage
Video Content - Transcribe an existing video, such as an
interview or class, and use it as a blog post.
- Add Your
Presentation to SlideShare: Or create a presentation from your
blog content for SlideShare.
- Create
Event Content – I do this a lot, I’ll go to an event,
take notes and turn them into blog posts; sometimes I’ll supplement them
with videos taken at the event. (http://www.amarketingexpert.com/viral-video-secrets-creating-video-gets-seen/)
- Content
that Sparks Ideas: When I travel I
take my magazines with me and often plow through them on the road. I tear
out pages that have interesting stuff on them and then recycle the rest. I
will highlight things that spark ideas or bits I want to share. Then I’ll
use this for an article, or a graphic with a tip (citing the publication).
Here’s another tip: I use Evernote to save all my ideas and bought the
scanner they recommended, but I didn’t buy it on Evernote, I found the
same one on Amazon for much less. It will scan your stuff into Evernote
(or Dropbox) which is great because you won’t have a ton of paper notes
all over the place.
- Turn
content into trading cards or other swag: I had
trading cards made for my book, How to Sell
Your Books By The Truckload on Amazon. I pulled different tips I had
already written, and put one tip per card. I took these around to speaking
events and people loved them. See a sample here (http://www.amarketingexpert.com/stepping-comfort-zone-key-success/). You could do this with content from past popular blog
posts or other articles you’ve written. While it’s not online content per
se, people love these cards, and I mail them with everything. I also give
them out at speaking events, too. Keep in mind that everyone loves swag.
http://www.exacttarget.com/blog/8-tips-for-recycling-your-content/It’s important that we get as much mileage out of what we write as we
possibly can, and with all of the new places to post (Pinterest, Instagram,
Vine, etc.) it’s become easier than ever to create virtual “breadcrumbs” that
lead readers back to our website which, in the end, is the ultimate goal.
Penny C.
Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a
best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media
relations expert and an Adjunct Professor with NYU. Her company is one of the
leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most
cutting-edge book marketing campaigns. She is the author of fourteen books,
including How to Sell Books by the Truckload. AME is the first marketing
and publicity firm to use Internet promotion to its full impact through online
promotion and their signature program called: The Virtual Author Tour™ To learn more about Penny’s
books or her promotional services, you can visit her web site at http://www.amarketingexpert.com. To subscribe to her free newsletter,
send a blank email to: mailto:subscribe@amarketingexpert.com Copyright 2015 Penny C. Sansevieri
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