Marketers are under pressure to produce more content that is interesting and easy to read, as well as something that people will want to share. However, constantly creating high-quality blog posts can be very time-consuming.
The solution to this problem is not to write more frequent, lower quality blog posts. The opposite is true. You need to dedicate more time to researching and writing the best and most engaging content you can.
The key to getting the most out of your content is to repurpose it in different forms once you’ve hit publish. By diversifying how your content is presented, you’re more likely to attract a larger audience to your website which increases the chance of them becoming customers.
Ways to Recycle Your Blog Posts Into Other Content Formats
Reusing your blog posts to engage your audience more is a great way to increase business. Here are some tips to get started:
Email Newsletters
If you want to stay in touch with your blog’s avid readers, email newsletters are a great way to do so. In the past, businesses would use this platform to share news about the company or try to get email subscribers to make a purchase. The inbound methodology suggests that you switch things up and do the opposite of what has been done in the past.
Measure the value you’re providing your subscribers against the resources it takes to create the content, and make sure the cost-benefit ratio is firmly in your favor. It’s more important to provide value to your readers than to ask for something from them. The next time you send an email to your subscriber list, make it something they’ll appreciate by being generous with your content. A great way to add value for your subscribers is to take your blog post content and turn it into an email. Not everyone will have the time to visit your blog every time you post, but if you show up in their inbox with a short snippet from your most recent blog post and an easy-to-find link, it drives traffic back to that post. Be sure that the value you’re providing to your subscribers outweighs the resources required to create the content.
Bonus Tip
Create content that will still be relevant in the future. This way, you can extend the life of your content by sending it to subscribers long after it was published.
Social Media Posts
According to Social Media Examiner, 92% of marketers say that social media is important for their business.
When you write a well-researched blog post, you have a lot of content to share on social media. This content includes quotes, questions, and statements that will engage your audience.
If you’re using the same heading for your blog on every social network, you’re going to get filtered out by your audience eventually. This not only reduces engagement, but also alienates people who don’t connect with your original blog title.
If you want your blog content to be widely shared on social media, don’t just post the headline. Share the whole thing! This will give your audience a variety of great content to share with their friends.
Bonus Tip
Here are a couple of tools you could use to easily repurpose blog content on social media:
- Social Inbox: If you use HubSpot, you can use Social Inbox to schedule out tweets promoting your blog posts in bulk. Here’s how.
- Buffer: If you don’t use HubSpot, schedule a set of posts using Buffer for the week or two following a new blog post, Buffer allows you to distribute content easily across several social networks.
- ClickToTweet: ClickToTweet helps you create a unique link that will allow your readers to share content within your blog post. Here is a post on how to generate click-to-tweet links for your content.
- Revive Old Post WordPress Plugin: If you use WordPress for your blog, you can establish regular sharing of old posts to chosen social networks. And it’s all automated and super easy to set up!
Blog Post Syndications
The practice of blog syndication, or featuring your blog content on a high-traffic website after already posting it to your own, is currently being debated as to its validity.
Syndicate your blog with caution if you wish to maintain a good relationship with Google. Duplicate content is something they do not favor, and neither does receiving backlinks from guest blogging. However, if you are wise about it and syndicate your blog with the right people, you can still increase your online visibility. This is especially true if you are just starting and don’t attract a lot of traffic organically.
Only syndicate your blog to reputable sites that attract your ideal audience, and make sure to ask the site owner or editor to include a canonical tag. This will allow search engines like Google to recognize the post on your site as the original.
Example
Jeff Bullas, a well-known marketer, syndicates some of his blog content using the LinkedIn publishing platform. His most successful LinkedIn post, “Why You Should Forget Facebook,” was originally published on his blog.
SlideShare Presentations
SlideShare is a platform similar to YouTube but for presentations. It’s a great way for marketers to reach a new audience, and one that is highly engaged. You can take a blog post and turn it into a SlideShare presentation, which can then be embedded onto other blog sites. This makes it easy for people to share your content.
Bonus Tip
It’s easy to create a SlideShare presentation. If you’ve ever made a PowerPoint presentation, you have the skills you need. SlideShare lets you upload presentations as PowerPoint files or PDFs.
The recent partnership between Haiku Deck and SlideShare has given users the ability to create ready-to-go presentations online. If you’re not great with PowerPoint, this is an alternative. However, there are some limitations with this technology if you want complete control over the creative process.
Example
HubSpot’s SlideShare channel has over 31,000 subscribers and is a great place to find inspiring presentations.
Tips to Entice Readers
Write Whiplash-Inducing Blog Headers
Hope Clark said in her March “Funds for Writers” newsletter:
I have a key factor I use to determine whether to delete or hold to read an email: the quality of the subject line. When time is limited, the subject line needs to be attention-grabbing so that I don’t regret not reading it later.
The person she is talking to is correct- headers are very important for blog content. Most writers try to make their blogs sound more interesting and creative like their books, rather than making them sound dull like a tabloid.
Tabloid and advertising writers understand how to capture the attention of readers who are quickly scanning through content. In order to maintain a reader’s interest, they utilize an interesting and attention-grabbing opening.
In order to make our headers more eye-catching and shareable, we need to make them more attention-grabbing and visually appealing.
Don’t be generic.
An interview won’t be interesting unless it’s about something that’s trending, like a threesome involving Justin Bieber, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Kardashian.
Make it Tweetable.
But I had no idea what the article was about when I saw the header The London Review of Books recently published an article with the header “Ghosting” which was about Andrew O’Hagan’s experience ghostwriting for Julian Assange. While the header is enigmatic and one-word, it does not work well in the age of Twitter.
You wouldn’t know from the title that the article is about ghosts. It might have been a piece about ectoplasmic apparitions, or a remake of the Dan Ackroyd-BillMurray movies, so the author didn’t bother to retweet it since they didn’t have time to write a new header. You don’t want that to happen to your posts.
Promise a quick read
Everybody’s in hurry online.
In a March 2014 piece in the Web Writer Spotlight, Jillian Mullin wrote:
Although it may seem daunting to compete with social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter, it is important to remember that just the fact that a user has landed on your site is something to be thankful for. On average, internet users only spend 10-30 seconds reading content on a given web page. Furthermore, users typically do not read web pages word-for-word, but rather scan the page for keywords, bullet points, subtitles, and quotes that are relevant to what they are looking for.
One way to make a promise is with numbered lists, for example, “The 10 Best Ghostwritten Books” or “5 Signs Your Computer is Possessed.”
Promise solid, helpful information that’s YOU-oriented, not ME oriented
A good title should be like “How to Become a Ghostwriter” or “5 Simple Snacks to Serve at Your Next Exorcism” rather than “I’m Making a Living Now” or “Another Sleepless Night in My New Apartment”.
Ask a question that stirs curiosity
You could try appealing to greed by saying something like “Make REAL Money as a Writer!” Or you could try appealing to paranoia by saying something like “Is Your Cubicle Haunted?” or “Who or WHAT is Flushing Your Toilet in the Middle of the Night?”
Use keywords in your header
hip What are keywords? They are the words that let the public and search engines know what your post is about.
The title of your blog post should be chosen based on the keywords you are targeting, not on what sounds most appealing to you as the author. For example, if you are writing about a haunted house, your title should be something like “10 signs your house is haunted: my encounter with a ghost” rather than something more creative but less keyword-focused like “Mildred Biggins walks at night.”
Just tell us what your article is about. What you write about is what will attract the most readers. Using keywords in your article helps with that too. (It’s called SEO—you can read more about that below.)
Put Your Most Important Info in the First Few Words
Your lead should be visible on phone and small tablet screens. This is because people do a lot of reading on these devices. Therefore, the first words are very important for today’s reader.
The words at the beginning of your blog post are important not just for people, but for search engines as well. Keywords in those opening words will help determine which searches will include your post in the results.
Most people will not read past the second paragraph, so you want to put your best stuff in the beginning.
Susie Scrivener is a 30-something freelance writer who shouldn’t have any cares in the world. She living in a gorgeous Victorian triplex in Old Town with her cat Hortense. The three-story house she moved into last month was once owned by one Mildred Biggins, who died in 1924.
These days, reporters have to give the facts in the first ten words, as opposed to the third or fourth sentence.
Former owner’s ghost is haunting Susie Scrivener’s house.
Learn to Use and Format Subheaders
The purpose of subheaders is not only to attract the reader’s attention and let them know what to expect, but also to emphasize the most important points. In addition, keywords should be included in subheaders.
This is because search engines will also pick up subheadings.
For your Mildred Biggins post, you might use subheaders that contain words related to the ghost story genre, like “ghost”, “haunted”, and “poltergeist”, rather than more mundane subheaders like “Who flushed that toilet?” or “Mildred and Hortense”.
Be sure to use the “subheader” mode in your blog program, which will help you organize your thoughts better than the “normal” setting. I only discovered this year that there was such a thing as a “subheader” category, and it has improved my blog organization immensely.
The subheader menu for Blogger users is located on the left-hand side of the toolbar next to the word “normal”. This menu provides the options of Heading, Subheading, or Minor Heading.
THE PROBLEM: YOUR BUSINESS ISN’T GROWING AS FAST AS IT SHOULD!
Your sales have stagnated or decreased, and you can’t figure out why. Discover what’s holding you back from achieving predictable sales growth in your business.
If you want to grow your business, you need a proven plan and framework. That’s what you get with the 2X Your Sales Discovery Session.
Want to learn about a formula for Predictable Growth that will put your business on a 90-day path to 2X Your Sales?