Latest / The Daily Writer / 10 Different Ways to Repurpose Your Content

Transcript

10 Different Ways to Repurpose Your Content · The Daily Writer

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hey friends, welcome to episode 129 of the Smart Business Writing Podcast.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Kent Sanders, and this is the show dedicated to helping you share your message, increase your impact, and grow your business through the power of writing.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: As I sit here in my home office, I can look at my window just to my left and see two vehicles in our driveway.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: The first is a red 2014 Mazda CX5, which we bought just a few days ago.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: We got an amazing deal on it from a local car dealership, and it replaced my wife's 2006 Honda Accord, which had around 160,000 miles on it.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I can also see my 2002 Silver Ford Ranger.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I said 2002, so the truck is coming up on being almost 20 years old.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: My Ford Ranger has a little over 200,000 miles on it, and it's been an amazingly reliable truck, despite what a lot of people do say about Fords.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I love Fords, I think it's been a great truck, so there you go, for whatever that's worth.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: After we bought my wife's Mazda the other day, we took a drive in it and she was talking about how much she loved that car and how much she would probably be driving it for years to come.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason is that we tend to keep our cars for many years.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, we drive them until we have a really good reason to replace them.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, we love to get as much mileage out of our cars as possible.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly the same way that I want you to think about the content that you create.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Specifically, I want you to think about repurposing your material in a bunch of different ways.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And on this episode, I want to give you 10 different ways you can repurpose your content.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Before I dive into this list, though, let me first address one quick thing, and that is simply why?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you want to repurpose your content?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it really all comes down to this.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: You have limited time, but you have an unlimited audience.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the best way to get the most bang for your buck from the limited time you have is to put your content a bunch of different places to reach as many people as possible.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Again, you have limited time, but you have a nearly unlimited audience, so let's figure out a way to make the most of that time and to reach the most people that we possibly can with that content.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the way to do that is by repurposing that content.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive in.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Here's ten different ways to do that.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is a blog post.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is where it usually starts for me.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I usually think in terms of a 500 to 750-word blog post or so.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is a post or a piece of content that you can read within five or ten minutes, and it's a really good size for a self-contained piece of content.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is the length of kind of an average magazine article or an average blog post.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: So think of that as sort of the cornerstone content.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Something that's around 500 to 750 words long, maybe even up to a thousand words long.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably a little bit on the long end, but something along those lines.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if you want to learn how to plan out a great blog post, go back and listen to episode 125, which is titled The Number One Writing Lesson from Disney's Star Wars Trilogy.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: In that post, I teach you how to plan out a really effective blog post.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So number one is a blog post that's sort of the cornerstone piece of content that we want to begin with.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is a podcast episode, and that's exactly what I'm doing right here.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast episode that you're listening to right now, as well as all of my podcast episodes, double as blog posts.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm reading from a script right now, but I improvise along the way to make it more conversational.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not like I'm just reading this script and I never deviate from it.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: I write it out, then I record it, and I improvise as needed, just so it can be more conversational.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I repurpose a blog post into a podcast episode.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, you might think of the teaching episodes of this podcast as an audio blog.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's all that it is.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's an audio version of a blog post.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a blog post, number two, podcast episode, and then number three is an email newsletter.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, an email newsletter is similar to a blog post, but this is something you send out to your email subscribers using something like Convert Kit or MailChimp or AWeber or some kind of email marketing service such as that.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the advantage of having an email newsletter is that it goes right to your subscribers inbox rather than them having to go to your blog or your website to read it.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'll say this about emails.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's better to keep emails short and sweet as much as possible.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of sending a full blog post in an email, I have started to, instead of doing that, send a summary of the blog post or the podcast episode over email instead of writing out the whole post.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: So my goal actually is to have the reader open that email on their phone, and I want most of that email, if possible, to be contained on one single screen of their phone without having to scroll down very much.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: That is honestly what my goal is, because we're all in a hurry.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: We've all got a lot of stuff coming at us.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the shorter and more enticing I can make those emails, the more likelihood that it's going to get read.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, for email marketing, I use Convert Kit, and you can get a 30-day trial of ConvertKit if you go to KentSanders.net slash convert kit.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's a company I love and support and I personally use.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: So check out the free 30-day trial.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is my little plug for them.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Go to KentSanders.net slash convert kit.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Number four is a social media post.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't recommend usually sharing a full blog post on social media unless you're using something like LinkedIn Publishing, which is designed for sharing a full-length article or a blog post.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, I think it's usually better to share a quote, an image, or a short summary of the content that is a blog post.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea is that you want to engage the reader, not just blast tons of text and tons of content at them.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can take what you do in a blog post and you can reframe that as a shorter version of that post, if you can maybe share a story related to that content, a quote that you're pulling from that content, a question, a picture, or something like that, I think that's actually more effective.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the idea is you're not just taking the blog post and dumping it on Facebook or or LinkedIn or someplace like that.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're actually redoing it.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're taking that content and you're refashioning it for that other medium that you're going to be sharing it in, if that makes sense.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So again, the idea is you want to engage the reader, not just blast a bunch of text at them.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if you want more tips on using social media effectively, make sure and check out the next episode that'll be coming out in a couple days.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is my conversation with Trisha Prouse, who is a social media marketing expert.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: That'll be episode 130 that's coming up really soon.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So quick recap: we have blog post, podcast episode, email newsletter, social media posts, and then number five is a course.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can repurpose your blog posts, or you can repurpose your content as a course of some kind.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this could be a live course that you're teaching in person to people, or it could be an online course.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: For example, in my day job, I'm a college professor.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: I teach writing, communication, and media, so I reuse a lot of content between my courses, blog, books, and podcast.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: But you don't need to be a college professor to do something like this.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can actually create a simple online course using a tool like Teachable.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Teachable is what I personally use.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's very simple, it's very cost effective, and it's just a really effective tool for creating high-quality online courses.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a blog post, for example, that post can be a lesson or a module within a larger online course.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the key here is you don't want to just slap something together.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to take, let's say, you know, seven random blog posts and just say, I'm going to create an online course out of it.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: You want there to be a cohesive sequential experience for the student if you're going to repurpose that content into a course.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure it's coherent and that there's a flow to it and that it's an actual legit course.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't just want to slap stuff together and put it out there just because we can.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: We want to create really solid, good content for our learners and for our students and for our audience.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: But that being said, you can definitely repurpose content from a blog post or a podcast into a course of some kind.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Number six is a guest post.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can use this material to write a guest post that is featured on somebody else's blog or website.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some bloggers are okay with you reusing material and some are not.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're going to write a guest post and submit it to somebody else to be featured on their website, make sure they're okay with you reusing material that you've already put somewhere else, like your own website.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that's just kind of common sense, I suppose, but um, some things are not always common knowledge to people, so I thought I would mention it here.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Number seven is a book chapter.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: A blog post can make an excellent chapter in a book because it's going to be short and it's going to be probably easy to read.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, my last book, which was called The Artist Suitcase, it had 26 chapters, one for each letter of the alphabet, and about half of those chapters started out as blog posts on my website.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a very simple way just to have have kind of half the book already made for me.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that being said, again, you don't want to just slap something together just because you can.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: The bad thing about self-publishing today, as much as I love self-publishing, but the downside of it is that anybody can create a book out of anything.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, literally, you can take total gibberish and you can make a book out of it and you can put it on Amazon.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's that's bad, but it's also good because that gives you the power to then do that yourself, which I love, but you don't want to just take stuff together and make a book out of it because you can.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: You want to make sure that the material fits together cohesively into a whole book.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: What I definitely don't want you to do is to take a bunch of random blog posts, compile them, and put it together and call it a book, because a book needs to be more than that.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: A book needs to have a common through line, it needs to have a flow to it, there needs to be thematic coherence to the whole experience for the reader.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure that if you're going to do that, that the blog posts legit fit into an actual book that you're working on.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes a blog post will need to be substantially rewritten or reworked in order to be a really excellent book chapter.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: But here's something really cool that you can do.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to think about this as a really snazzy way to repurpose content.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I've ever used the word snazzy on this podcast before.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's got to be a first for me.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, a really snazzy way to repurpose content is to reverse engineer your book writing process.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, if you want to write a book on a topic, then you can create blog posts, knowing that those will then become book chapters.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if you plan everything out in advance really well, you can actually create a steady stream of books based on your blog post if you write those blog posts as book chapters, or as I would probably even more recommend doing them as segments of book chapters.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And to take things even further, you can then create many forms of the same book.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can have a print book, which could be hardcover or paperback, you can have an audio version of the book, you can have an e-book, you can create a workbook based on that book if it's nonfiction.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Joanna Penn, one of my favorite teachers and writers, she teaches a lot about writing and self-publishing.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: She often does this with her nonfiction books.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: She'll create one book, and then she'll have a workbook that goes along with it, and then she'll have multiple versions of that of that same book so that in effect you're creating multiple streams of income from that one book.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if you reverse engineer that whole process, it all starts with planning out the book and then writing those chapters as blog posts.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm totally confusing you, I definitely don't mean to.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: All this can get a little bit much to absorb at once, I realize, and sometimes it takes me a while to keep it all straight as well.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: The point here, though, is that there's tons of opportunity to repurpose your content, particularly when it comes to books, because a book is a product that you can sell and then make income from it.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And especially if you think of multiple streams of income, that one piece of content in that book can then really come back to you in some pretty cool ways.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's move on here.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: As you can tell, I really love books.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Number eight, the eighth way to repurpose content is by doing a speech, a workshop, or a presentation.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: In the last couple of years, I have given a number of talks that I have then repurposed into some other kind of written format.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And these talks include speaking at a graduation service, preaching in churches and college chapel where I work, because I work at a college, doing a talk at a business luncheon, and speaking at a writer's workshop.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the really wonderful thing about speaking is that you get immediate feedback on your content.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, literally, as you're speaking, people are telling you with their faces and their body language if they're connecting with what you're talking about.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Also, when you speak, you can build great in-person connections with people.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as much as I love social media and the internet and all that stuff, podcasting, there's something irreplaceable about connecting with people in person.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So because of that, I highly encourage you to pursue speaking opportunities.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Not just for the relationships, but also because you can then take your talk or your presentation and repurpose that into something else.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Number nine is to syndicate your content on other larger platforms.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: For example, let's say you wrote a blog post on something, you can then syndicate that or you can reuse that on sites such as Medium, Thrive Global, the Goodman Project, LinkedIn Publishing, and many, many other places.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I used to be a lead editor at the Goodman Project, and I repurposed quite a few of my blog posts there, and we would frequently do that with writers who submitted material to the Goodman Project.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: I have a great friend, Jim Woods, who is recently on the podcast, and he is really, really active on LinkedIn.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: I would recommend to you that you check out his writing.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put a link to that in the show notes, because he does a great job there, and Medium is a great place to repurpose your material, and there are obviously tons of other places as well.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that you want to think about doing something like this is that sites like Medium or the Goodman Project or Thrive Global, they have really, really large audiences, probably far larger than your own blog or website or podcast.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that can be a great way to take the content that you've already written, put it somewhere else that has a much larger potential audience and get some more traction.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, here is number 10.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is the final way that you can repurpose your content.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's not the ultimate final way, it's just the final way I'm going to share in this particular episode.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that is by doing video.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can take your content, whether it's a podcast or blog post or talk or whatever it is, and you can craft this into a video that you have on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, or wherever else that you want to post videos.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that being said, I don't do a lot of video, but I need to get way more active with it.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: My friend Andy Storch does a lot of video on LinkedIn.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: He does a great job with it.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Tons of people do video on LinkedIn, but I love how he positions his profile and how he shares things in a very brief and succinct way, and just does a phenomenal job with his uh social media sharing.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure and check out Andy's profile for some great examples of how to use content, not just video-wise, but on LinkedIn.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And also you can check out my interview with Andy on episode 106 of this show.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, my friends, those are 10 different ways to repurpose your content.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: The key here is not to do all 10 of these at once.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want you to get overwhelmed because when you feel overwhelmed, you get paralyzed and you just shut down.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: At least that's what I tend to do.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would recommend you choose two or three of these at max and start repurposing some content between them and see what happens and see how people respond.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: None of this is set in stone.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: This space of social media and content and publishing and all this stuff, it is changing constantly.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: So a huge mistake that we can make is to get locked into doing something just one way.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's a million ways to do this stuff, so I would encourage you to hold loosely to any firm ideas about you've got to do it this or that way.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just do some experimenting, see what works, see what's gaining some traction from your audience, and then you can adjust as needed.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one final thing here before I start the wrap up.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that people often worry about is that other people will see their same content multiple times and get mad at them because they're sharing the same stuff so much.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to let you know that that's usually not going to be the case.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, your audiences for these different formats and locations is not going to all be the same.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: For example, the people who follow you on LinkedIn are not going to all be the same people who follow you on Facebook, or be the same people who get your emails, or be the same people who listen to your podcast, or be the same people who hear you do a talk locally, and so on and so on.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: So don't worry about that.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: There will be some overlap, of course, between maybe two or three locations or platforms, but by and large, it's going to be a lot of different people who see you in each place.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: So don't worry about people seeing your stuff multiple times.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: But also on that point of people seeing your material multiple times, that's actually a really good thing.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know how many times I've seen Citizen Kane or The Godfather or Back to the Future or any of a number of other movies or TV shows?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I have no idea.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen The Godfather probably a couple dozen times or more.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's because I love that movie.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really love the story, and I really don't ever get tired of watching it.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: If your material is good and it's helpful and people enjoy it, people will not be irritated at seeing it multiple times.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they'll be grateful that you've shared it in more than one place.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because if it's good, they're going to want to see it more than one time.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hey guys, those are my thoughts, but I'd love to hear what you think about this episode.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to specifically hear how you repurpose content and what ways you're trying to do it.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this is an area that is in flux constantly, and I'll love to hear what you're doing with it.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can let me know your thoughts by heading over to KentSanders.net slash one two nine.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's KentSanders.net slash one two nine.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you can leave a comment on this episode, and that's also where you'll find the links in the notes for this episode.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a preview of what's coming up on the next couple of episodes.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: On episode 130, the next one, Trisha Proruz will be sharing how to use social media effectively.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: She is an expert on social media marketing and she's got a lot of great tips to share with us.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then next week, on episode 131, I'm going to be talking about some guidelines for writing better emails.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: All of us are writing emails constantly, and we really don't ever think about how to do it more effectively.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, emails is one of the most important forms of business writing that we do because we do it constantly, and so much depends on our email communication.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to share some guidelines for writing better emails.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a mundane thing, but it's actually really, really important.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going to dive into that next week.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hey guys, once again, thank you for listening.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember that your writing has the power to change people's lives.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you in the next episode.