If you identify yourself as being a Youpreneur, then by definition, you’re someone who is dedicated to building the best possible business for yourself based on your personality, unique experience and those you wish to serve.
Creating quality content simply must be at the heart of your marketing approach.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that if you’re not consistently creating content, you’re not going to win at the Youpreneur game.
Creating unique content enables you to connect with your audience. Your personality can shine through and you can build those essential P2P (person-to-person) relationships.
The type of content is up to you. Whether you blog, vlog, live stream, podcast… it all depends what you’re most comfortable with, what your audience want and your niche.
There’s no one-size fits all approach to content creation but there are some basic rules.
Creating quality content simply must be at the heart of your marketing approach. If you’re not consistently creating content, you’re not going to win at the #Youpreneur game. Click To TweetRule #1 – Quality
Create quality, high-value content that will help you stand out. The internet is a VERY busy place and the only way you’re going to stand out in the long-term is by putting out quality content, being creative and adding lots of value.
Rule #2 – Consistency
You must be consistent with your content. Don’t write a blog post once in a while, or record a video as and when you feel like it. Create content on a consistent, regular basis. This will help you to build an audience, and so much more.
Rule #3 – Repurpose
Do not let all of the time and effort that you put into creating your content go to waste. You must look at ways to repurpose your content into different formats and for different locations so that you can reach and connect with a broader audience.
Let’s delve into this further…
Content Repurposing Explained
When you repurpose your content you adapt it for use with a different purpose.
Perhaps you change the format. In turn, you change the audience. The core message stays the same, but you look at different ways to communicate it.
Why should we repurpose?
Because all too often, we spend hours upon hours on our initial piece of content, pouring ourselves into an original idea until it’s polished and engaging and top notch…
…and then what do we do? we just post it.
What’s next? We put our nose back to the grindstone and eek out yet another, brand new idea.
Of course, you should be producing great content, but you should also be producing content on a regular basis. Not all your content needs to be brand-new, cornerstone pieces.
That’s where repurposing comes to the rescue: turning each original piece into yet more ways to reach and connect with your audience!
If you only write blog posts… you only reach those who read your blog.
If you only record podcast episodes… you only reach those who listen to podcasts.
If you only publish YouTube videos… you only reach those who watch your YouTube channel… and so on.
This is why you need to find ways to spread your message across different channels and communicate using different mediums.
Repurposing provides the perfect opportunity to build a system whereby you can turn your original content and ideas into many other pieces of content on a consistent basis.
How to repurpose blog posts
Let’s focus on blog posts.
When people talk about repurposing a blog post they will often talk about pulling some quotes from the post and creating quote images for social media. This is good – I recommend doing this.
They may also talk about taking key sentences and Tweeting them out. Again, a perfectly fine thing to do.
But, I’m going to provide you with five fun and creative ways in which you can repurpose your blog post that you may not have even thought of.
Think of this as five tasks that you can tag onto your existing content creation process.
Here goes…
1. Go-live on social media
Every week, when you publish a new blog post, why not also go-live on Facebook or Instagram to talk about your blog post topic?
When you go-live on social media, it’s not just video content that you’re creating, it’s an experience. An interactive, two-way experience that you create with your audience.
There are a lot of possibilities… you could share more about your topic and run a Q&A.
Potentially more interesting still, you could invite an expert guest to join you and you could interview them and/or run a Q&A together.
Going live enables you to connect with your audience in a more personal way and the live aspect Q&As allow you to demonstrate the depth of your knowledge.
Of course, don’t forget there are plenty of ways to repurpose those live videos too!
2. Have fun with Instagram Stories / IGTV
Instagram is by far my favorite social media platform. In particular, I really enjoy Instagram Stories… and I’m not the only one. 400 million accounts use Instagram Stories every day.
Instagram Stories are fun and engaging, and you don’t need to be a funky creative, visual brand to get involved.
Stories present an opportunity to show a different side of you and your business, and an opportunity to interact with your audience.
So, how can you get more from your blog content on Instagram Stories?
- Film short videos for Instagram Stories letting your audience know your post has been published and what it’s all about. Make sure to reference the main hook from the post to intrigue your audience.
- Share engaging graphics with the title or key quotes from your blog post and direct viewers to the post URL.
- Run a poll about your topic – for example, if you’re blog post was about who’s best, Superman vs Spiderman, then go ahead and run a poll and see what people think!
- Use the ‘ask me a question’ feature and allow people to ‘ask you anything’ (and share your answers of course!) about this week’s blog post topic.
- Play around with many of the other audience engagement features in Stories, they’re always coming out with new ones!
In Instagram Stories you can use hashtags and geo-tags to improve your discoverability. I highly recommend doing this – especially when you’re first starting out on the platform.
3. Host a Twitter Chat
If Twitter is your thing, then hosting a live Twitter chat can be another way of offering an opportunity for your audience to engage with you.
Every time you post a new blog post, why not on the same day or later that week run a Twitter chat?
All you need to do is claim a relevant hashtag, let your audience know the time and date the Twitter chat will take place (Tweet about it, email your list, shout out on other platforms, have a banner on your blog post… lots of ways to let people know) …and host it.
Be sure to keep your Twitter chat focused on the core topic of the week/the blog post. Delve further into it. Encourage people who haven’t yet read your post to read it. Share tips, suggestions, and don’t forget to tag sources mentioned in your post – you might get a retweet from someone with a huge audience
4. Record a Podcast Episode
Convert blog posts into podcast episodes. You’ve already done all the hard work in writing your blog post, so if you feel comfortable doing so, why not talk about the topic into a microphone and record it.
You could read your blog post out loud – there would be nothing wrong with giving that a try.
Or, and perhaps more preferable, for a more natural sounding discussion just note down the key points from your blog post and discuss them without reading directly from the blog post.
Another option would be to invite a guest onto the show to discuss the topic in more detail.
5. Create a Slide Presentation
You can convert your blog post into a slide presentation.
Firstly, plan out your slides by stripping your blog post down completely to the most important points.
From there, plan out what will go onto each individual slide. Make sure you don’t have too many words on each slide, less is more. Make sure that your slides flow nicely together and tell a story.
Once you’re happy with your plan, you can create your slides in PowerPoint (Microsoft) or Keynote (Apple). If you want, you can create slides in graphic design tools like Canva or Photoshop. We love to do this because we love to make our slides very visually engaging.
Once you’re happy with your slides what will you use them for?
A few suggestions would be to upload to SlideShare and other document sharing sites, use for a webinar or they may even support your live social media video (no1. above), or you could use them for an in-person talk/presentation too.
You could also look at which slides stand-alone and share them as individual images on social media.
There’s plenty that you can do with a fun and engaging slide presentation.
Conclusion
You owe it to yourself, your content and your audience to repurpose.
Repurposing can take many forms, it’s about not reinventing the wheel every time you embark upon creating new content.
It’s about never being stuck in a creative slump, wondering what you are going to post for various different platforms, and instead, looking at your existing content and working out what you can do with it to make it fit for a new purpose.
Start small. Don’t try and do everything at once. When you take on a repurposing mindset, you’ll find it easier to become a content marketing machine!
Amy Woods is a digital entrepreneur and expert in content repurposing. She helps online content creators grow their audience by maximizing their return on every piece of content that they create. She is the founder of Content 10x, who provide content repurposing services to podcasters, video content creators and bloggers.
