You’ve spent a lot of time and energy crafting an EPIC post. You’ve spent time researching, maybe reaching out to influencers, writing and rewriting, publishing and promoting this post.
Hopefully when you publish and promote, you get some good buzz happening. Maybe it lasts for a week or so — two if you’re lucky.
Then what?
You spent hours of your time crafting this piece and now… it’s just going to languish on your blog getting buried further and further down, forgotten.
Or will it?
This is where upcycling comes in. When you have a post that you know has significant value and you want to get it in front of more eyeballs, the best thing you can do is repurpose it.
Repurposing generally means using the same information in a new format. The new buzzword for this is adaptive content. Technically, adaptive content also includes a smart content management system that helps you do all this — but until someone invents a cool system like this that we can all use, we can do some of it manually ourselves.
The great thing about repurposing is that it gives old content new life, gets it in front of new eyeballs, and can be done for days, weeks, or months after the original post goes live, extending its life and usefulness.
Sharing (Syndication) on Other Sites
Syndication is when you share your blog post on other sites in almost exactly the same format it’s already in.
Sites like Medium and Quora encourage people to re-post long-form content, and you’ll reach a new audience of readers by doing so.
The upside of this method of repurposing is that it is the least labor-intensive. After you’ve set up accounts with these sites, basically all you have to do is cut and paste your content.
The downside is that, as with most outlets, some of these will be relevant to your niche, and some won’t. Do some Google searching to see if there are any similar sites specific to your niche.
Sites to repurpose your content include:
- Medium
- Quora
- Google+ (just do a regular update, but in long form)
- Blokube
- Syndication sites like Biz Sugar and Bussiness2Community — check out this post for more syndication suggestions.
NOTE: There is some question about how to do this “legally” with Google so that it doesn’t hurt your SEO. Most of the big syndication sites use a bit of code called rel=canonical that makes it OK with Google, but you might want to check. Here’s a good article that explains this issue in plain English.
Repurpose in a new format
The next level of repurposing is to take your content and put it in a new format.
The Internet is a multimedia place, and many people are drawn to different types of media. Some people like to read long articles, others would rather watch a video, listen to a podcast, or get it in an easily digestible format like an infographic.
I have heard many excellent success stories from using these techniques. Speaking coach Michelle Mazur took an old blog post and created a presentation from it, which she uploaded to SlideShare. It was then included in the SlideShare newsletter, and she got hundreds of new opt-ins from it.
Here are some ideas for repurposing content:
- Course — turn your content into a course
- Udemy
- Skillshare
- Guides.co
- Presentation — turn your content into PowerPoint-style presentations (use Haiku Deck to produce it) and share on these sites:
- Slideshare
- Slideworld
- Slideboom
- Ebook/PDF — turn your content into an ebook or downloadable PDF and share on these sites:
- Scribd
- Kindle
- iBooks
- Infographic — turn your content into an infographic and share on these sites:
- Scribd
- Slideshare
- Visual.ly
- social media networks
- Flickr
- Daily Infographic, Cool Infographics, Infographics Archive, Infographic Journal, Infographics Showcase
- Video or Audio version of your content
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- Viddler
- iTunes podcast (or video podcast)
- Webinar — turn your info into a webinar
- Use EventBrite to promote your webinar
- Record it and upload as a video or audio
- Email Course — turn your content into an email course
- Use it as an free or paid opportunity on your website
- Use your email service (MailChimp, Aweber, etc.) to deliver
- Quizzes — turn your content into an interactive quiz.
- Checklists, forms or worksheets — turn your content into a downloadable asset for your readers (this is sometimes known as a content upgrade).
- Resource post — combine several epic posts into one mega resource post on a topic — like this one.
- Create a physical book from your content using these sites:
- Lulu
- Amazon Createspace
Whatever you choose, you need a plan.
Of course, this is all well and good and exciting, but here’s what usually happens. You think, “YEAH! That’s a great idea! I’m going to turn my blog post into a video/presentation/ebook!”
And then it never happens.
That’s why I call this advanced blogging: because it takes some serious extra effort to make it happen.
My best suggestion? Make a plan and then make it happen. Consider: Do you need to hire any help to make this happen? When will you create it? How much time do you need?
Once you’ve got your plan figured out, you can put it in your calendar and make it happen.
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