10 Secrets to Repurposing Your Content Part Four

Content repurposing is more than a way to fill in the gaps when you’re on vacation or when you’re struggling to come up with original content. Repurposing your content makes good financial sense too. In past posts in this series, we’ve discussed repurposing books, reports and articles – all fairly obvious content to repurpose. However, one area which you may be overlooking and which can provide powerful and compelling content are ecourses and client communication or FAQ’s.

Let’s take a look at both and explore your options.

Ecourses

If you have an online course or two in your content catalog, either as a product you sell or a giveaway, bonus or lead generator, that online course can be paired down to create snappy and information dense autoresponders.

For example, if your online course has 10 lessons, you can pull three of the most useful lessons out, whittle them down to a paragraph or two, and create an autoresponder series. If the course is a product you??re selling then the autoresponder can be a great way to motivate a purchase. You can also use this autoresponder to promote other items in your product or service catalog or to promote other items, for example if you’re an affiliate marketer.

Your repurposed ecourse also makes for a great lead generator.

Frequently Asked Questions

Whether you’ve been in business for a month or ten years, chances are you’ve been asked questions about your business. They may be questions you get from people on the street who learn about you and your business or questions you receive from your customers. These questions, and more importantly your answers, make great content material. Grab those old email responses and repurpose them into content.

Format them as a Q&A piece or pull apart the important points in your response, add an attention-grabbing headline and voila, you have a great article or blog post. If you receive a number of compelling questions you can gather them together, along with your compelling answers, and create a short report, for example "The Top Ten Questions People Ask about _________."

The great thing about repurposing content is it only takes a few minutes to pull things together and polish it into quality fresh content and it’s an easy task to outsource!

Next time we’ll wrap this series up by talking about repurposing blog posts and PLR content.

Happy writing!

Is Fear Stifling Your Content?

I receive a lot of questions from people interested in entering the freelance writing world and I’ve noticed that one thing holds all of them back – fear. It got me to thinking, and blogging, about how this emotion, which we all deal with at one time or another, affects internet marketers and the content they write. I’d like to take a look at a few ways fear can hold you back from connecting with your audience and from making money.

Fear Can Make Your Content Dreadfully Dull.

When you write , we’re talking about articles, blog posts, and even ebooks and reports, do you write without fear of being judged? Do you write without fear of stepping on a few toes, of stirring up controversy, of being perceived a certain way? Many people write their content with a great amount of restraint and unfortunately their content lacks enthusiasm, passion and to be quite blunt, it’s not interesting.

If this rings true for you, if you feel as if you’re holding back when you write, because you fear being judged or angering people, consider taking a leap of faith. Write about something you’ve always wanted to write about, don’t hold back, and then publish it. It can be a liberating experience. And you’ll likely attract some new attention to your website.

Fear Can Make Your Sales Content Ineffective.

Many business owners struggle with writing their sales content. They strive to cover all the bases, the emotional triggers, the benefits, the testimonials and so on, while at the same time they fear sounding too boastful, too salesy, too cliche and so on. However, what happens when you let fear rule your writing is you end up focusing on the wrong things.

The Poopy First Draft

One of the most powerful ways to overcome fear whether you’re writing sales copy or content, is to sit down at your computer or notebook and commit to writing a first draft. Not just any ol first draft, but what you will gratefully accept as a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad first draft.

In our house we call it the "poopy first draft" because my daughters used to sit at the computer for hours writing and editing their book reports. They put so much pressure on themselves for it to be perfect it took twice as long as it should and sometimes they weren’t very good.However when they write their poopy first draft, spelling and grammar check takes care of the editing and a few contextual revisions usually brings their report together quite nicely

When you eliminate judgment from your writing it frees you to write without fear. When you write without fear, you accomplish your writing goals much more eloquently and efficiently.

Your audience is able to connect with you on a very personal and human level and your sales content will feel genuine and have more power to convert.

Do you let fear stifle your content and if so, how do you overcome it – share your stories!

Tired of Tips and How To Articles? Try the Problem/Solution Approach

Tips and How to Articles are successful formats because they are easily digested by any audience.  When you are able to distill a topic into a series of steps or offer advice with finely organized tips then you capture your audiences attention and offer them a quick benefit.

However if you’re writing articles for SEO and traffic generation purposes that means you’re writing a lot of content.  The result can often be stagnant copy.  Not fun for you or your audience.

Consider using the problem/solution approach to your next article series. It works like this:

An article on losing weight might approach the topic with the following problems and solutions:

• Problem – Late in the day cravings and before bedtime snacks.
• Solution – Find a high protein snack with a small amount of carbohydrates like a bowl of cereal.  If you’re exercising and building muscle this snack will actually help you metabolize slower.
• Problem- No time for breakfast
• Solution – Make time!  Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day.  A hard boiled egg or a protein shake will go a long way toward curbing cravings and maintaining blood sugar levels.

This approach with a very tightly focused theme will help you keep your content fresh, letting you and your audience look at things with new eyes.  It offers the same easily digestible benefits for your readers and is still simple to write.

Happy writing

10 Secrets to Repurposing Your Content Part Three

Whether you’re on a budget or simply seeking to make the most of your assets, repurposing your content is a brilliant business decision.  In the first two installments of this five part series I discussed repurposing Interviews and How to Articles and Forum Posts and Information Products .

In this third installment we’ll take a look at how to repurpose newsletters and autoresponders.

Newsletters

Newsletters, also known as ezines and enewsletters if distributed electronically, are a great way to stay in communication with your prospects and customers.  Regular communication, as you know, is one of the keys to motivating purchases – it’s about creating and maintaining front of mind awareness.

Whether your newsletter has one article or ten this content can be repurposed into a variety of products or formats.

Reports. It may be a big job and one to consider outsourcing particularly if you have been publishing for a long time however you can pool all of your newsletter content together and organize them by topic and create special reports.

The dated content will need to be updated with timely statistics and quotes.  These reports can of course be given away, sold, or packaged as bonus products with other products to increase their value.

Blog posts. Your newsletter content can also be shortened and repurposed into blog posts or even guest blog posts to expand awareness.

Articles. Finally, newsletter content can be reformatted and rewritten to create original content which you can utilize for article marketing or SEO purposes.

Autoresponders.

Typically autoresponders are short informational messaged with a bit of a marketing message tied in. The goal is often to motivate people to click through to receive more information or to motivate a purchase.

Articles. These messages often combine quite well to create longer How To or Tips articles.  Pull your autoresponder series together, add a few transition sentences and remove the marketing content and you have a well formatted article.

Ecourse. Many autoresponders are designed to show someone how to do something.  Pulling them together you can create an ecourse to sell or give away.  Add exercises and action steps in the form of a workbook to increase the content’s value.

There are myriad ways to repurpose your content without worrying about duplicate content issues or fearing redundancy.  Next time we’ll take a look at how to repurpose your online courses, and questions from your prospects and customers.

Happy writing!

3 Tips to Writing an Attention Grabbing Lead

Your audience, on average, gives your content about 20 seconds before they decide to continue reading or to click away.  Myriad eye tracking studies have been conducted and they all come to one basic conclusion – readers and website visitors usually read your headline first, scan your copy quickly (and we’re talking seconds here) for a reason to read your article or web page, and then if so motivated will go back and read your first paragraph and hopefully continue on to read the entire article.

This means your first paragraph, your lead, plays a very important role in whether or not the remainder of the article will be read.  Here are three tips to getting your readers attention every time.

#1  What is the most unusual or jaw dropping statistic or quote you have?  What has the biggest wow factor?  For example, if you’re writing an article on how to save money with your home heating, then your lead might contain an eye popping statistic about how much one family was able to save or how much the average consumer wastes.  (We’ll discuss how to find these nuggets of data in a subsequent post).

#2  Introduce a little daytime television – human drama.  People love stories, especially stories with a little drama or tension – Shakespeare was onto something.  Start your article with a human element.  For example if you’re writing an article on budgeting or financial management you could start by telling your audience about a particular family who on the edge of bankruptcy was able to bring their finances back under control.  The article would then go into some tips on how to accomplish this.

#3 Tap into curiosity.  Presenting a common problem or trend that we all have, or that your audience has, and then stating that you have a unique but effective solution for that problem.  Don’t state the solution in the lead – allude to it.  Spark their curiosity.

Your lead is perhaps the most important paragraph in your article.  However the pressure to write a catchy lead can be overwhelming and the all familiar writer’s block is sure to pop up with too much pressure.  Write your lead keeping in mind that you are going to go back and polish it up once you’ve completed the article.  Often times, after writing the article, you’ll see a better way to write your lead.  You’ll uncover an angle or a snippet of information that’s just perfect for your lead.  This process enables you to write the article with a bit of structure and it eliminates the pressure for first time perfection.

What’s Your Content Resolution for 2009?

I’d like to take a short hiatus from the repurposing your content series to talk very briefly about New Year’s Resolutions.  Perhaps you’re like me and you don’t make resolutions, then consider this a content plan for the upcoming year (and unlike those resolutions, stick to it)

So what do you want to include in your content plan/resolution?

First determine what your goals are for the year.  Set the bar high, but not so high that it’s unattainable.

For example, what about a report a month?  Depending on your business, a report a month may be a valuable asset for your audience AND each report could generate 10-12 additional articles for article marketing and SEO purposes.

At the end of the year you would also have 12 reports which could be combined into one fantastic digital product to give away for free (think viral marketing here) or to sell for a profit.

What about tacking a quarterly interview onto your 2009 content resolution?

So now you have 12 reports and 4 interviews.  Each interview could be packaged as a product or freebie. It could also be transcribed and spun into articles for article marketing and SEO purposes.  A workbook or online course could be created from the transcription and you could bundle it with your 12 reports at the end of the year as a bonus.

The quarterly interview would generate at least 4 articles.  Combined with your monthly report and you’ll have approximately 12 articles a month – that’s a great goal.  Hire a great article spinner and those 12 articles could be spun into 24 or 36 monthly articles – all from one report each month and one interview each quarter.

Now, if you really set the bar high for yourself you could also add an original blog post a week to your 2009 content resolution.  (or you can simply pull one of those articles from your report and/or interview and use those for your posts)

Create A Plan To Follow Through and Accomplish Your Content Resolution

Once you’ve determined your goals for 2009 and how to achieve those goals with your content, then it’s time to create a plan.

Here are some questions to ask yourself.

• What report topics would your audience benefit from?
• What experts can you connect with to interview and what beneficial information can they offer your audience?
• How many pages do you want your reports to be?  (10 pages is a good round number that is easy to achieve)
• Are you going to create the reports, and subsequent articles, yourself or outsource the project?
• Are you going to transcribe the interviews yourself or outsource the project?
• How are you going to distribute the content created from your reports and interviews?

If you don’t choose the reports and interviews concept for your content strategy then what content works best to market your business?  Articles?  Blog posts?  Case Studies?  How will you structure your year to maximize your content?

For example, you could plan for 10 articles and 10 blog posts/month.  How will you create the content?  Will you outsource it or write it yourself?

Remember to set the bar high here. If you wrote 10 articles a month last year and had good results, then up the ante and write 15 a month – create a plan to get it done.  Don’t forget to use your content for maximum value – spin it, repackage, and repurpose it.  Content is still Queen online and off.  People are still searching for valuable nuggets of information – be the one who consistently provides it and you’ll have a loyal visitor, and customer, for life.

Happy New Year!

10 Secrets To Repurposing Your Content – Part Two

Last week I began a 5 part series on repurposing your content.  Having a repurposing strategy in place before you have the content created will save you valuable time and money (two things we can all benefit from).

In the previous post I talked about repurposing Interviews and How To articles .  This time around we’re talking about repurposing forum posts and digital information products.

Forum Posts

If you an active social networker and marketer then you’ve likely participated in a few hand picked forums devoted to your industry or niche.  For example, if you sell pet related products or services then you may be a devoted visitor to one or two forums devoted to the pet industry or pet lovers.  You may even have a forum on your own website.

These forum posts are excellent sources for content – particularly if you’re a long winded writer :-)

So…grab those posts, cut and paste them or download them if it’s possible, and take a look at what you have.  You may have a wealth of content practically ready to go or you may need to polish them, combine them and work em over to create valuable content.

Sounds like a lot of work, right?  This is a perfect job for a virtual assistant or a freelance writer.

Digital Information Products

Do you have eBooks, reports, and workbooks you’ve written?  Perhaps you’ve given them away for free or perhaps you’ve charged for them – either way, they make ideal projects for repurposing.  eBooks and reports are easily reworked into ten, twenty, even thirty articles and blog posts and articles.  You can also repurpose a large eBook into several smaller reports.  AND each article you create from your eBooks and reports can be spun at least once or twice to create new articles.

When you have an eBook or report available to repurpose, you can literally create hundreds of articles.  Quick note:  When you spin an article, it’s important to make sure it is different enough from your original so search engines do not penalize you for duplicate content.  There are free online tools to help you check including dupecop.com.

Again, a good virtual assistant and/or a freelance writer can be very helpful for content repurposing projects.

Between your forum posts and your digital products there is likely enough material to keep you, or a valued contractor or employee, fruitfully busy for a long, long time.

Happy writing and repurposing!

10 Secrets to Repurposing Your Content – A 5 Part Series

When it comes to content, many business owners exhaust themselves, their resources, and their budget trying to come up with original content on a consistent basis.  Others seem to write the same content over and over again re-purposing the same five articles ad nauseam. Over the next 5 posts, I will share several clever ways to create unique content from your stockpile of already wonderful and original content.  (This is particularly helpful at the end of the year when you’re planning your content strategy for the upcoming year!)

#1  Interviews.

Interviews, whether they’re audio interviews, video interviews, or even print interviews, offer an abundance of opportunity.  An interview can be transcribed and turned into a free product.  From this transcription you can create:

Several articles and/or blog post. One interview often provides several nuggets of key information. An article can be written highlighting each nugget of information.  Often these articles simply require an introduction and a conclusion and you can pull the body of your content verbatim, right from the interview.  You can also create list type articles with bullet points to highlight key bits of information under a common theme.

Workbooks. Interviews are a fantastic resource to create workbooks for your prospects and customers. You can pull out those key points of information and then invite the reader to take action, answer questions, take a survey or quiz and so on.

Reports. Like articles, creating reports from an interview are a pretty straightforward process.  You, or your writer, can pull those key points of information from the interview and expand on them.  You can even quote the person/expert interviewed to add credibility and authority to the report.

Digital Products. Collect your interviews over the past year and package them as a book, or pull out those particularly valuable nuggets of information and create reports.

#2  How To Articles

How many how to articles do you have in your archives?  Ever consider putting them together to create a workshop, class, or online lesson?  Take a look at your collection of how to articles, sort them by theme, and explore where their might be gaps.  Do you have enough to create a course?  What’s missing to make it complete?  Fill in the gaps and package it nicely and you have another valuable piece to offer your customers and prospects.

You can also make a fabulous product by gathering your how to articles together into a bundle and making them available.

Finally, you can use the good old fashioned article spinning process to re-work those particularly popular how to articles you published last year.  Explore combining a few how to articles to create an original article or blog post.

Re-purposing your content most often takes looking at it from another angle.  Remember, you know your audience best.  Explore what pieces from your archives offer the most value and what received the best response.  Those are the pieces to begin with.

Happy writing!

Plagiarism – The Internet’s Naughty Little Secret?

Plagiarism is defined by the wonderful folks at Plagiarism.org as:

1. to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own
2. to use (another’s production) without crediting the source
3. to commit literary theft
4. to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.

Unfortunately, with the vastness of the internet and the abundance of content available, plagiarism by and large goes unnoticed and silently accepted.  In an effort to demonstrate credibility and to meet content demands – content and ideas are “borrowed.” It doesn’t have to be a blatant cut and paste. Plagiarism occurs in degrees from using a person’s ideas as your own to the good old fashioned cut and paste.

I’m not going to lecture on the moral and legal implications.  This is not a soapbox moment. But rather, discuss how you can create wonderful content without risking plagiarism and copyright infringement.

1. Create proprietary slogans and acronyms.  This not only sets your content apart from the other content available online and off, it’s great for branding and building credibility.
2. Share personal stories and examples to demonstrate your ideas and concepts. You’re a unique entity and in todays market the more transparent and authentic you can be, the more your audience is going to respond to you.
3. Source and give due credit. If you like and embrace the ideas of another internet marketer then quote them, give them credit when you reference their content and expand upon it if you want to differentiate yourself.
4. Do your research. There’s a notorious quote by playwright, Wilson Mizner which says “Copy from one, it’s plagiarism ; copy from two, it’s research.”
5. Make certain to hire ghostwriters who provide original content and source their information.

Transparency and authenticity are an internet marketer’s secret weapon.  When you create unique and valuable content – you’re providing something beneficial to your market.  Creating original content may be a bit more challenging than copying others however it’s well worth the effort ethically, legally and it’s more profitable.

It’s also worth the effort to do what you can to protect your unique content.  I truly believe that the majority of Internet Marketers are honest and ethical business people.  However, if you do come across potential perpetrators – consider taking a stand against plagiarism.  It elevates the industry which benefits us all.

NaNoWriMo for Marketers?

November is National Novel Writer’s Month – it’s the month that authors or would be novelists are challenged to write 50,000 words on their novel.

For a novelist that is a large word count and a very lofty goal.  Writing every day, it comes out to about 1700 words a day.

As a novelist looking at that daily word count, I cringe and hide in the corner.  Am I participating in NaNoWriMo this year?  Nope!

For an internet marketer 50,000 words a month equates to about 80-120 articles/blog posts/social marketing and networking posts, blog comments, reports, sales letters, emails and so on… each averaging between 400 and 600 words.

Do you presently write 50,000 words for your business?

If not, consider setting yourself a goal – we’ll call it NaIMWriMo – National Internet Marketer Writer’s Month.  Keeping the same 50,000 word count goal that means:

30 Blog posts (600 words per post) – 18000

20 Articles (600 words per article) – 12000

3 ten page reports (400 words per page) – 12000

That leaves 8000 words for email messages, blog and forum comments, tweets at Twitter and so on.  Easily accomplished, right?

So how do you track all this content – consider saving the month’s content in a single NaIMWriMo folder.  That way you can see at a glance how many articles, reports and emails etc..you have written and how close you are to your goal.

Reaching your goal – the celebration

Attaining any lofty goal deserves a lofty reward – right?  If you’ve written 50,000 words then you certainly deserve a reward!

Now for internet marketers much of the reward will be in the form of additional profits.  However if you like to up the ante, consider giving yourself much needed time off – even a day or two just to sit back and enjoy life.  Go to the movies.  Buy those shoes you adore but really have no place to wear.  Do something fun!

Oh, and don’t forget to make a plan to get all that new content online and available to your prospects and customers!

So…is NaIMWriMo for you?  If so, get busy it’s already Nov 10th!

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