10 Secrets to Repurposing Your Content Part Five

In this series we’ve discussed how to repurpose just about every type of content. However, we haven’t talked about repurposing blog posts or the most obvious type of repurposed content…PLR (private label rights)

Blog Posts

Blog posts are typically left alone and not considered for repurposing because they’re written with a different tone and perspective. They’re often written with a more personal touch by sharing personal stories and experiences as well as opinions that may not be used in your day to day informational content. However, blog posts can be repurposed quite well into article and even report formats.

Consider a blog post series on repurposing content. The series could be pulled together into a report on repurposing content. You might tweak the report by adding statistics, and data as well as examples on how to repurpose content. You may also change the POV, point of view, of the post from an informal “I” or “You” to “He, She or They.”

The structure of the report is already present in the 5 part series. The opposite, as we’ve discussed in previous posts, is also true. You can pull apart a report and create blog posts from it.

Private Label Rights

Private label rights content is a great way to supplement your content strategy. It can be used as is, or it can be repurposed into a variety of content types. Here are just a few of the ways PLR can be repurposed:

• Ecourse. Group a series of how to PLR articles all on the same relevant topic, add an exercise or action steps to the end of the lesson, to add value and you have an instant ecourse.
• Report. Gather a group of relevant PLR articles and create a report. All you’ll need to do is write a cohesive introduction, transitions between the articles and a conclusion to make it complete. However, you can modify the content as well, to include some of your own content or to change the POV.
• Blog posts and autoresponders. PLR content can be pulled apart to create brief blog posts and/or autoresponder messages. Additionally, while people typically think of articles when they think of PLR, there are also PLR reports and ebooks available. One PLR ebook can create hundreds of articles for your blog and website.

Repurposing your content is part of a sound internet business strategy. It can optimize your ROI and help keep valuable content flowing to your prospects and customers. Speaking of prospects and customers, remember them when creating your content strategy. Make sure they’re receiving value and avoid the temptation to say the same thing over and over again – keep your repurposing strategy in check. The goal is to provide value and maximize your content.

Happy writing!

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!

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.

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!

Stats Are Good But What About Demographics?

For the longest time now, those of us in Internet Marketing or bloggers for that matter have relied on web statistics to help us figure out what kind of traffic we’re getting. What content is bringing in the traffic, who sends us the traffic, what people are searching for, what people use to access your content which is very important because you want your site to look good for everyone… ok, well almost everyone. These are all good to know, great for tracking where you are, how far you have to go to reach your goals, what’s working and what’s not.

The thing is, web stats don’t tell us who these people are. Sure, if we’ve been in the business for a while, you more or less have an idea who your audience is. Either by talking to them on the phone, during webinars, teleseminars, emails, blog comments, social networks. You more or less have an idea who reads your blog and visits your site. But fact is, a lot of that is gut feeling or a group you want to target. Are you really speaking to your target audience or not?

Do you know…

• What kinds of income bracket are they?
• Are you serving more women than men or equally split?
• Are you visitors more likely to be of a certain ethnic group?
• What age brackets are most of your visitors from?
• Do they have children?
• Are they college educated?
• What kind of lifestyle do they lead?

Did you get to answer all of the above? No need to despair if you didn’t because you can use Quantcast to help you track all these. Quantcast is stats tracker that tracks the finer stuff like these. What’s also cool, they tell you what else your audience will like – great for researching new topics, new affiliate products to promote or create your own products. If there’s sufficient data, you’ll also find out what other web sites your audience visits.

Check out the estimated stats for Internetbasedmoms.com. Yes that’s right. You can check other sites too – how’s that for a neat research tool and all free. You may think you know your audience well, but try it out and see how close you really are from your target.

Learn to be a Real Estate Virtual Assistant!

If you want to learn how to invest in real estate, one of the easiest ways to do it is by working for someone else.

Real estate investors and agents often need someone to help them with the details and paperwork. As more and more offline businesses are downsizing, serving a company as a Virtual Assistant from home is a win/win situation for both you and the company!

The company or investor doesn’t have to pay overhead to have you onsite so having a VA reduces his expenses. That means, it saves him money.

And as long as you can accomplish all your tasks on time, you have the freedom to work your job around your busy life.

Since I think this is just one more way that folks can work successfully from home, I have asked Alan Brymer to teach a course.

He is the only real estate expert I know who teaches this.

The problem is, his course is for real estate investors and agents. NO ONE has a course on how to BE a real estate VA.

So he and I are creating one!

You’ll get the advantage of being the first people to take the first real estate VA class and you can do it from home!

 The class is online so all you have to do is watch the videos, listen in on the phone and ask your questions to get all the answers you need.
And if you love real estate like I do and would love to learn it by doing it for and with someone else, consider taking Alan’s Real Estate VA training. It starts on Thursday, Sept. 25th.

There’s nothing else like it out there!

Here’s where to register:

http://www.EducatingforSuccess.com/reva/

So many books, so little time…
Rhea!

who loves bringing you Real Education

 

Life Happens

The past month and a half have been quite the ferris wheel for me.  Some good things (helping my son navigate Big School) and some hard things (my aunt passed away suddenly). 

I’ve checked in with my Direct Selling clients and apparently life is happening all over the place to everyone.  That is the beauty and the challenge of this industry.  We get to be available, but how do we keep it from overtaking us?  What do we learn that we can apply to our business and our lives? 

I’ve been pondering these very same questions.  For some reason, these questions  have driven back to some of my favorite books for sorting out the meaning of this things called life and to look for answers.  Though you may not believe these books will have anything to do with improving your direct sales business, I can promise you, if you read one or all of them, you won’t be able to stop the positive change. 

Here are five of my favorite old friends:

1. The Alchemist by Paul Coelho.  A short, but profound parable about following your heart’s desire, no matter the obstacles.

2. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.  Even if you don’t think you are an artist (you are, by the way), your business and your life will change in unimaginable ways under Julia’s expert guidance.

3. Steering By Starlight by Martha Beck.  I have a personal bias for Martha’s transformational abilities.  She trained me to be a coach.  If you don’t want to see your life, your business, your world in profoundly different way, don’t pick up this book.

What about you?  What books have changed your life?  Please share.  I am always looking for more.

In the meantime, enjoy the ebb and flow of living – and relish the freedom you are creating to be present for each and every moment:)

Love & Success!
Sarah

A Week Unexpected

So this week is not exactly working like I had planned.  Sunday night I made my usual weekly list of when I was teaching, what I was writing, business tasks I needed to complete.  I thought it was a nice, manageable list.

UNTIL……. my son woke up Monday morning sick sick sick and hasn’t gone to school one day this week.  So, my perfect plans went right out the window.

I couldn’t completely blow off working and he wasn’t deathly ill – just ill enough not to be welcome in his classroom.  So, I’ve had to re-group each morning and decide:

1) exactly what HAS to happen.  For example today I taught the first class in an 8 week series.  I could have re-scheduled if he were really really sick, but decided that I did not want to start off a coaching intensive that way.

2) Decide what can wait.  For example, I wanted to work on the website of a pet project of mine.  I haven’t gotten to work on it lately and it is fun to me.  Not happening this week.  Unless I do it while we watch the Olympics tonight……

3) Delegate to my assistant what has to be done that I can’t do that she can.  For example, because I started a class this week, I got lots of questions from participants before the first call.  Sine I could predict that (it happens every time), I checked in with my team and made sure they were on standby to respond to any emails that came in about the class.

4) Let the rest go and enjoy the fact that I can be home with my son, fix him Gatorade, watch Between the Lions, put a cool rag on his head without wondering if I am going to run out of vacation days.  That is what makes my life taste sweet.

What does this have to do with Direct Selling?  Plenty.  I was reminded by a client today that many direct sellers start their businesses to be available to their familes, but quickly lose track of that (somtimes are pressured to lose track of it – but that is a post for another day) – and when a wrench get thrown into their schedule it creates a meltdown.

When (notice I did not say “if”) this happens to you, use the steps above to get yourself back on track.  Remember why you started your business in the first place.  Take a deep breath, make some choices and be glad you have the power to make them.

Here’s to a sweet tasting life, compliments of your direct selling business!

Sarah
www.directsellingleaders.com

How to write a profitable book review

Books are great products to add a little passive income to your bottom line each month. The benefit is that there almost always a number of quality books written on the subject and depending on what books you decide to promote for affiliate profits, the prices can range anywhere from ten dollars on Amazon.com to a hundred for a digital e-book from a niche expert.

The trick, typically, is to promote a book in a manner in which it doesn’t seem like you’re making a sales pitch. Enter…the book review.

Reviews are wonderful little tools to pre-sell any range of topics. In future posts I’ll talk about how to write other types of reviews however since I have the tremendous pleasure of being a professional book reviewer for a national magazine (a job I pinch myself for the good fortune to have every day) I thought I’d start with how to write book reviews.

Book reviews typically come in two main sections, contrary to how most content is written. Most content has an introductory paragraph, the body content with at least three main points supporting the intro paragraph and then the conclusion. Book reviews on the other hand have a summary paragraph and then an opinion paragraph, or vice versa. It’s perfectly acceptable to reverse the two however most people reading online want to get to the details of the product before they hear your opinion of it.

A typical review for a print publication ranges from 250-350 words. Online you can add a bit more content particularly if you’ve had a personal experience with the book.

For example, you’re reviewing a book for marathon runners and Chapter Three on nutrition really helped you improve your performance. That personal experience is fine to add to a blog type review. However if you’re structuring your content as a non-biased third party review then personal stories are best left out. Your audience and industry will determine the formality of your writing style.

Sitting down to write. Summaries are often the most difficult part of a book review to write. I typically write a first draft without thinking too much about it. I’ll then ponder the review for a day or two and then re-write it a couple times until I’m satisfied. It’s important to give both a comprehensive picture of what the book is about while still covering the important points your audience wants to know. Practice. Read a few online reviews and give it a shot. There’s still plenty of profits to be made in affiliate marketing and plenty of books to sell.

Happy writing!

Quick Editing Checklist for Non Editors

Some of us are writers, some of us are editors and some of us are neither – very few are both. I have to admit to being a terrible editor, (fortunately I am married to a wonderful one).

If you don’t have the good fortune to know a great editor first hand, here’s a great little checklist.

Step One . Use your word processing software’s grammar and spell-check. I even use my email spell-check – I’m a good speller but not such a great typist. The grammar and spell-check function often catches incomplete sentences, confusing sentences, bad punctuation and of course misspelled words. It doesn’t however catch those pesky words which sound alike but are spelled differently.

Step Two. Use your "Find and Replace" feature and search for all of the Your and You’re words to make sure they’re correct. Search for the It’s and its to make sure they’re correct. Search for There, their, they’re and so on. The "Find and Replace" feature makes the job a quick and reliable one – you won’t miss a single word.

Step Three. Read it aloud. This process forces you to actually read your content rather than to skim it with your eyes. It forces you to be thorough. Quite often this is where you will catch the sentences which just don’t make sense and the other minor errors your word processing tools don’t catch. For example, I often repeat words in in a sentence. Spell-check won’t catch that but reading it aloud does.

Step Four. Macro Editing. Up to this point you’ve really been searching for the small stuff. Now it’s time to take one last glance at your content and make sure you have a beginning paragraph which introduces your topic, a body paragraph with at least three points to support your beginning paragraph statement and a summary or conclusion paragraph which wraps it all up. Kind of brings you back to your old Literature and writing classes doesn’t it?

Step Five. Double check formatting consistency. Make sure all your subheadings are formatted the same – if you’ve been bolding some and underlining others, make them consistent. Make sure all of your links work, all of your bullets or numbered lists have the same margins and so on. Polish the formatting so your content is easy to read and professional.

Take these five steps to keep your writing error free, polished, and professional. Happy writing!

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