Your best content doesn’t have to live only once. If you have managed to create something awesome that resonated with the audience, go ahead and make the most of it.
Re-purposing or re-packaging an article means giving it another form and format based on the exiting content and research. By re-packaging, you spread your article even further. You expose it to new audiences; you allow to download it and save for further reference.
Repackaging is one of the most powerful content marketing tactics. It does require time, effort and inspiration but it pays back with more exposure, links and recognition. This post is about different ways to re-package your content to give it wings. This post means to inspire.
Contents
1. Presentations
You can turn almost any article into the PowerPoint presentation:
- Collect all the screenshots and put them into a pretty slideshow;
- Turn your list part into an appealing presentation;
- Create an easy-to-digest summary of your article (move the key points into the presentation);
- Move any statistics data or case studies you are mentioning to the presentation (to make your point clearer); etc
Tools to promote:
| Slideshare | Social media friendly: LinkedIn and Facebook applications (presentations are easy to promote); Huge community (more exposure). |
Helpful tips!
If you consider using SlideShare to expand your content reach, be sure to go through these tips on promoting your presentations on Slideshare. Some most useful tips include:
- Don’t forget your keywords (and put them in tags and presentation title);
- Take part in SlideShare contests (like this World’s Best Presentation Contest)
- Create a group that’s exclusive to your brand and advertise your product or services
- Integrate some sound into your presentation with Slidecasting
- Launch a channel (Check out some of the newest channels and contact SlideShare for details on how to get started.)
Example?
Back in 2008, when I was doing my very first guest post for SEJ, I got so excited that decided to find a prettier way to share my guest post with my personal blog audience. So I came up with the short but pretty (and surprisingly well-branded) presentation to embed to my blog:
2. eBooks and PDF’s
Like with presentations, you can always re-package your content into PDF’s to let users download it and view on iPad, share with friends and save locally for further reference:
- Re-organize your tips into one-page cheat sheet;
- Re-arrange your article to create a mini eBook;
- Interview a few really prominent people on the topic of your post and collect the interview into an eBook;
- Collect related statistics to create a white paper.
Best tool to promote:
| Scribd | Heavy Facebook integration (login and reading recommendations via Facebook) which gives your content more social media exposure; Huge community. |
I have a larger list in this post on sharing your (SEO) documents. There are also eBook sharing and reviewing sites like GetFreeEbooks you can try to use to increase exposure of your content.
Here’s also a very sweet tip on how to promote your eBook which I thoroughly enjoyed because it is very practical and genuine. Here’s an excellent article on eBook revolution from DirJournal web directory.
With marketing automation platform like GetResponse you can also turn your how-to article into a series of emails targeting your readers who chose to download the PDF guide.
Example?
I have mentioned this in my 3-R post, but I decided to include it here just because I really enjoyed the execution. Allison Boyer re-crafted her The 12 Days of Blogging 2010 series into an appealing eBook: each page of the eBook is dedicated to one prominent blogger with the citation from his article and Allison’s comment below it.
3. Cheatsheets
If you want to give your content some huge exposure, consider creating a useful cheat sheet or a quick-reference guide – that always results in insane popularity because people love sharing and printing out cheat sheets that offer an easy way to remember and use complex guidelines.
Tools to promote:
| Quickly Code | Internet (including HTML, search and typography) |
Note: Cheat sheets are very easy to promote via blogger outreach. Most bloggers (including myself) love sharing and creating round-ups of relevant and useful reference guides – so just take some time looking for such bloggers in your niche.
Example?
Ian Lurie did an awesome guest post at Moz and then followed up with this equally awesome Google Analytics Cheatsheet containing both basic and advanced tips on setting up the proper tracking. Obviously, he now owns Google SERPs for [Google Analytics Cheatsheet] term and also enjoys plenty of backlinks naturally flowing in (including mine):
4. Screencasts
If you (like myself) tend to shy away from creating a screencast, let me tell you that today it seems to be as easy as making a screenshot:
- Here’s one fun free tool I shared previously that makes screencasting fun.
- You can convert your PowerPoint presentation into a video as well!
By creating a screencast showing what you are explaining in the post you will cater for “visual learning” part of your audience. Besides, you’ll be able to increase your content exposure to highly popular online video sharing websites.
Tools to promote?Video sharing websites are plenty. Of course, I suggest focusing your efforts to max 5: you will get extra exposure only if you develop and promote your profiles at the selected video sharing websites (instead of trying to distribute your video to hundreds of them). Video social media websites work like any social networks: you need to commit to get noticed there!
| Youtube | It’s huge and very active. |
5. Infographics (and Other Image Content)
If you take time creating some pretty charts, venn diagrams or other types of infographics, be sure to promote those separately.
Here are some free tools to help you quickly create useful infographic. Here are also a few great data visualization WordPress plugins.
But not only infographics are worth sharing. If you have created a good collection of screenshots, for example, share and promote your collection as well!
Best tool to promote?
| Flickr | It is fairly easy to get ranked high in Creative Commons search results. |
There are many cool ways to promote an infographic. Also learn how I promoted my infographic here. Don’t forget to use best image SEO practices to generate extra organic visibility from Google image search and Google’s image carousels.
Example?
When I was launching MyBlogGuest, it struck me that not all people actually were familiar with the concept of guest blogging, so I created a short intro to explain what it was all about and one of our members did a great job visualizing the concept through infographic (which became a powerful independent piece of content).
Do you re-package your content? I’d love to know your tips and favorite tools!
cc licensed flickr photo shared by balanced.crafts
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Guest posting is now one of the SEO techniques that works very well because aside from spreading your blog post, you also get the chance to mingle with other bloggers. You also build trust with even more audiences through this technique.
I’ve had a lot of luck with PDFs. I get some good traffic, and some of them get republished. I haven’t tried Presentations of images yet. Great idea. Thanks for the tips!
Thanks for the new ideas Ann.
Wow you have written such a fabulous post, I liked it from the beginning to end. I will implement your all tips.
It is really good to repackage content, most especially old content so they can still be of use and not just archived in your blog. I’m familiar with all the other tips you mentioned but not with screencast and infographics. I will surely check those out.
Thank you for your article and for your tips. In my opinion when you are creating a blog I think it is important to use different content. You need to create content that people like to talk about it so that they will share it, it will help you to increase your visibility on this internet.
Really useful post, Thanks for the post!
Hi Ann
Not visited in a while but have just subscribed to your email feed so I won’t miss any more posts.
“Your best content doesn’t have to live only once.”
Now that’s what I call good news.
Lots of useful ideas – particularly like, “Re-arrange your article to create a mini eBook;”
I’ve been thinking about that for a while so I might go with that.
BTW – notice that you are using the GASP antispam plugin.
Do you use it with Akismet or have you deactivated Akismet?
I like those presentations. Planning some ebooks at the moment, but presentations could be a good way to promote an ebook without going the video route.
Great post.
I’ve developed a site, the content of which is unique and much more useful than some crappy posts available on some blogs appearing on first page of google.
Can I just write a summary paragraph and copy/paste the same paragraph at multiple sites like hubpages/squidoo etc? Or will I have to write 1000 different introductory paras for 1000 social bookmarking sites?
Now, this is what I call a useful list. Thanks for all the resources we can utilize to repackage our content. This is the way to ‘multitasking’ content! Off to do some work now…
This are awesome tips. I already have plans to turn some of my posts into an ebook.
This has given me some more ideas.
thank you!
mike
Liked this article very much.
I am looking for a source to read up on ebooks.
Is there no duplicate content issue with this idea.
This is a great idea but dont goolge index pdf’s?
Ann, that is a great set of ideas & links. Will pass on to my clients & use myself.
Thanks
Thanks for the feedback. Greatly appreciated. Nathanael
Really useful list. Thanks for the post!
@PTCL EVO, you better not. Google is most likely to devalue all duplicate content entries and your links in them anyway, so providing unique description with each is the only way to go!
Thanks Ann. I was able to bring first one of my developed sites to top 3 in the google results. But I’m having tough time with my two sites one year after that. Maybe I’ve got too lazy.
SEO is really a tough job, and requires lots of patience.
Thanks again for the response and nice suggestions.
Certainly a great post on resources. I am currently working on slides presentation & youtube videos to get more exposure.
Ann,
I’m curious: Why did you choose to add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the links in your “Ann Smarty recommends” section? I’m thinking; If you recommend something, you’re giving it your vote of confidence (a vote). It’s not like your preservering PageRank by adding the attribute.
Great post, Ann. Thanks for the great ideas. We’ve used Slideshare before but your idea on eBooks is a great one. I’ll be on the look out for another source on this. My favorite ways of repackaging that you mentioned is infographic creation. These are so effective at making an article or blog post into a quickly readable and eye-catching piece. There are lots of people out there who like sharing them, which is always great. Thanks again for your post. Looking forward to sharing with our readers at http://www.searchinfluence.com/blog
Great list. Thanks for posting.
@ Dee, good point about the re-packaged content being even better in the need. While re-packaging the content, we re-think and re-organize a lot of things. We arrive at new conclusions and we make new exciting discoveries based on the same research!
@ Cindy, thanks. I am glad the list may turn useful!
@ Keith, I don’t update the blog as often as I’d like to (because of the lack of time), but I do try to maintain the quality.
I am using GASP together with Spam Karma (which I don’t think is still supported) but I still have lots of spam (not sure how it gets through!)
This is a great list of opportunities to re purpose my previous content. Not only is this a great way to recycle content but also a fantastic way to increase back links to my site.
Thank you so much for this.
Great post. Another good suggestion is turning your written content into Pod casts for audio marketing.
Thanks for the huge amount of ideas on how to re-package existing stuff. I’m really glad that I found this info because I’ve always felt that my stuff is not getting the momentum it deserves. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do it with re-packaging following your lead.
Thanks again.
Thank you for these tips. Your post as been different than some repackaging ideas for content I have read. I have found unconventional the tip about taking screenshots. Thanks
Nice useful list, thanks, came in use. 🙂
Cheat sheet is a new one for me! I have been reading into new forms of content, and I was growing weary of hearing “top 10 lists” over and over again (even if they do work!). Cheat sheets will be something I do more research on for industries that it will work.
Infographics seem to be really popular right now. I think that they will get increasingly harder to push because, naturally, they are becoming more interactive and more robust. It seems to be the industry’s saying that, “infographics aren’t dead, crap infographics are.” Our standard of infographics now may be terrible by tomorrow’s standards.
The platform section is really going to help me out. I was searching the web for sites that accepted content submission, but I was not sure of what would be the best home and for what type of content. Really appreciate that section!
I do have a question…well, maybe a few! When you repurpose the content, do you only push that content on external platforms, or would you host it on the internal site as well? I was just curious about the best method if you were going to host it on the internal site. You wouldn’t want pagination issues, but you also wouldn’t want to cannibalize.
Thanks for the post! This is one of the best reads I’ve had in awhile. I’m starting to realize the importance of content. If it’s what the searchers care about, it’s what the search engines are going to care about.
thank you for sharing!
Repackaging is indeed great in all aspects. Oftentimes, it’s needed actually most especially if you really wanna highlight something on your article before but you forgot to do. I’ve done repackaging as well and the quality is still there. I remembered one time when I made it I noticed that it usually better than the first one. To repackage your content means giving it a new life and a better perspective. Nice post.
Some great ideas I had not thought about. It feels like certain people have favourite sites and tools. I think ill do some research on what my customers use and see where some of my content could live. Thanks again.
Enjoyed reading your post with great ideas and resources. Thanks for sharing – there’s so many applications and resources out there for us to use, but it can be overwhelming finding them. Much time spent staring at the computer screen! I will be linking to this post from my blog/website with a few of my thoughts added in.
I thought I pretty much knew all the known paths of repurposing your content, but you still manage to surprise me, Ann.
Will have to try some of these out.
Ana
Good tips, it just goes to show that you don’t always have to rely on creating new content but you can distribute what you already have for a new audience.
Cheat sheets work a lot, mainly because they solve problems and build trust among readers.
Going to put this aritcle to good use now.
I have Re-packaged some of my content before, but you have given me some new ideas for sure. Good content nowadays is so expensive and getting a few more ideas on how to re-packaged can save you a lot of money as well.
Thanks for the suggestions.
I have always had great success with cheat sheets I have created. In fact, one of my very first projects was an ebook entitled “The Foundation for Facebook Marketing” I created by following your advice in your second point.
Now, after reading this article, I see a new mission before me. I never considered your advice on using old articles (particularly its images) to create PowerPoint presentations. I never thought of this marketing strategy!
Can’t wait to see how much MORE this impacts my traffic and lead generation.
Thanks Ann
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