Giving Your Old Content New Mileage

library
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

By now, you have so much content on your website. You don’t want to waste it. Using it once and then moving on doesn’t seem very efficient. You need to take old content and use it in innovative ways.

You have a tremendous amount of opportunities at your fingertips. There are certain rules that you need to follow when it comes to your content so that you are able to use it in different ways. You want to get the most mileage out if that you can. One thing that you shouldn’t do with your content is to write in a time-sensitive manner. For example, if Black Friday is coming up and you want to write content on that topic, you can only post it in November. If you are approaching the end of the year and you want to write 2013, it will only be applicable once. That is not content that will give you a great deal of mileage.

What you can do with your already-created content

Even though traditional book publishing has been on the decline for the last several years, publishing in other ways is not. Many people are publishing electronically and there is no reason why you can take your valuable content and turn it into several eBooks. You may be surprised to learn how many people will be interested in your eBooks. You have already chosen your niche. Now, all you have to do is share what you have written in another form.

The transition from blogging to writing

If you started out as a blogger, you have already developed the writing skills that will carry you into the future with your business. There are certain fundamental differences between bloggers and authors but all of them can easily be overcome. First of all, authors are used to writing long content while bloggers generally write shorter content that often uses colloquial language. Authors work on one project for a long time while bloggers work on much shorter-term projects. Additionally, authors are generally not involved with marketing while bloggers need to have an understanding of marketing so that they can get people to pay attention to their content. One of their main goals is to get people to interact with them so that the relationship becomes strong enough to get the other people to eventually buy what they are selling.

Bloggers have relationships with their audience and they communicate with them regularly. Authors generally don’t have relationships with their audience. Part of the interaction that bloggers have with their audience is the feedback aspect of it. Bloggers need audience feedback so that they can figure out how to improve upon what they are doing and thus offer improved and more desirable products and/or services.

Publishing makes natural sense for bloggers

The first thing that you need if you are blogger who wants to publish is self-confidence. You need to believe that you can successfully make the transition from blogger to author. Financially speaking, you will most likely see very positive results if you start to publish your content as eBooks. The fact is that you already have the niche audience in the palm of your hand. Now, all you have to do is expand the way that you were presenting your content to them. It is nowhere near starting from scratch.

Your edge as a blogger

You now understand that you have an edge if you started off as a blogger. The advantages that you will be able to enjoy once you are an author are:

  • Subject matter expert: Once you slide into the author’s position, you will be regarded as the top expert in your field. Coming out with an eBook will really catapult your career.
  • The process of selling your eBooks: Once you make your eBooks available, you will be surprised at how success comes to you.
  • New opportunities: Once you have published eBooks, your name will become better known and a whole bunch of opportunities will open up for  you. People will invite you to give presentations, be a part of strategic partnerships and co-author books with other influencers.

 

Conclusion

It is wonderful when you can figure out how to take all of your hard work (in the form of content) and get a lot more valuable use out of it. Once you have published eBooks, you can use them as incentive giveaways in return for people opting in. Everyone wins and you will feel that all of your hard work was leveraged and that your efforts gave something back to you. Inspiration comes from many different places, including from you at an earlier time when your perspective was slightly different than it is now. It isn’t necessary to reinvent the wheel every time if you have the tools and the material to share information that you created before if it still has the ability to give meaning to other people.

Masterful Blogging Book on Amazon

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a complimentary assessment of your online presence, let’s have coffee.

Let's Have Coffee CTA 2

Let's have coffee

Author

  • Carolyn Cohn

    Carolyn Cohn is the Co-Founder & Chief Creative Services of CompuKol Communications. Carolyn manages CompuKol’s creative and editorial department, which consists of writers and editors. Her weekly blogs are syndicated globally. She has decades of editorial experience in online editing, and editing books, journal articles, abstracts, and promotional and educational materials. Carolyn earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.

4 Responses

  1. Ian Alexander says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups
    Group: The Content Wrangler Community
    Discussion: What do you do with your already-created content?

    I think this makes perfect sense in the age of self-publishing. I believe too many people think of publishing in the terms of decades gone by where getting published was a big thing and required a lot of leg-work.

    This isn’t the case as much today. Why blog your ideas which makes them little different from all the other blogs when publishing them gives them more credibility given that someone felt the topic was worthy of them publishing them. Even if this publishing generates no income per se, the added credibility can only help you or your business.
    By Ian Alexander

  2. Elizabeth Todd says:

    I agree with Ian, this is definitely a good idea. Browsing through what I’ve written on various of my websites over the last few years I can see quite a few pieces that have had a good size audience and would be worth recycling.

    Technology may have changed over time but the principles of building a business are still very much applicable. Refreshing some of this material and publishing it as eBooks would serve well as refreshers for people who have seen it before. In addition, it could serve as new quality promotional material that will take little time and effort to produce.

  3. Lorne Marr says:

    Hi Carolyn!

    Thanks for your inspiring ideas. The shift from blogging to writing indeed is a natural step, I agree, but there are so many mediocre bloggers offering too little to the audience on the Internet that turning their work into eBooks would be pointless. Anyway, it’s a very interesting means of preserving old content for those, who are skilled enough to create attractive content and offer an original point of view.

  4. Akilah says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups
    Group: Retail Online Integration
    Discussion: What do you do with your already-created content?

    I try to repurpose post into status and tweets. I’ve also added some to my free ebook and using some in my inbox course
    By Akilah at AKZMe Designs