Repurposing Content Works: How to Extend the Life of Your Blog Posts

To grow your blog, think beyond your blog. 

That’s right: your writing should not just stop in your blog. There are other ways you can expand the reach of your blog, simply by repackaging your content. You can give your articles and blog posts legs by thinking of how you can reuse your existing content in a new and exciting way.

Repurposing your content simply means taking your existing content and using them in new formats. Your blog posts can be turned into a number of different products that can be distributed in a variety of mediums. By repackaging your content, you are able to maximize your intellectual property and customize it to deliver value to different audiences. Thus,  you can reach more audiences and increase the visibility of your blog.

Here are some ways you can repackage and repurpose the content of your blog to broaden your marketing reach:

1. Compile your blog posts into a book. If you write on your blog diligently, you will soon have pages and pages of content that you can compile into a book. In fact, many have throttled this path – to great success. Having a book generated much more interest in their blogs, raised their profiles as experts in their field, and opened new opportunities for them. Here are some examples:

• Jessica Hagy’s delightful exploration of everything in crude chart-and-graph visuals all done in index cards in the blog Indexed http://thisisindexed.com/  , turned into the book Indexed
• Walker Lamond’s Rules for My Unborn Sonbook came  from his blog “1001 Rules for My Unborn Son” http://rulesformyunbornson.tumblr.com/
• Christian Lander’s blog “Stuff White People Like” http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com / got a book deal in about three months of publication and his book “Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions was soon published.

2. Turn some of your blog posts into short videos. According to comScore, more than 177 million U.S. Internet users watched video content in June 2010. Given that about 84.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video, this is one huge market that you could potentially reach with videos made from your blog posts.

After writing your blog posts, you can create a video summary of your blog post. If you’re a little camera-shy, there are programs out there that convert articles into videos such as ArticleVideoRobot.com. Or you can create a PowerPoint version of your blog post, which you then convert into videos using software such as Presentation Pro. Make sure that you put a link to your blog in the video or make your URL  visible. Also include a link in the description that you create for the video. Then submit the video to sites such as youtube.com, viddler.com and metacafe.com, among others.

3. Convert your blog posts to audio. You can also create audio products from your blogs. You can read your blog post into a microphone, using software such Audacity (free) to record your podcast or use a service such as AudioAcrobat. Then you can upload your podcast into iTunes, and grow your listener and user base.

You can even take it to the next level by creating a radio show out of your blog in sites such as blogtalkradio.com.

4. Tap the social publishing networks. People spend time a lot of time online sharing information, and one of the places you need to tap are the social publishing platforms. Most social publishing networks accept PDFs and PowerPoints, while others allow for Microsoft Word, Excel and other file formats.

You can submit your blog content to social publishing sites by converting your blog posts into PowerPoint presentations, or simply reformat them into PDFs. Make sure that the converted file format of your choice includes your blog name and URL prominently, and the description includes a URL of your blog. Examples of social publishing where you can submit your content are:

• SlideShare.net
• Scribd.com
• AuthorStream.com
• Docstoc.com
• Slideboom.com
• MyPlick.com
• Issuu
• Slideserve

There are a number of ways you can use and reuse your blog posts to market your blog and profit from it. Use your imagination and creativity to find new ideas.