Leveraging Content Creation by Repurposing with Value

Creating content on the Internet is what brings people to your web site, your affiliate ad, your sales funnels, or whatever it is you want to achieve. Content is generally the start of that process.

Many marketers have figured out ways to re-purpose their content and convert one piece of content into different multimedia types, each one having stand alone value in and of itself. Certainly you can find re-purposed content across the web that has no extra, and sometimes even lesser, value than the original, as is the case with spun content, or auto-transcription in a lot of cases, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

In this article I’d like to discuss leveraging written content, let’s start with a blog post, and then converting that content into different multimedia types, first a simple PDF with free tools, then a video, then audio. You can spread the content across the web on the appropriate sharing sites for the given media type, and optionally embed them into your original blog content giving your audience more options to take in your message.

Write a blog post first

Starting with a blog post isn’t necessary, it’s just the approach I want to take here. Bloggers often write about topics from the tops of their heads and lots of words can be put to text in a short amount of time when done that way.

As you know, for a blog post you write the body, between 300 and 1500+ words is common, and the title. You can also include tags, some say to use very short words as tags, others use several long tail keywords. I have seen some high ranking posts that use long tails for tags. To me, it seems spammy and in general the tag will just link to an archive page with one page, but it is effective, so I will leave the decision how to handle tags to you.

Creating a lot of white space throughout the content, rather than just a sea of text looks more appealing to the would-be reader. Embedding images and other media throughout, as well as adding ordered and unordered lists, makes the content even more attractive to the reader. Using headlines, usually with H3 or H2 tags, and including long tail key-phrases that you pull from Google Suggest might not be a bad idea. Also floating your images left or right, or using large images the full width of the content area make for an attractive post.

Convert to PDF for free

A great strategy is to convert the post to a PDF, and then share the PDF on one or more PDF sharing sites. The bulk of the work is done, it just requires copying and pasting the content and exporting to PDF, then publishing. However, I would put a little more into it than that to create value.

First off, for getting a free tool to convert to PDF people often just search Google for “free software to create PDF” or something similar. A lot of times what they end up with is a lite version of software that will not retain hyperlinks and often times will be stamped with the product name or site. That may be fine in some cases but there is a better way. Download the free open source tool from OpenOffice.org. Launch the “Write” program and paste your content in there.

Adding intros, images, copyrights, and calls to action and perhaps an ad or two won’t hurt. You can’t do much with multimedia but that’s OK. You can make it attractive with fonts and pictures. You can set some meta data in the properties then just click File then Export as PDF and you’re done.

When publishing I would take care to create a unique 150+ (even up to 300 or 500) word description for each site you’re publishing to. Include a link to your site in the profile and perhaps to the URL of the blog post if there is an option to do so. PDF sharing sites include Scribd.com, Slideshare.net, DocStoc.com. There are a few others, just Google “PDF sharing sites” to find a list.

Creating a video

There are a few different ways to skin this cat. You can first create a presentation with points from your original post as the slides. This presentation can be shared as its own media as well on sites like SlideShare.net. Then you can create a free screencast using Screenr.com, providing you can get through the presentation in the 5 minutes that is allotted to free users. You can then download the video to be used on YouTube and optionally other video sharing sites.

Be sure to do a quick intro, and an outro with a call to action. Now, if doing the presentation (you can use free software from OpenOffice.org for this as well by the way, the presentation software is called Impress) seems more work than you would like to do, simply flipping on the web cam and reading the post into an attached mic in a conversational way is fine as well. There are ways to put your face in a smaller window and still have control over the screen that is being captured. Or you can just do a screen capture video demonstrating what is discussed in the post. This obviously works best for “how-to” type posts.

I think YouTube is an obvious choice for uploading the video to, but there are certainly a lot more options out there for video sharing. Again, I would recommend a unique, longer than average, description used for each site. I realize this is a little more work but if it’s content that originally came from the top of your head it should be rather easy, and is well worth the extra effort. Perhaps you can span this whole process across an entire week and sink real value into each step to really make it worthwhile.

One last thing, for YoutTube, if you include a plain link at the top of the description (with the http) it will turn into a hyperlink. That can be used for your site URL or post URL or both. Multiple links can be included. Something that I noticed some SEO experts doing that I have been experimenting with as well is linking to the YouTube video itself at the bottom of the video description.

They were just dropping the link in, I decided to use it with a call to action by saying something like — if you liked this video you can embed it into your site using the embed code below in the “share” section, or else link to it directly using this link — then I paste the YouTube video URL immediately after, which it then hyperlinks back to itself after publishing. I don’t know the value that really serves for users so use with caution.

Extracting audio from the video for a podcast

Now, the simplest way to get audio from this is by simply extracting the audio track from the video. Be sure that when creating the video you keep in mind that it will also be used for your podcast so it might be wise not to say “in this video…” or anything similar. You can extract sound from your video using free software called Audacity.

There’s not a great deal to say about creating the audio except that when publishing it, keep the same ideas in mind about writing a unique description. Also sharing it on multiple audio-sharing or podcast sites might be a good idea. Sharing podcasts is different in that you generally just share a podcast feed rather than upload the individual file everywhere. You start with one source, either your own blog, or a hosted site and get the podcast-friendly (and perhaps iTunes friendly) feed, and share that. There are free and paid services out there for this. I have no personal recommendations, except that if you intend to upload to just one place, SoundCloud.com is a popular choice amongst marketers and podcasters.

Extending your social reach with images

If you are using your own personal images within your original post, you can upload them to places like Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest and others, and then embed them into the post. Then you can link back to the post in the images description on the social site.

Taking it a day at a time

Now, if you are committed to providing real value, I don’t suggest you try to handle all these steps in just one day, unless you have a team behind you. If going at it alone…

Day 1 – Put your content into the blog post. Go out and capture images and unqiue video perhaps. Break the article or blog post up into sections, sections that can be discussed in a stand alone way. Publish the images and the post. Social share the post (FB, Twitter, G+, etc.)

Day 2 – Create and publish the PDF. Today is an easy day, but it may encourage you to get creative with the descriptions and to share on multiple sites. Social share. Embed in original post if desired.

Day 3 – Create the video and publish it, and/or publish any video captured on the first day. Spend time on decriptions. Share on multiple sites. Social share. Embed in original post if desired.

Day 4 – Extract the audio, publish and share it.

Tying it all together with article marketing

Day 5 – Take one of the concepts or sections from the original post and write a quick 500 word unique article about just that. Link to the post, the images, the videos, and/or the audio (or even embed some) and publish it to a high authority, high Alexa, or niche site or blog.

Check Alexa to see the top sites and find out how you can publish on them. Learn the publishing rules and always provide the same value as if publishing to your own site.

Now, take the weekend off, or perform the steps from Day 5 again. If you find that the main post becomes popular, highly shared, highly commented on, etc. consider setting up auto-tweets of the URL and short description at set intervals to keep giving the post social juice as you move onto the next killer content to share with your audience.