Treat #4 – 5 Ways to Reuse Your Content to Create Something New

This is an entry in our HALLoween Blog series. Each week leading up to Halloween 2010 we will treat you with internet marketing topics that have a fun and spooky flare.

Each year on October first I start brainstorming my costume for Halloween. Sometimes I have a general idea of what I want to dress up as, and sometimes, like this year, I am not sure. In previous years, I’ve had to decide if I wanted a store-bought costume or if I wanted to make my costume. If I make it, will I need to start from scratch or do I have some items that I can put together to make my costume?

This year I thought of my previous costumes and which items could I use again to make a new, different costume. This is a great way to think about the content that you are putting out on the web. Just like your costume, you don’t need to something brand new each time, you can reuse previous content to make new content. Here are some great ways to use the content you already have to create new content than can be distributed on your website and online.

Halloween Costume
Halloween Costume
photo credit: burke_white
    1. Blog – Some blogs are short and some blogs are more detailed. Turn your longer blogs into whitepapers or webinars. Both give you the opportunity to elaborate on your original idea. Plus, the more content you have on a particular topic the more you likely you will be viewed as an authority on that topic.
    2. Webinar – On the flip side, you can break your webinars and whitepapers into blog posts. After you’ve created a webinar go back and take a look at your slides. Your webinar slides usually aren’t text heavy; they contain limited text to get your point across. Use one or two slides as an outline to write a new blog post for your website.
    3. Whitepaper – Whitepapers are written to help people with a particular problem or to educate readers on a certain subject. They are comprehensive and cover the point thoroughly. Use a whitepaper you have written to create a webinar or break up the whitepaper into sections to create a blog series based on that subject.
    4. Video – People consume content differently; some like to read whitepapers while other would rather watch a video tutorial. Take a quick video of yourself giving a brief explanation of a blog post. Then, distribute that content on YouTube and your other social networks with a link back to the blog entry. Not only are you creating a diverse blend of content, you will also be spreading your content beyond your website.
    5. Testimonials – Use your testimonials to create case studies that you can put on your site to explain in further detail the challenge that your product or service helped solve. You can describe the solution and the results in more detail than a testimonial as well as demonstrate the satisfaction of your customers.

You don’t have to buy a new costume each Halloween; sometimes the best costumes come from items you already have (you just have to be a little creative). The same goes for the content you’re distributing. It takes a lot of time and energy to create new content, but by reusing what you already have, you can create new, diverse types of content. The content that you distribute will continue to educate others as well as help build the image of your company as an authority in that particular industry.
Read the rest of the HALLoween blog series

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