How to Give Your Content Legs

November 1st 2014 | By Sarah McInerney

Everyone knows the importance now of producing and publishing meaty content on a regular basis. Google loves it; it demonstrates your expertise and is the modern way to do PR.

These days there are so many places you can publish your content, so it is well worth taking your time to produce something that has legs. What do I mean by that? Well with so many places to be posting and sharing your content, you really want to get the most out of your writing efforts and streamlining your time.

So instead of spending your entire working week trying to come up with material to put on your blog and website, in your newsletter, on all your social platforms and online groups and to submit to target publications, you could be producing one shining example of a great piece of content that can be used – with a little tweaking – across the lot.

How it Works in Practice

So how does this work in practice? Well, say for example you write a post, ’10 Ways to Get Your Content Out There’. First write your post. Make it nice and detailed and a good length, about 700-800 words at least, split into numbered reference sections is about right. There you have your main blog.

Now you can start deconstructing it:

• Take out each of your tips, summarise them and post them as Tweets.
• Split the post into about four or five sections and post as a serial on Facebook once a week. Serialised content grabs attention and keeps people coming back.
• Publish the piece on LinkedIn (you can post full articles now – it’s a recent feature). Tail it off with a question asking your followers for opinion, input and comments. The more you get a conversation going, the more people will see your material as the connections of anyone who comments will get to see what you are talking about.
• Scan your favourite forums and LinkedIn groups for conversations that relate to your article, then use parts of it to respond to questions and requests for advice.
• Take 20 or 30 word snippets of your blog, find some relevant images to go with them and create a Pinterest board. Anyone searching for images on a particular subject will come across your content in a different way.
• Re-jig the piece so it’s unique and make it into an advice based article that can be submitted to online business portals or business magazines.
• Summarise your article into a great teaser intro and use it in your latest newsletter to drive traffic through to your website to read the full piece.

There are so many possibilities for your content, just bear it in mind when you are writing your posts. Craft them from the start with multi-uses in mind and you’ll find your content really can have legs –getting you the widest coverage with just the effort it takes to write one post.

In our next post we’ll talk in more detail about possible destinations for your content, from social sharing to online business portals and local magazines.