Do Your Blog Posts Have Legs?

15 Ways to Use Blog Posts To Create Content Marketing

While some bloggers can whip up a blog post in a matter of minutes (specifically under an hour), I’m not one of them. I need to consider a blog topic and let my thoughts marinate before I compose a post. To maximize my blogging time, I assess how to leverage each blogging effort to develop the most content marketing efficiently.

To put a content marketing twist on John Donne, “No blog post is a content marketing island entire of itself.”   Tweet This

Based on my experience, here are fifteen ways to extend your blogging efforts to create additional content to meet your objectives and your target audience’s needs.

Expand your article content efforts.

  1. Create multiple related blog posts at the same time. Make the most of research by writing two or three posts on the same topic at the same sitting. Once you’ve done the thinking on a topic, it’s easier to extend your writing. Actionable Blogging Tactic: Select different associated topics rather than writing a series and space out the publication dates of these posts. Skip writing a series of articles since, while efficient from a writing and production perspective, they don’t perform as well because the later columns only attract a percentage of the initial readers.
  2. Write articles for different media entities simultaneously. Like writing multiple posts on the same topic concurrently, use your knowledge to serve several different writing assignments, such as blog posts, guest posts, and third party articles. Each article should have it’s own focus on the topic. Actionable Blogging Tactic: Tailor each article to the specific target audience and their needs. Add enough unique content to each piece so that it’s not a duplicate of another.
  3. Extend website content. Provide more detailed information for product pages and other internal digital content needs. This is particularly useful if your blog posts answer customer questions. (Check the blogging secret sauce.) Actionable Blogging Tactic: Cross link the content to your product page from your blog post and vice versa.
  4. Offer second publishing rights. Allow other media entities and/or blogs to republish blog posts ten days later to expose your content to a broader audience. Actionable Blogging Tactic: Think strategically about your third party content placement to maximize blog reach.

Send the information out.

  1. Build regular emailings around blog posts. Handcraft excerpts from each blog post to entice readers to click through. Actionable Blogging Tactic: Incorporate images from your blog posts and the social media shares to help lure readers in.
  2. Develop tailored newsletter articles. Alternatively, write new columns based on the blog post. Actionable Blogging Tactic: Include links to related blog posts to drive traffic to your blog from your email.

Picture your blog post as an image.

  1. Create an image from your blog post to share on image rich social media venue (such as Facebook and Pinterest). Take a visual approach to your blog’s information. Actionable Blogging Tactic: Highlight a quote, recipe or pattern to engage and attract social media shares. Ensure the graphic is sharable on visual social media platforms and use the appropriate sharing buttons.
  2. Convert blog tips into an infographic. Use your blog post information to develop an infographic to attract an interested audience.  Actionable Blogging Tactic: Clearly denote relevant data points to ensure your infographic’s ability to build a following, Further support your efforts with blogger and media outreach to expand your audience.
  3. Develop a video from your blog post. Use your blog as the basis for creating a powerpoint based video. Alternatively, use your blog post as the script for a talking heads video. Actionable Blogging Tactic: Add relevant text to the video to ensure it’s searchable

Socialize your blog post content.

  1. Divide blog posts into chunks of social media shareable information. As food for social media, assess how each blog post can be shared over time on various social media networks. This is easy with lists where you can share each point separately. Actionable Blogging Tactic: Encourage additional social media sharing by streamlining your readers’ effort by using TweetThis. This is what I did with the John Donne quote.
  2. Draft a blog post as the basis for a Twitter chat. Several Twitter chats outline their conversation in advance so participants can consider the core issues. This is important if you’re the leader or the guest. Mack Collier of #BlogChat does this consistently. Actionable Blogging Tactic: Outline your thoughts in blog post format if you’re the chat moderator or featured guest. Then create tweets from the major points and queue them up to share when appropriate.

Create longer form content based on one or more blog posts.

  1. Build a presentation or part of one from one or more blog posts. By thinking through a topic before I blog, I can create presentation content from blog posts.  Actionable Blogging Tactic: Include a link to your blog post as a source in your presentation. To allow attendees and those who view your presentation to read the full version of your content.
  2. Create a class from several blog posts. Like creating a presentation, you can use blog posts to develop an online course. I’ve done this for classes I’ve taught at universities and at industry events. Actionable Blogging Tactic: Here’s another place where referencing your blog post as a source recognizes your content and leads participants back to your blog.
  3. Write a white paper. Once the domain of B2B marketers, these plainer content marketing options provide useful content to support pre-purchase and post-purchase needs.  Actionable Blogging Tactic: Both link and reference your blog content in your white paper to expand your reach.
  4. Integrate your blog posts into an e-book. Gather your blog posts into one document to create an e-book, which is in some ways a newer, sexier version of the white paper. Include new content and edit the information so that it reads as a coherent document. As with any form of content marketing your objective should be to add value! Here’s my free ebook, What Every Blogger Needs to Know. Actionable Blogging Tactic: Incorporate links back to your blog posts containing fuller explanations of your key points .

Since high quality blog posts generally take a lot of work, spend some extra time to extend the effectiveness of your content by creating additional offerings. (Here’s a more complete list including 56 ways to recycle your content marketing.

Have you ever extended the effectiveness of your blog posts by creating another form of content marketing? If so, what did you do and what were the results.

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen


Here’s a tip of my hat to Lisa Petrilli who’s the guest this week on #BlogChat.

Here are some related articles to help inspire you.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/forcefeed_swede/857621972/

 

 

 

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