Top 10 Tips to Maximize the Life of a Blog Post!

Maximize to Monetize!

So you finally put together an editorial calendar. You have even written a few blog posts that got some good attention on the social network waves. However, now you find yourself busy with business. You have no time to write new content in the next two weeks because you have two events to attend to, classes to teach, new clients visiting the office and an extended weekend vacation coming up.

So what is a good business blogger to do? I have some tips to help you maximize the life of the blog posts you have already written!

Maximize to Monetize!

Blog posts can be a great test bed for all sorts of marketing and social media strategies and tactics that can help you better meet your business goals and objectives.

If you know you have written a few killer blog posts, why not leverage the same content for other marketing and social media activities and tactics?

I often leverage single pieces of content for 18-24 months or more! A few of our top traffic driving blog articles were written over two years ago. Even to this day they are still the top one to two traffic generating posts daily thanks to Google organic search!

Below are some quick tips to help you maximize and lengthen the life of your rockin' blog posts.

Top 10 Ways to Maximize the Life of a Blog Post:

1. Ensure that they are search engine friendly. Go back to the post and double check details such as titles, tags, categories and more. If you don't know what to look for give us a ring or contact any good agency with expertise doing such and they should be able to help you.

2. Add a video. Record a quick video summary of the post and publish to YouTube. You may even be able to create a series of videos from the single post depending on the content. The video doesn't have to be fancy. Simply talk about the points you made in the video. Mention the blog post including the url for your blog. Don't forget to include a title closing slide at the end with your url as well. Also include your blog url in the text description of the hosting site such as YouTube.

3. Record a podcast. Similar to above, but record an audio recording and publish it as a podcast.

4. Send an email to your list and include all content created. Send the email to your list of subscribers with a short summary of the content and why they should read it, including how it can help them solve business problems or improve their life. Include mention of and links to both the blog post and video. This works like a charm. I do this all the time and get many personal emails back thanking me for doing such.

5. Write a whitepaper. Write an enhanced version of the blog post and turn it into a whitepaper. Then leverage the whitepaper to help meet business, marketing and social media objectives and goals. You may have a goal to grow your email subscriber list. If yes, then use the whitepaper as a call to action for people to subscribe. Use the whitepaper as give-aways at networking events, association meetings or with new prospects. Use it for education with current and new clients.

6. Create a worksheet with detailed instructions. If your blog post includes specific how to instructions and you have a framework for which you can help people leverage your methodology, then create a quick worksheet to help them better implement your ideas and recommendations. You can also use this as a call to action similar to the whitepaper to grow your subscriber list. You can see two examples for how I did this as follows:

Worksheet: Download Content Inventory Worksheet to maximize to monetize your content!
Worksheet: Download our POST audience analysis worksheet to help you identify and prioritize your top audiences. It is based upon the Forrester POST methodology.

7. Record a webinar. Now that you have the video, podcast, and whitepaper you have plenty of content to create a webinar. Create a few slides and plan a 30 – 60 minute webinar. You can either conduct the webinar live and record it or simply record yourself giving the presentation and then pitch it as a webinar. Either way you can require an opt-in to your email subscriber list if desired.

8. Post the slides to SlideShare. Now that you have the beautiful slides created for the webinar you can use them elsewhere. In addition to leveraging them for training, sharing with prospects or clients you can also upload them to SlideShare for broader sharing. You can link to them from your blog, Facebook, email nurturing campaigns and the list goes on. You can check out a recent deck I published here: 34 Social Media Truths in a Nut Shell

9. Develop a lunch-n-learn or mini-training course. If the content includes how to information, methodology specifics or anything that can help other business leaders or individuals then consider sharing it with a local association, Chamber of Commerce, University or non-profit. Leverage all of the content you have created to date starting with the blog post. You can print off the blog post, whitepaper, slide deck, worksheets and even invite them to download the recorded webinar after the session. This will help you nurture relationships and grow your email list. The benefits are endless because now you have an entire mini-package to share with them that is packed with useful information and tools. Great job if you made it this far!

10. Write a case study blog post on all of the above. Now that you have a case study from leveraging and maximizing the life of your content you can help others do the same! You can see an example here with a keynote presentation I did at Rochestor Institute of Technology a year ago. I did all of the above with great success. I even took it a step further and since I started with a presentation deck I wrote a blog post on each of the key points over the course of a year.

Bonus Tip: Conduct a Tweet Chat. If you have a strong Twitter community or want to build one a great way to provide value to your community would be to provide all of the above as resources in support of a Tweet chat. I host the #GetRealChat which meets weekly at 9pm et on Tuesdays. We support this topic and many others as we help each other grow! We would love you to come say hi!

Different Strokes for Different Folks

Remember, all people learn differently. While some people like to learn by simply reading a post, others prefer video or audio. Some even like a mix of all three or more.

I always believe in the “create once, use many” approach to content marketing. Create the best content you can at phase one and then leverage it for months to come via different mediums and communication channels.

Continue to Nurture the Relationship

Be sure to maximize the investment you are making in building relationships by continuing the conversation with those interested in your content, brand and messages along the way. If they opt-in to your email list don't just send them one email and then never follow up again. Be sure to keep a healthy pulse going with them which includes a variety of content to help them grow their business and meet objectives in life and/or business.

Quality over Quantity

As you can see as an example with the tips presented in this blog post, quality trumps quantity any day. You can only maximize what you are creating that is good and relevant to your audience. You must get in the head of your audience, know their objectives, what keeps them up at night and how you can help them solve problems. If you know why they should give a rip about what you have to say then it should be fairly easy to create content that will help them solve problems in their business and life. You can never go wrong by investing in people and their needs.

If you create junk content marketing then you are going to have a tough time making sense or leveraging this blog post for your business or blog. If this is you, that's okay. Don't be too hard on yourself. Simply start at square one and set some solid goals and objectives. Make it a goal to undertand your audience, community, target customer, current customer and other partners integral to your business. My blog is loaded with information to help you do all of the above. If you need specific recommendations, or help getting started, give us a call. We can help.