How To Get More Mileage Out of Your Content

A quick Google search of this topic came up with 16 million results.  I scanned the first page to see if anyone was talking about what I mean, and I saw a lot of great strategies for repurposing your existing content by putting it into other formats.

For example, you can take a series of blog posts and turn them into an e-book, or you could take webinar notes and turn them into a Slideshare document or a YouTube video.

Although those are great ideas that you might want to try out, my post today is about an easier, faster way to get more mileage out of your content even before you think about creating something new out of it.

For now, the only thing I want you to do is to rewrite your blog title.

Yep, that’s it.  Let me explain.

Typically, what a lot of people do is publish a new post on their blog, and then put it out on their social media accounts by sharing their post title and a link back to their blog.

Some people do this once per post, and some do it a few times.  But the people who share the same post a few times also tend to use the same title.  They may hope that by sharing the post more often, they’ll get more people interested in it.  But posting the same information multiple times isn’t always an effective way of catching more interest from different people.

Basically, posting the same information will likely catch the same attention from the same audience who noticed it originally.  The same people will see it.  Just.  More.  Often.

What I want you to do is to forget about blog posts for a moment. Now think about how you already know how to share the same story differently with different audiences.  Think about how you would tell your boss, a client, a co-worker, a friend, a spouse, a child, or a stranger about the same topic.

Think about a story you’ve told recently about something that happened at work.  If you told your boss about it and then told a co-worker during lunch break, you probably told different versions of the same story.  Not that you changed the facts of the story, but you probably explained it differently to your boss than you did your co-worker.  You highlighted different details, and may have used different language or expressions.  Your boss may have been in the loop with the background of the story, while you may have had to explain a few things to your co-worker.  You might have given your boss just the facts, but shared some of your own feelings about it with your co-worker.

Now take that work story home with you and tell your spouse, your mom, or your best friend about it.  Again, it’s the same story, but depending on who you’re telling it to, the details and your way of telling it may differ with each re-telling.  You share different angles or different parts of the story depending on what you know about the person you’re talking to, and what they know or don’t know about the story’s context.

I want you to keep that in mind when you are sharing your blog post.

Some people respond best to data, others to questions, or catchy headlines, or keywords, or to trendy pop culture references.  You want to tell your story to as many different people as you can, so use different language in your headlines when you share your posts.

Action plan for getting more mileage out of your content

Ask yourself these questions about your blog post:

1. In one sentence, how would I catch
   • my boss’ attention?
   • my colleague’s attention?
   • my client’s attention?
   • my staff’s attention?
   • my supplier’s attention?
   • my child’s attention?
   • my friend’s attention?
2. How would I phrase a headline for this blog post
   • as a fact?
   • as a question?
   • as a statement?
   • as something funny (if appropriate)?
   • as relevant to something in the news today?
3. You will now have several different ways to talk about one post.  Take your different headlines and use them when you share your post through your social media outlets.  By sharing different headlines, you have a better chance of catching the attention of a wider audience of people.  Also, different headlines will suit different social media outlets.  For example, just as I talked about keeping your Twitter hashtags short, you should also keep the headlines you share on Twitter short so you can leave room for people to add their own comment when they re-tweet.

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